HOW TO OVERCOME SIN - SCRIPTURALLY

Charles G. Finney (1792-1875)
"Power From on High"

In every period of my ministerial life I have found many
professed Christians in a miserable state of bondage, either to
the world, the flesh, or the Devil. But surely this is no
Christian state, for the apostle has distinctly said: "Sin shall
not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but
under grace." In all my Christian life I have been pained to find
so many Christians living in the legal bondage described in the
seventh chapter of Romans - a life of sinning, and resolving to
reform and falling again.


FALSE INSTRUCTION ON OVERCOMING

 And what is particularly saddening, and
even agonizing, is that many ministers and leading Christians
give perfectly false instruction upon the subject of how to
overcome sin. The directions that are generally given on this
subject, I am sorry to say, amount to about this: "Take your sins
in detail, resolve to abstain from them, and fight against them,
if need be with prayer and fasting, until you have overcome them.

Set your will firmly against a relapse into sin, pray and
struggle, and resolve that you will not fall, and persist in this
until you form the habit of obedience and break up all your
sinful habits." 


I WAS VERY NEARLY MISLED

To be sure it is generally added: "In this
conflict you must not depend upon your own strength, but pray for
the help of God." In a word, much of the teaching, both of the
pulpit and the press, really amounts to this: Sanctification is
by works, and not by faith.  I notice that Dr. Chalmers, in his
lectures on Romans, expressly maintains that justification is by
faith, but sanctification is by works. Some twenty-five years
ago, I think, a prominent professor of theology in New England
maintained in substance the same doctrine. In my early Christian
life I was very nearly misled by one of President Edwards's
resolutions, which was, in substance, that when he had fallen
into any sin he would trace it back to its source, and then fight
and pray against it with all his might until he subdued it. This,
it will be perceived, is directing the attention to the overt act
of sin, its source or occasions. Resolving and fighting against
it fastens the attention on the sin and its source, and diverts
it entirely from Christ. 


ALL SUCH EFFORTS ARE WORSE THAN USELESS

Now it is important to say right here
that all such efforts are worse than useless, and not
infrequently result in delusion. First, it is losing sight of
what really constitutes sin; and, secondly, of the only
practicable way to avoid it. In this way the outward act or habit
may be overcome and avoided, while that which really constitutes
the sin is left untouched. Sin is not external, but internal. It
is not a muscular act, it is not the volition that causes
muscular action, it is not an involuntary feeling or desire; it
must be a voluntary act or state of mind. Sin is nothing else
than that voluntary, ultimate preference or state of committal to
self pleasing out of which the volition's, the outward actions,
purposes, intentions, and all the things that are commonly called
sin proceed. 



EFFORTS TO SUPRESS SINFUL HABITS

Now, what is resolved against in this religion of
resolutions and efforts to suppress sinful and form holy habits?
"Love is the fulfilling of the law." But do we produce love by
resolution? Do we eradicate selfishness by resolution? No,
indeed. We may suppress this or that expression or manifestation
of selfishness by resolving not to do this or that, and praying
and struggling against it. We may resolve upon an outward
obedience, and work ourselves up to the letter of an obedience to
God's commandments. But to eradicate selfishness from the breast
by resolution is an absurdity. 



THE FORCE OF RESOLUTION--IS ABSURD

So the effort to obey the commandments of God in spirit - in other
words, to attempt to love as the law of God requires by force of
resolution - is an absurdity.  There are many who maintain that sin
consists in the desires.  Be it so.  Do we control our desires by

force of resolution?  We may abstain from the gratification of a
particular desire by the force of resolution.  We may go further, and
abstain from the gratification of desire generally in the outward
life.  But this is not to secure the love of God, which constitutes
obedience.  Should we become anchorites, immure ourselves in a cell,
and crucify all our desires and appetites, so far as their indulgence
is concerned, we have only avoided certain forms of sin; but the root
that really constitutes sin is not touched.  Our resolution has not
secured love, which is the only real obedience to God.  All our
battling with sin in the outward life, by the force of resolution,
only ends in making us whited sepulchers.



ALL OUR BATTLING TO NO AVAIL

All our
battling with desire by the force of resolution is of no avail;
for in all this, however successful the effort to suppress sin
may be, in the outward life or in the inward desire, it will only
end in delusion, for by force of resolution we cannot love.  All
such efforts to overcome sin are utterly futile, and as
unscriptural as they are futile. The Bible expressly teaches us
that sin is overcome by faith in Christ. "He is made unto us
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption." "He is
the way, the truth, and the life." Christians are said to "purify
their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9). And in Acts 26:18 it is
affirmed that the saints are sanctified by faith in Christ. 



UNLESS BY FAITH, IT CANNOT BE ATTAINED

In
Romans 9:31, 32 it is affirmed that the Jews attained not to
righteousness "because they sought it not by faith, but as it
were by the works of the law." The doctrine of the Bible is that
Christ saves His people from sin through faith; that Christ's
Spirit is received by faith to dwell in the heart. It is faith
that works by love. Love is wrought and sustained by faith. By
faith Christians "overcome the world, the flesh, and the Devil."




ONLY FAITH QUENCHES THE FIERY DARTS

It is by faith that they "quench the fiery darts of the wicked."
It is by faith that they "put on the Lord Jesus Christ and put
off the old man, with his deeds." It is by faith that we fight
"the good fight," and not by resolution. It is by faith that we
"stand," by resolution we fall. This is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith. It is by faith that the
flesh is kept under and carnal desires subdued. The fact is that
it is simply by faith that we receive the Spirit of Christ to
work in us to will and to do, according to His good pleasure. He
sheds abroad His own love in our hearts, and thereby enkindles
ours. 


WHENEVER THE IS DIVERTED FROM CHRIST . . . 


Every victory over sin is by faith in Christ; and whenever
the mind is diverted from Christ, by resolving and fighting
against sin, whether we are aware of it or not, we are acting in
our own strength, rejecting the help of Christ, and are under a
specious delusion.  Nothing but the life and energy of the Spirit
of Christ within us can save us from sin, and trust is the
uniform and universal condition of the working of this saving
energy within us. How long shall this fact be at least
practically overlooked by the teachers of religion? How deeply
rooted in the heart of man is self-righteousness and

self-dependence? So deeply that one of the hardest lessons for
the human heart to learn is to renounce self-dependence and trust
wholly in Christ. 



IMPLICIT TRUST OPENS THE DOOR

When we open the door by implicit trust He
enters in and takes up His abode with us and in us. By shedding
abroad His love He quickens our whole souls into sympathy with
Himself, and in this way, and in this way alone, He purifies our
hearts through faith. He sustains our will in the attitude of
devotion. He quickens and regulates our affections, desires,
appetites and passions, and becomes our sanctification. Very much
of the teaching that we hear in prayer and conference meetings,
from the pulpit and the press, is so misleading as to render the
hearing or reading of such instruction almost too painful to be
endured. Such instruction is calculated to beget delusion,
discouragement, and a practical rejection of Christ as He is
presented in the Gospel.




"I HAVE SOMETIMES FELT AS IF I SHOULD SCREAM"

Alas! for the blindness that "leads to bewilder" the soul that is
longing after deliverance from the power of sin. I have sometimes
listened to legal teaching upon this subject until I felt as if I
should scream. It is astonishing sometimes to hear Christian men
object to the teaching which I have here inculcated that it
leaves us in a passive state, to be saved without our own
activity. What darkness is involved in this objection! The Bible
teaches that by trusting in Christ we receive an inward influence
that stimulates and directs our activity; that by faith we
receive His purifying influence into the very center of our
being; that through and by His truth revealed directly to the
soul He quickens our whole inward being into the attitude of a
loving obedience; and this is the way, and the only practicable
way, to overcome sin.


WHAT ABOUT WORKING OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION?

But someone may say: "Does not the Apostle
exhort as follows: 'Work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling; for it is God which worketh in you, both to will and
to do of His good pleasure'?  And is not this an exhortation to
do what in this article you condemn?" By no means. In the 12th
verse of the second chapter of Philippians Paul says: "Wherefore,
my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only,
but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you, both to
will and to do of His good pleasure." 



NOT BY RESOLUTION BUT BY THE INWARD OPERATION OF GOD

There is no exhortation to
work by force of resolution, but through and by the inworking of
God. Paul had taught them, while he was present with them; but
now, in his absence, he exhorts them to work out their own
salvation, not by resolution but by the inward operation of God.
This is precisely the doctrine of this tract. Paul had too often
taught the Church that Christ in the heart is our sanctification,
and that this influence is to be received by faith, to be guilty
in this passage of teaching that our sanctification is to be
wrought out by resolution and efforts to suppress sinful and form
holy habits. This passage of Scripture happily recognizes both
the divine and human agency in the work of sanctification. God
works in us to will and to do; and we, accepting by faith His
inworking, will and do according to His good pleasure. 



FAITH IS NOT PASSIVE

Faith
itself is an active and not a passive state. A passive holiness
is impossible and absurd. Let no one say that when we exhort
people to trust wholly in Christ we teach that anyone should be
or can be passive in receiving and cooperating with the divine
influence within. This influence is moral, and not physical. It
is persuasion, and not force. It influences the free will, and
consequently does this by truth, and not by force. Oh! that it
could be understood that the whole of spiritual life that is in
any man is received direct from the Spirit of Christ by faith, as
the branch receives its life from the vine. 



AWAY WITH THIS RELIGION OF RESOLUTIONS!

Away with this
religion of resolutions! It is a snare of death. Away with this
effort to make the life holy while the heart has not in it the
love of God. Oh! that men would learn to look directly at Christ
through the Gospel and so close in with Him by an act of loving
trust as to involve a universal sympathy with His state of mind.
This, and this alone, is sanctification.