March 31

Sin shall not have dominion over you. - Romans 6:14.

ONE of the Christian’s most inveterate enemies is sin. This is the cause of all his other evils and enemies. Sin is nothing to some, and they are well aware of it. They neither hate nor fear it; they do not oppose the stream, but they are sailing down by it, and often singing as they go, though they are moving down to the gulf of perdition.

The name of Jesus was imposed upon the Saviour at his birth, because he was to save his people from their sins, and his people consider sin as their chief enemy, and they rejoice in the persuasion that the Saviour gave himself for them, not only “to redeem them from all iniquity, but to purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” It will be acknowledged that sin, even now, is to be found in a believer. Paul speaks of sin dwelling in him: he says, “I delight in the law of God, after the inward man; but I find another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

But, though sin lives in the Christian, the Christian does not live in sin, and, though sin be not destroyed in him, it is dethroned in him; it shall no longer reign in his mortal body, that he should fulfil it in the lusts thereof; and he has this assurance given him:-that “sin shall not have dominion over him, for he is not under the law, but under grace.” And grace deserves its name: it is able to subdue every other principle; it occupies the place which sin had done before; it “reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord;” and though there be sin in the Christian, yet it is resisted, it is abhorred. A Christian is not only restrained from the practice of sin while his inclination attaches him to it, but he has mortified it; he is “dead unto sin but alive unto God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” A change took place at the foot of the cross: he saw by faith Him whom he had pierced, and he mourned for it. Hear his language:-

“Furnish me, Lord, with heavenly arms

From grace’s magazine,

And I’ll proclaim eternal war

With every darling sin.”

How little his fellow-creatures know of him! They that receive not the things of the Spirit of God judge of Christians by themselves, and because they love sin they think the Christian loves it, and, therefore, that he embraces particular doctrines because they favour licentiousness. Why, he does not desire a license to sin; why, he is not a swine, and therefore does not deem wallowing in the mire any privilege. He loves purity, and therefore dislikes impurity, and prays that he may be “cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.”

There is as much difference between sin found in a Christian and sin found in a natural man, as there is between poison found in a serpent and found in a man. Now, poison is found in a serpent, but it does him no injury. Why? Because it is natural to him; it is part of his system: but poison in a man makes him sick; it is no part of his nature. And so it is with regard to the Christian. Sin in him will always be abhorred, and he cannot be happy until he be entirely delivered from it; he therefore abhors it in his heart and resists it in his life. But he will not be called to resist it always, nor to resist it long. Now “the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” Now he rises to a daily conflict, but the conflict will soon be over:-

“Sin, his worst enemy before,

Shall vex his eyes and ears no more;

His inward foes shall all be slain,

Nor Satan break his peace again.”