Overcoming sin in Christian preaching emphasizes the necessity of decisive, total renunciation of sinful habits to achieve victory, illustrating that partial measures are ineffective. This subject often uses the picture of complete cessation or cutting off sinful behavior to highlight true repentance and transformation (Romans 6:12-14).
The clear cure for intemperance is to stop drinking entirely.
In the English Parliament, some years ago, a member moved the appointment of a committee to investigate the cause of intemperance among the people. Another member arose, and said he thought he could tell them without a committee: it was drinking. This being a clear statement of the cause, a clear statement of the cure will be, Stop drinking.
A king overcame drunkenness, valuing sobriety over money or threats.
A heathen king, who had been for years confirmed in the sin of drunkenness, by the evil practices of white men on the Sandwich Islands, had been led to forsake the dreadful habit. He said lately to a missionary, “Suppose you put four thousand dollars in one hand, and a glass of rum in the other, you say you drink this rum I give you four thousand dollars, I no drink it; you say you kill me, I no drink it.”
Celebrating victory over sin too soon can allow old corruptions to revive and persist.
The very easiest way to give resurrection to old corruptions is to erect a trophy over their graves; they will at once lift up their heads and howl out, "We are alive still." It is a great thing to overcome any sinful habit, but it is needful to guard against it still, for you have not conquered it so long as you congratulate yourself upon the conquest.
Long habits of right action build momentum to overcome temptation and sin.
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Many men fail to overcome sharp temptation because they have not by long previous habits acquired the momentum of right thought and right action. We can not fly unless we have learned to walk and to run.
“Any one who has ever watched a heavy bird rise from the ground,” says the _American Inventor_, “has doubtless noticed that it runs along the ground for a few feet before it rises; the bird must acquire some momentum before its wings can lift its heavy body into the air. The natives in certain parts of the Andes understand this fact very well and by means of it catch the great Andean vultures, the condors. A small space is shut in with a high fence and left open at the top. Then a lamb or a piece of carrion is placed on the ground inside. Presently a vulture sees the bait and swoops down upon it; but when once he finds he has alighted on the ground inside he can not get out, for he has no running space in which to acquire the momentum that is necessary before his wings can lift him.”
Small sins can bind us like thread until we are completely enslaved.
When I was speaking to five thousand children in Glasgow some years ago, I took a spool of thread and said to one of the largest boys:
“Do you believe I can bind you with that thread?”
He laughed at the idea. I wound the thread around him a few times, and he broke it with a single jerk. Then I wound the thread around and around, and by and by I said:
“Now get free if you can.”
He couldn’t move head or foot. If you are slave to some vile habit, you must either slay that habit, or it will slay you.
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