The Oberlin Evangelist

April 24, 1839

Lecture IX.

GOSPEL FREEDOM

by the Rev. Charles G. Finney

Modernized by Cliff Collins

“For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” (Romans 6:14)

I will discuss the following:

I. What is sin?

II. When can we say that sin has dominion over our soul?

III. What does it mean to be under the law?

IV. What does it mean to be under grace?

V. Under the law, sin will have dominion over an unsanctified mind.

VI. Sin can’t have dominion over those who are under grace.

I. What is sin?

Sin is a state of mind, which is the opposite of the law of God. As I have shown in an earlier message, true religion consists in obedience to this law, which requires supreme unselfish love for God, and unselfish and equal love for our neighbor. This is the opposite of selfishness. This is the opposite of a supreme regard for our own interests. Therefore, selfishness, no matter what form it manifests itself in, is sin. Sin is always a modification of selfishness.

Therefore, sin is not a part of our physical or mental constitution. It is not part of or a principle of nature itself; but sin is a voluntary state of mind. In other words, sin is an action, or choice of our mind; it prefers our own interest because it is our own, to other, higher, and more important interests. Sin does not consist in any defect of our nature; but in a perverted, or prohibited use of our nature.

II. When does sin have dominion over our soul?

You cannot conclude that sin has dominion simply because our soul has fallen under the power of an occasional temptation.

Some believe that this passage teaches that a person, under grace, can’t sin under any circumstances. They have maintained, that to sin once, is to be brought under the dominion of sin.

Now although I believe in making God’s promises mean all they say, I don’t believe that this language can be justly interpreted to mean everything that some people say it means. For example, if a person got drunk one time, under circumstances of peculiar temptation, it would be neither fair, nor true, in speaking about his general character, to say that he was under the dominion of those burning spirits, and a slave to this appetite.

To illustrate my meaning, let’s look at a parallel promise in John 4:14. Here, Christ says, “but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” Now some have understood this promise to mean that if a person became a partaker of the Holy Ghost, he could never again truly know what it was like to thirst for God’s divine influence; that he would have such a fullness of the Spirit of God, that he would never thirst for more. But, this is certainly a forced interpretation of this passage. That does not agree with the meaning of these words in similar situations. For example, if you promised your neighbor that, if he came and lived in your house, he would never hunger nor thirst, would he think, you meant that he would never again have an appetite for food; or simply that he would not be hungry, or thirst, without being supplied? No doubt, he would understand that you are promising that he will have enough to eat and to drink; that he shouldn’t have to suffer gnawing hunger pains, or prolonged thirst, without you supplying what nature demands.

In the same way, I understand this promise of Christ to mean that if anyone has partaken of these waters of life, he has the promise of Christ that he will have as great a measure of His Spirit, as his needs demand. That is, whenever his soul thirsts for more of the waters of life, he has a right to plead this promise, with the assurance that Christ will satisfy his thirsty soul with living waters.

I believe our passage today has a similar meaning. This passage doesn’t mean that under temptation, nobody can fall under the power of an occasional sin. But this passage means that no form of sin shall be habitual; that no form of selfishness, or lust, shall, in any such situation, become habitual in the soul that is under grace; that no appetite, or passion, or temptation of any kind, should, in this sense, be able to bring the soul into bondage to sin.

III. What does it mean to be under the law?

1. To be under the law means to be subject to the law as a covenant of works. In other words, to be under the law is to be under the need to fulfill the law perfectly in order to obtain salvation.

2. To be under the law, is to be influenced by legal motives, or legal considerations. To be under the law is to be constrained by the fear of punishment, or influenced by the hope of reward.

3. To be under the law is to be constrained by conscience and a sense of duty, and not by love. Individuals seem to go painfully about their duty under the demands of conscience; and submit with about as much pain and reluctance, as a slave submits to his master.

4. If you are under the condemning sentence of the law, you are like a state criminal, except that you are shut off from communion with God. A state criminal, under sentence, is shut off from any kind of friendly relationship with the government. He is considered and treated as an outlaw. The same is true with a sinner under the sentence of God’s law. As long as the sinner remains in a state of spiritual death and alienated from God, the sentence of eternal death is posted against him. He is shut off from communion with God, and as a result, sin will have dominion over him.

IV. What does it mean to be under grace?

1. To be under grace means to be under a covenant of grace, as opposed to a covenant of law. By a covenant of grace, I mean the covenant that confers all the blessings of salvation as a mere gratuity; and more than a gratuity, as being the direct opposite of what we deserve.

2. To be under grace means that we are influenced by love. This is excited by grace, and not by legal motives.

3. To be under grace puts us in possession of the blessings of the new and gracious covenant.

“Behold, the days are coming”, says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them,” says the Lord. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days”, says the Lord, “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” says the Lord. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jer 31:31-34)

“Behold, the days are coming”, says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them,” says the Lord. “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days,” says the Lord, “I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” (Heb 8:8-12)

4. To be under grace, is to be so united to Christ by faith, that you receive an uninterrupted life and influence from Him. Christ represents Himself as a vine; and His children as the branches. And to be under grace is to be united to Him, just as a branch is united to its vine, so that you receive the continuous support, strength, nourishment, and life from Him.

To be under grace, is to pass from death unto life; it is to be translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. To be under grace is to pass from the state of a condemned criminal into a state of redemption, justification, and adoption.

V. Under the law, sin will have dominion over an unsanctified person.

1. Why? Because sin’s dominion is the sure result of the law on a selfish person! A selfish person seeks his own interests. If he tries to obey the law, he tires to obey through selfish considerations. He will obey either because of hope or fear. In every such attempt, that person realizes that he fails because selfishness is the very thing that the law prohibits; and every attempt to obey from selfish motives, is only a grievous breach of the law. Therefore, if all former sins were canceled, and salvation depended on future obedience to the law, salvation through works would be forever impossible. As a result, if a person tries to obey because he wants to obtain salvation, this would be a selfish act, and therefore, it would be disobedience; and that person must fail every time he tries to fulfill the law selfishly.

2. Sin must have dominion over any selfish person who is under law, or it would amount to this absurdity: that the unselfish love demanded by the law can flow from selfish motives; something that is naturally impossible.

3. To produce unselfish love, salvation must be gratuitous. Our soul must understand that obedience to the law is not the condition of salvation; for if we believe that legal obedience is the condition of salvation, it’s impossible that this belief won’t influence us in our efforts to obey. This consideration would make all attempts at obedience ineffective; and sin would continue to have dominion.

4. Selfishness will seek our present selfish gratification, until we are compelled to stop by a deep conviction to desist. In which case, our will takes refuge in a self-righteous attempt to obey the law, unless we understand that salvation is gratuitous, or a matter of grace. As a matter of fact, there seems to be no other way in which the power of selfishness can be broken, except to annihilate our reasons for making selfish efforts, by bringing home to our soul the truth that salvation is by grace, through faith.

The Apostle Paul in the 7th chapter of Romans beautifully illustrates the effect of law on a selfish mind. People commonly believe and teach that Paul is speaking here as if it were his own experience. This passage appears, from its context, to illustrate the influence of law over an unsanctified mind. It is clearly a situation where sin was habitual, where sin had dominion and where the law of sin and death in the members so warred against the law of the mind that it brought the soul into captivity. Now some have contended, and continue to contend, that the Apostle, in this chapter, describes the experience of a saint under grace. However, this can’t be; because, in this situation, it would flatly contradict the passage that I am preaching from today. As I have said, the situation described in the seventh chapter of Romans, is a situation where sin undeniably has dominion, the very thing that the Apostle complains about. But the text affirms that sin shall not have dominion over the soul that is under grace. Besides, it is obvious, in the seventh chapter of Romans, that Paul was discussing the influence of law and not grace.

5. Another reason why sin will have dominion under the law is that, under the law, we are left to the unaided exercise of our own powers of moral agency without those gracious helps, which alone can induce true holiness. The law throws out its claims on our powers of moral agency, requires the perfect use and the complete consecration of all our powers to the service of God, and then leaves us to obey, or disobey at our peril. The law neither secures, nor promises us aid; but requires us to go forth in the service of God; to love Him with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves, on pain of eternal death. Now in such circumstances, it is very clear that our mind, which is already selfish, will only be confirmed in selfishness under this arrangement.

VI. Sin can’t have dominion over those who are under grace.

1. Sin can’t have dominion because the law is written in our heart. The spirit of the law has taken possession of our soul, and made us forever “free from the law of sin and death”, which was in our members.

2. Sin can’t have dominion because we have now become acquainted with God, and with Christ, and our soul has fallen deeply in love with their character. Our soul now delights in God, and we exercise the very behavior required by the law, uninfluenced by the hope of its rewards, or by the fear of its penalty. We are overcome and swallowed up with that love that naturally results from a right acquaintance with God. Now in this state of mind, sin can’t have dominion over the soul anymore. No form of selfishness can be habitual any more than a wife, who loves her husband supremely, can become a habitual adulteress. A woman, who loves her husband, might, by force of circumstances, and by some unexpected and powerful temptation, be led to sin against her husband; but for this to become habitual, while the supreme love of her husband continues, is a contradiction.

3. Sin can’t have dominion over the true Christian because Christ has become his life. Christ is represented, not only as the life of the soul, but also as the head of the Church; and Christians are members of His body, flesh, and bones. Now as the vine supplies the branch, and as the head controls the members, Christ has become the mainspring, the wellspring of life in the Christian; and sin can’t have dominion over such a soul unless sin can have dominion over Christ. Christ may find it necessary to allow a Christian to fall into an occasional sin, to teach it by experience what, perhaps, it will not learn in any other way. However, that any form of sin should become habitual isn’t necessary to give the Christian a sense of its dependence on Christ; and Christ, by His express promise, has secured the soul against sin.

4. The soul so rests in the blood of Christ for justification and salvation that it has no reasons for engaging in selfish efforts. That person has been set free from the responsibility of working out a legal righteousness. He is constrained by such a sense of abundant and overflowing grace, that he loves and serves God. He has no reason to serve himself.

5. The soul is so constrained by a sense of the love of Christ that the Christian is less able to indulge in sin than the most obedient and affectionate child is able to indulge in habitual and willful disobedience to its parents.

6. It is impossible for sin to have dominion over a Christian, because it implies a contradiction. To be a Christian, is habitually to love, serve, and honor God. Obedience is the rule, and sin is the exception. It is therefore impossible that sin should have dominion over a Christian, for this would be the same as saying that a person might be a Christian while sin ruled over him, and obedience would be an exception; or, in other words, that sin is habitual and obedience were only occasional. If this is the definition of a Christian, then I don’t know what a Christian is.

7. Sin cannot have dominion over the Christian because the truthfulness of the God of truth pledges that sin shall not have dominion over you.

8. The very terms of the covenant of grace show that to be under grace is to have the law written in our heart. The Spirit of Christ residing within us makes or renders us obedient to God.

9. Sin can’t have dominion because every form of sin is now hateful to us. Sin can only influence us during a moment of strong temptation, when our involuntary powers, or emotions, are so strongly excited by temptation, that they gain a momentary ascendancy over our will. Meanwhile, the deep preference of our mind, although for the time being comparatively inefficient, remains unchanged.

10. Our soul, under grace, is led by the Spirit, to such an understanding and use of its powers, that it makes us a partaker of the Divine nature. John says that, “whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him”, that is the Spirit of Christ, dwelling in him, renders it unnatural for him to sin.

11. Sin can’t have dominion over the soul because old things are passed away, and all things are become new. (2 Cor 5:17) The motivation of the mind undergoes a radical change. And since the motivation of the mind must control the habitual conduct of the soul; and since deviations from its influence will only be occasional and not habitual, so the soul under grace will not and cannot be under the dominion of sin.

REMARKS.

1. There is no sound religion where there is no universal reformation. We should observe, whenever someone claims to be converted, whether the reformation in his habits and life is universal; whether reformation extends to selfishness, sinful lusts, and habits of every kind and under every form. If any lust remains, if selfishness under any form is habitually indulged in, if any sinful habit remains unbroken and unsubdued; that conversion is not sound. No form of sin will have dominion where conversion is real. Occasional sin may occur through the force of powerful temptation; but no form of sin will be habitually indulged in.

2. The lack of attention to this truth has allowed a great many unconverted people to enter the Church. In some respects, there appears to be a reformation in their lives. In many situations, without sufficient discrimination, individuals have indulged in a hope, and encouraged by other members of the Church. He is admitted to the communion table to the great disgrace of religion. I don’t see where many professing Christians truly understand that grace not only should, but actually does, in every case where piety is real, so overcome sin that it leaves no form of sin habitual. It has indeed been a common saying, that where sin is habitual, there is no real religion. But, clearly this has not been adopted in practice; for great multitudes have become members of churches, and are allowed to continue as members in good standing in Christian Churches, who habitually indulge in many forms of sin. I think the gospel demands, that no professing convert should be encouraged to think they are saved, or allowed to become a member of the Church, whose reformation of life and habits is not universal.

3. You see that all those people who have frequent convictions and conflicts with sin, and are still habitually overcome by it, are still under the law, and not under grace. In other words, they are convicted, but not converted. The problem is that their hearts are not changed to where they hate sin under every form. Temptation is too strong for their conscience, and for all their resolutions. Their hearts, pleading for indulgence, makes them an easy prey to temptation. This seems to be the precise situation that is described in the seventh chapter of Romans. Where regeneration has taken place; and the heart, as well as the conscience has become opposed to sin; in every instance, the power of temptation is so broken as that sin will be, at most, only occasional, and never habitual. Therefore, individuals who find themselves in situations where they are seen by others to be under the dominion of sin, or lust of any kind; they should know, or be told immediately, that they have not been regenerated; that they are under the law, and not under grace.

4. What can those people think about themselves, who know, that they are under the dominion of certain forms of selfishness? Do they believe that this passage in scripture is false? If not, how can they indulge in the hope that they are Christians? Our passage says, as clearly as it can, that they are under the law, and not under grace.

5. You can see the condition of those who are encouraged by the seventh chapter of Romans, believing that the seventh chapter of Romans is the Christian’s experience. If they have gone no farther than that, they are still under the law. I have been amazed to see how tenaciously professing Christians will cling to a legal experience, and justify themselves in it, by a referring to this chapter. I am fully convinced that interpreting chapter seven, from the 14th to the 25th verses, as a Christian experience, has done incalculable evil. This interpretation has led thousands of souls to stop there, and go no farther, imagining that they are already as deeply versed in Christian experience as Paul was when he wrote that epistle. There they stay, and hug their delusion, until they find themselves in the depths of hell.

6. There may be a lot of legal reformation without any true religion.

7. A legal reformation, however, may generally be distinguished by some of the following characteristics:

(1.) A legal reformation is usually only partial; that is, it may extend to certain forms of sin, while others sins are still indulged in.

(2.) A legal reformation may be temporary. In fact, it almost certainly will be temporary.

(3.) In a legal experience, you will generally notice that some forms of sinful indulgence are practiced and defended, as not being sin. And, where there is no powerful conviction deterring the soul from indulgence, selfishness and lust are still tolerated.

A gospel, or gracious experience will manifest itself in a universal hatred of sin and lust in every form. Sin will have no place, except in situations of such powerful temptation that it carries the will for a while by the force of excited feelings, when a reaction will immediately take place that prostates the soul in the depths of repentance.

8. By referring to this passage, and the principles implied here, we not only can determine if each pretended conversion is genuine, but we can also determine if religious excitements are genuine or not. Any revival that doesn’t produce universal reformation of habits in the people involved is not a genuine revival. There are many revivals of conviction, and those convictions are often deep and very general in a community, where, for the lack of sufficient discriminating instruction, there are very few real conversions.

9. You see the error of those sinners who fear to embrace religion, lest they should disgrace it, by living in sin, as they see many professing Christians now do.

Sinner, don’t hold back because of this. Only come out from under the law, and be truly converted. Submit yourself to the power and influence of sovereign grace, and no form of sin shall have dominion over you, as God is true.

10. This text is a great encouragement to real Christians. True Christians often tremble when they have once fallen under the power of temptation. They greatly fear that sin will gain complete control over them.

Christian, lift up your head, and proclaim yourself free! The God of truth has declared that you are not, and shall not be a slave to sin.

11. This is a proper promise, and an important one, for Christians to plead in prayer. It is like a heavy anchor in a storm. If temptations beat like a tempest on the soul, let the Christian hold on to this promise with all his heart. Let him cry out, “O Lord, perform the good word of Your grace to Your servant, wherein You have caused me to hope, that sin shall not have dominion over me because I am not under law but under grace.”

12. Let those who are under the law, over whom sin, in any form has dominion; remember that under the law, there is no salvation. That “whatever things the law says, it says to those who are under the law” and that “cursed is every one that continues not in all things written in the book of the law to do them”. (Gal 3:10)