Well, beloved, I can only say that, when I have read certain caricatures of this doctrine — and it is most natural that ungodly men should make fun of it — I have thought that the caricature was richly deserved, and that any contempt that could be poured upon such atrocious falsehoods was well merited. For sin, in a Christian, is quite as much sin as it is in anybody else; indeed, it is a great deal more sinful, for never does a black stain seem so black as when it falls on spotlessly white linen, and never is sin as sinful as when it is committed by one who is greatly loved by the Lord, and is the subject of peculiar favor. May Antinomianism never mislead either you or me, beloved!

The other way of perverting this truth is to say that you do not sin at all — to stand up straight, like the Pharisee in the temple, and say that you have attained such a condition that you do not now sin. If any of you, my dear friends, are in that condition, the sooner you get out of it, and humble yourselves before God for ever having dared to get into it, the better will it be for you. Our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostle never meant that we were to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin in such a sense that we never sinned at all, or that sin did not affect us as it affected other people, because that is not the truth. I appeal to every man who has a conscience, and I trust that even the believers in this super-fine holiness have some trace of conscience left, so I appeal to them whether they are not conscious of sin. My dear brother or sister, if you are not guilty of a single sin of commission — if you never utter an unkind or angry word — if you never speak unadvisedly with your lips — if you never break one of the ten commandments in the letter by an overt act of sin — if there is never about you any trace of pride, or covetousness, or wrath, or anything else that is wrong, can you say that you are free from sins of omission? Have you done all you should have done, in as high and noble a spirit as you ought to have displayed in it? O my brother, if this is your belief, you must be strangely different from what I have ever been able to be; for, when I have done my very best before God, I have always felt that my best was imperfect and marred by sin. I have had to mourn over many omissions even when I have diligently labored to obey my Lord and Master perfectly; and in reviewing any one day of my life, I have never dared to congratulate myself upon it; but, with tears of repentance, I have had to confess that, if I have not erred by overt sin, yet I have somewhere or other come short of the glory of God. My dear brother, do you really believe that your motives, and the spirit in which you have acted, have been perfect in God’s sight? It is quite unaccountable to me, if you look into your own heart, and try to trace all your sacred motives, and desires, and imagination, and all the tendencies of your nature, and yet say that you do not sin against the Lord? Have you the same standard of holiness that we have? Surely you cannot have, if you think you have attained it; if you have the same standard that we have, I am certain that you have not attained it. The holiness that a Christian ought to aim at is to be absolutely as just, and righteous, and pure as God himself is. This is the mark that he sets before us: “Be ye holy, for I am holy;” “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” If you say that you have reached that perfection, I believe that, if you let your conscience speak the truth, it will tell you that you are under a great delusion, and that you are utterly self-deceived upon that matter.

As to the notion that reckoning yourself to be perfect will help you to be so, I tell you flatly that it will most effectually prevent you from becoming perfect. Reckon that you are sinful, admit that sin far too often prevails over you, and then go humbly to God, and confess that it is so, and seek from him grace to keep you, day by day, from the power of reigning sin; and you will, in that way, make a real advance in sanctification and true holiness. But if you reckon that you have reached this blessed condition, you never will reach it. If you sit down in carnal security, you will rest in contentment with yourself, but you will never be what I trust you really desire to be. Your experience will be like that of the artist who at last painted a picture with which he was perfectly satisfied, and he then said to his wife, “I may as well break my pallet, and throw away my brush. I shall never be a great painter now, for I have realized my ideal, I am perfectly satisfied with this picture that I have produced.” Far better is it for you to have a sacred dissatisfaction and hallowed discontent with all that you are. That forgetting of the things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those that are before, that pressing forward toward the mark for the prize of your high calling in Christ Jesus, to which the apostle urges you — that seeking to fight from day to day with the temptations that surround you, not reckoning that you have won the victory yet, but believing that you will win it, though the blood of the Lamb; — this is what we long to see in you; and not to behold you sitting down in calm content, and saying, “It is all done; I am perfect.” For, believe me, my brother — or, if you do not believe me, you will find it to be true, sooner or later — you are not perfect by a very long way, as the devil knows, and as God knows, and as many people beside yourself know, who see what your daily life is, and mark your conversation.

II. Now, having thus spoken concerning this great truth, and having shown you in what way we are dead unto sin, and alive unto God, through our union to Christ, I want to point out to you THE GREAT PRACTICAL LESSON WHICH THE TEXT SETS BEFORE US: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.”

This is the great fact that you are ever to remember, you are now an altogether new man. In Christ Jesus, you have died, and been buried, and have risen again. Surely you will not now have anything to do with sin, will you? You must hate it, for it has done you such serious mischief. It was sin that slew you in the person of your Substitute and Savior but, now, you have been born again, and you are a new man in Christ Jesus. You are not going back to sin, are you? Oh, no, your whole soul abhors it, and you endeavor now, from this time forward, to be entirely free from its dominion. You mourn that sin is still within you, and that it still has great power over you. That power it will try to use, and it aims at getting complete dominion over you. It seeks to make you again what you formerly were, its subject and its slaves.

You are told, in the text, not to let sin reign in your mortal body, and this injunction implies that sin is already there, and that sin will seek to get dominion over you. Be not surprised, young converts, if you find sin to be terribly fierce within you, and if sometimes it seems even to be stronger than divine grace. It is not really so, but it may appear to you sometimes to be so; and rest assured of this — that sin in you is so strong, unless God the Holy Spirit shall help you, it will get the victory over you. It will fail to get the victory over you, because God will help you; but if he did not, the smallest soldier in the army of sin would be too strong for you, however powerful you may think yourself to be. Sin in a believer can never reign over him, because he is dead to the reigning power of sin. O King Sin, I am no subject of thine! I was once, but I died, and now I have risen again in Christ, and I am no subject of thine. What, then, does sin do, if it cannot reign over the believer! It lurks inside the soul like an outlaw whose banishment has not yet taken place. John Bunyan’s description of the Holy War is a matter of true experience. After the Diabolonians were overthrown in Mansoul, many of them remained hidden away in dens and corners of the city, and although diligent search was made to find them, there were always some of them hiding away in the back lanes and side streets, where they could not easily be discovered. It is just so with sin. As a reigning king, sin is dead to you, and you to it; but, as a sneaking outlaw sin is still lurking within your soul. It is plotting and planning to get back its former dominion over you, and not merely plotting and planning, but it is also warring and fighting to that end.

Oh, with what possible force does sin sometimes assail a believer! Just when he least expected it to come, some old lust reappears. “Oh!” he cries, “I thought that evil passion would never again assail me.” Perhaps when he is on his knees in prayer a blasphemous thought is suddenly injected into his mind; and when he is engaged in his business, endeavoring to provide things honest in the sight of all men, he finds a temptation to do something which is unjust put in his way, and though, at first, it seems as if he would consent to it, yet, by the grace of God, he is enabled to get the victory over it. The very best man in the world, if he were left by divine grace only for five minutes, might become, and probably would become, the worst man in the world. Left to himself, impetuous Peter begins cursing and swearing, and thrice denies his Master. This vile outlaw, sin, that is always fighting within us, will be king if it can. It will rally all the forces of the world against us, it will call the devil himself to its assistance, and so seek to get the reigning power again; but it never can, for we are not its subjects, we are not under its dominion, and we never will be. The almighty God, who has redeemed us from going down into the pit, will never suffer us to be again the slave of sin; yet we are constantly to be on to watch against its attacks.

The text also implies that the point of assault of sin upon you will be your body: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body!” It is generally through our body that sin tries to bring our soul into captivity. There are natural wants of the body which must be attended to; but every one of these wants may become sinful craving, and we may so excessively minister to the want that, by-and-by, it becomes a sinful lusting. That a man should eat to appease his hunger, is right; but, alas! gluttony often follows. That a man should drink to quench his thirst, is right; but there are divers drinks which lead to drunkenness; and so, even through two such perfectly justifiable natural wants as eating and drinking, Sin may come in. There are a great many other wants, emotions, and passions of the body, which are, in themselves, properly considered, not sinful, but every one of them may readily be made into a door through which sin can enter. Nay, it is not only the wants of the body, but also the pleasures of the body, which may lead to sin. There are bodily enjoyments which are perfectly innocent; but it is very easy to pass beyond that line, and to indulge the flesh with that which is evil. Even the pains of the body may become the means of attack upon the soul, for great pain will often bring depression of spirit, and despondency; and through despondency comes doubt. Ay, and pain sometimes causes murmuring, and murmuring is really rebellion against God. This poor flesh seems to be the battlefield in which the fight with sin is continually to be carried on. Sin makes frequent incursions into the region of mind and spirit, but it generally begins with the body. How strenuously, therefore, must we see to it that we obey the apostolic injunction, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof;” but, rather, let us yield these our members to be the instruments of righteousness and purity. Watch and pray, beloved; do not imagine that the stern battle is over, it is only just begun! As long as you are in this mortal state, you are to put on the whole armor of God, and to strive, and agonize, and wrestle against sin, in the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, who will help you by his ever-blessed Spirit; but to suppose that the battle for purity is over is to suppose a falsehood, which will seriously endanger the sanctity of your lives.

The apostle uses one word which is very comforting to my mind: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” I am very glad too read that word “mortal.” If this body were immortal, with its present tendencies, then might it continue to be a field of battle for the believer forever. But it is mortal; and when it dies, then shall its tendencies, which now incline us to sin, die also. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” for flesh and blood always will have a tendency towards that which is evil. But, brethren, we are going to have this flesh and blood behind us when we die. We shall be re-united to our body after it has been refined, for the grave is the refining pot for it; but, until we die, this body will be the nest of sin, and within our flesh, as Paul truly says, “there dwelleth no good thing.” Through being cumbered with this flesh, many a true child of God will, perhaps, have to cry even upon his dying bed, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Thank God, then, that it is a mortal body in which this warfare is waged, so that, when it dies, the fight is over, and the emancipated spirit shall then rejoice in the fullness of the glory of God; but not till then, neither need you expect it; for, if you do, you will be grievously disappointed when you find that you have been buoyed up with a false hope, based upon self-conceit, and not upon the work of the Spirit of God at all.

The pith of the matter lies here, brethren: Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin because, in Christ Jesus, you died unto sin; and let that truth strengthen yet to fight sin. As long as you have any question about whether God counts you among the guilty, you will never have courage to contend with sin. Evangelical doctrine is the battle-axe and the other weapons of war with which the believer is to fight against sin. That I am saved — that I am fully absolved from guilt — that I am accounted just in the sight of God — that I am saved to all eternity — this is a firm foundation for me to stand upon; and now, relying upon the power of God’s grace, I may confidently say, “Sin shall not have dominion over me, because of this amazing mercy which I have received. Because of this high calling, to which God’s infinite love has called me, I will cast down every sin that dares to lift itself up; I will take by the throat everything that is hostile to God, and I will labor to perfect holiness in the fear of God.” Tell the sinner that he must do this and that, and he is conscious of his want of power, and therefore he does nothing; but, go to him, God-sent, in the power of the Holy Spirit and say to him, “Thy sin was laid on Jesus, so thou art free from it, for Jesus bore its penalty. Thou art saved, for in him thou hast virtually died, and the law cannot now touch thee; thou art a dead man so far as it is concerned. Sin cannot accuse thee, for thou art dead to it,” — and what does the man say? Why, with great surprise in his soul, he is yet enabled to believe it, and he sees, as it were, the mountains cast down, the valleys filled up, a pathway made in the desert for God to come to his soul, and for him to come to his God; and, in the joy of pardon freely given through his Savior’s precious blood, in the bliss of salvation graciously bestowed without, money and without price, he shakes himself from the dust, arises from his former love of sin, and says, “Now, sin, I am dead to thee, and I will never permit thee to be king over me. I am no longer under thy dominion, and I will drive thee out of my being altogether. Thou sit not reign over me. I will, by the power and grace of him who has bought me with his blood, live to the praise and glory of God alone.”

Now, brethren and sisters in Christ, most earnestly do I desire that you may so live that you will never doubt your eternal union with Christ, and your consequent perfect acceptance with God. I pray that you may exercise an unstaggering faith in the finished work of Christ culminated on Calvary’s cross; and then I say to you, “Think what manner of persons you ought to be in all holy conversation and godliness.” Never tolerate any sin in yourselves; never wink at it, or imagine that it is less in you than it would to in others. Grieve over every shortcoming, every failure, everything that is not according to the perfect rule of righteousness; and, watch every day, and every hour of the day, calling in the aid of divine strength that you may be enabled to watch, and believing, at the same time, that that strength will be given you, for the promise to you is, “Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”

This will make sure work for holiness; you will not be puffed up, but you will be built up; you will not go bragging about how holy you are, your own mouth condemning you all the while; but, in silence before the Lord, you will sit down to admire the grace which has looked in love upon such a poor unworthy worm as you are! While you will seek to do that which is right, and will hate every false way, you will, at the same time, take your place with the publican in the temple, and cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Seek to be as holy as the angels, yet be, all the while, as humble as the publican. Recollect that it is grace which has made you what you are, and that it is grace which must keep you faithful to the end. If grace did not keep you, you must be a castaway; but you shall not be a castaway, for, “beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.” I pray that every member of this church, and of Christ’s Church at large, may be very careful in his living, very watchful, very devout, very earnest. O professing Christians, you are not what you should be! A great many of you seem to forget altogether the sacred obligations of the love which has been from eternity fixed upon you. Confess this sin, mourn over it, and seek the power of Christ to help you against it, and henceforth may your course be as “the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

I fancy that I hear somebody in the congregation say, “These godly people seem to have a hard fight of it.” They do; it is not an easy work to get to heaven, even by grace; for, though we are saved, yet it is a pilgrimage to heaven, and a stern fight all the way. What we have to say to unconverted people is this, “If the righteous scarcely” — or, with difficulty — “are saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” If he, who zealously desires to follow after holiness, has such a stern fight for it, what must be the end of the man who never denies himself, but indulges his sinful passions, and casts the reins upon the neck of his lusts? O Christian, yours is the lot of a soldier, and you have to “endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ;” but you are comforted because, by faith, you can see the crown of life, which fadeth not away, and which is reserved in heaven for you; and therefore you keep on contending. But as for you who never fight against sin, and who feel no agony within, it is very evident why you have no inward struggle; it is because your whole nature goes one way. Dead fish float with the stream; it is the live fish that swim against it; and if you never feel any inward contention and striving — if you never have to cry, “To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not,” — if you never groan under a sense of sin, I close my sermon by saying that I pray God that you soon may do so, and that your groanings may be uttered at the foot of his cross, who will look down upon you as you lie there in utter weakness and misery, and who will say to you, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me, for I have redeemed thee.” May we all learn that Christ is everything, and that we are nothing; that he is holiness, and that we are unholiness, and may the Lord give us the grace to be found in him, not having our own righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of God by faith! Amen.