Deliverance from sin isn’t deliverance from human nature. There are certain things in human nature, such as prejudice, which the Christian has to destroy by neglect; we have to flat-out refuse to give these things air. Other things we have to hand over to God, then stand still and witness the power of his salvation.
But there are also things which have to be destroyed by violence—by drawing on the divine strength imparted to us by God’s Spirit. Any theory or idea that raises itself up against the knowledge of God has to be determinedly demolished, not through fleshly effort or compromise but by drawing on his power. “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).
Only when God has altered our disposition and we have entered into the experience of sanctification can this fight begin. Our fight isn’t against sin. We can never fight against sin; sin is Jesus Christ’s domain, and he deals with it through redemption. The war we must fight is the war of turning our natural life into a spiritual life. This is never easily done, nor does God intend it to be easily done. It’s done only through a series of moral choices. God doesn’t make us holy in the sense of instantly giving us a good character. He makes us holy in the sense of imparting innocence. It’s up to us to turn that innocence into holy character by a series of moral choices.
These choices are continually in conflict with the entrenched habits of our natural lives—the pretensions and arguments that raise themselves up against the knowledge of God. We can refuse to make the moral choice, knowing that if we do, we’ll be of no account in his kingdom. Or we can determinedly demolish every pretension, and let Jesus bring us to glory.
