p. 66 | Freedom from Sin by B. F. Merritt

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 16, 1870

Freedom from Sin.

By B. F. Merritt

The Saviour declared that “whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin;” and knowing the nature of this bondage, he said: “If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Jno. 8. Free indeed. Happy thought. The conscience purged of guilt, and the energies quickened by the Holy Spirit, and the soul enabled to resist every attempt of sin to bring it into captivity.

The Jubilee was a glad festival to those slaves of Israel whose bitter bondage was then ended. We may imagine with what glad hearts, and high transports, they celebrated it.

The first of January, 1863, was a day that brought joy and gladness to the hearts of millions, when our chief Executive said: “Let the oppressed go free.” Did not the mother’s heart leap for joy when she knew that she was free, and that she need no longer fear that her dear children would be torn from her arms, and sold to be the slaves of tyrants?

And the hearts of fathers, too, swelled with emotion too big for utterance, when they felt that they were free, and knew that cruel masters could no more invade their dwellings and molest those their hearts held dear.

But from a worse thralldom than the slaves of Israel saw, or than Afric’s children in the South were doomed to, is that from which the Son proposes to release us.

Servants of sin! Our energies too weak to break the galling bands. Doomed to a dreadful life of misery here, and hereafter the second death. This is the portion of the servants of sin. “The wages of sin is death.”

From this deplorable state, the Son only can make us free.

“He breaks the cruel power of sin, He sets the captives free; His blood can make the foulest clean; His blood avails for me.”

Some persons are struggling against the power of sin; and seem to think that God requires them to break the cruel bands. They have struggled long, but are not free. Their depravity is so great, that with all their strength, this formidable tyrant, under which they are sold, brings them into captivity. They exclaim, in bitterness, “What I would that do I not, but what I hate that do I.”

They are encouraged by reading the last of the seventh chapter of the Roman letter; for they conclude that their experience is like that of the apostle, and therefore they are Christians. But let me say to such that Paul is not there giving the experience of a Christian, but that of an unconverted man. If, therefore, your experience accords with that given there, do not take it as evidence that the Son has made you free.

The idea that a person in the regenerate state is in the condition there described, most pitifully and shamefully, not only lowers the standard of Christianity, but destroys its influence and disgraces its character. Let us notice that experience, and it will be seen that he is either personating a Jew convinced that by works he cannot be just with God, or giving his own experience before he heard those words of Ananias: “Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way, as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost.” Acts. 9:17.

Rom. 7:14. “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.” The law is not a system of external rites and ceremonies, nor merely a rule of moral action, but it reaches to the most hidden purposes, thoughts, dispositions, and desires of the heart. It is spiritual. Now I say that the character here represented was not a Christian; for,

1. He was not keeping the law. He assented to the law that it was good, but he was carnal and could not keep it. While a person is possessed of a carnal mind, and is under the power of sin, he cannot keep a spiritual law. He declares in the next chapter, verse 7, “The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Therefore while carnal he was not keeping the law.

2. He was a subject of death. While carnal, the “mind,” the “inner man,” the “I,” may see the right and approve it too, yet being in captivity cannot perform it, and therefore is a subject of death. In the next chapter, verse 6, his own language is: “To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

He was not the latter; for he had no peace, but he was the former; for he says, “I am carnal;” and seeing his doom he exclaims, in bitterness of soul, “Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

3. Christ had not made him free. “I am carnal, sold under sin.” Can any one whom Christ has made free, and said that they should be free indeed, feel that they are slaves, sold under sin, unable to do what they know to be right, unable to perform that which they will to do, but find themselves doing that which they hate and know to be sinful? The idea is preposterous.

When we apply all that is here said, of the carnal man “sold under sin,” to a man in an unconverted state, all is plain. That it was all true of Saul of Tarsus, none can doubt. But that the great apostle in whom dwelt the Holy Spirit, and toward whom the work of grace had been so abundant, was in this condition, who can doubt?

It is strange that any should imbibe the notion that such was the condition of the apostle, or that when the Son “makes free,” he leaves souls in that condition. The notion is absurd and monstrous, if not blasphemous.

Paul was not left in that state of bondage. He found deliverance. When seeing his doom, and feeling his utter helplessness, he inquires for help. “Who shall deliver me?” It was the grace of God through our Lord Jesus that helped him, that broke the chains that held him in slavery. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” made him free.

He then had the Spirit of Christ which quickened his mortal energies to such an extent that he could vanquish sin. He was no longer sold under sin, and therefore could write, “We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.” He had gotten his freedom, and now he could write of the Father “who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.”

Dear reader, has the Son made you free? Then you shall be free indeed. You may have been but partly converted to Christ. From an infidel to a believer, or from a Sabbath-breaker to a Sabbath-keeper, or from an idle man to a student of the Scriptures. In these steps toward conversion to Christ you may have been blessed. You may have gone further, and yet are not free. Peter followed the Master about three years, and learned many of the great lessons of sacred truth from his own lips, yet the Master said, “When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”

It may take time to convert every member and faculty of our being from its imperfect state in the service of sin to the service of the living God. We are not able to do it. We cannot loose our bands without help. We must apply to the Lord Jesus, who can quicken our mortal energies by the Spirit he imparts, and make us free. All our help must come from him. We can do all things through the strength of Christ. He can make us free and keep us so. To him be the praise. B. F. MERRITT.