THESE DAYS OF WAR remind us afresh of the man who reported to his commanding officer, "I have taken a prisoner." His commander said, "Bring him along with you." "He won't come," complained the soldier.  "Well, then, come yourself," replied the officer.  "I can't.  He won't let me," was the final acknowledgment.  I fear there is a great deal of Christian victory that is no deeper than that.  All Christians have indeed been freed from the penalty of sin.  But what about sin's power?  Are we to camp forever around the truth of our justification, that "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound"?  Were we justified that we might be legally safe, or that we might become morally and spiritually sound?  Were we not declared righteous in Christ that we might be holy in life?

Most of God's children seem to have assumed the position that, having been justified, it is quite optional whether or not we live unto ourselves.  Our restless and uneasy consciences would often stir us up to heart conviction of our unholiness.  But we have contented ourselves with our judicial standing in Christ.  We have misused and abused the blessed truth that "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Perhaps unconsciously to ourselves, we have settled down to an ordinary and defeated Christian life, a customary unholiness.  When the Captain of our salvation looks to us to be more than conquerors, to triumph in every place and take captivity captive, we cannot bring our sinful lives into obedience.  "Well, then, come yourself," cries our Captain.  But indwelling sinful self "won't let me."

Some Christians have been affrighted by the fanatical extremes of perfectionism.  Their fears are not without foundation.  However, we commend to the reader the wise words of Dr. A. J. Gordon:

Divine truth as revealed in Scripture seems often to lie between two extremes.  If we regard the doctrine of sinless perfection as a heresy, we regard contentment with sinful imperfection as a greater heresy.  And we gravely fear that many Christians make the apostle's words, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," the unconscious justification for a low standard of Christian living.  It were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness.  Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a Christian perfectionist.

But what saith the Scripture?  "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?  God forbid" (Rom. 6:1, 2).
Is the reader one of those souls who has discovered that, whereas you thought you had taken a prisoner captive, you find yourself a slave, a veritable victim of self and indwelling sin?  You find yourself double-minded and unstable in all your ways?  You cry with Paul: "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." You have watched and prayed.  You have struggled and fought, you have, mourned and wept over the futility of your effort to, live for Christ.  You may have tried to pray all night, or to "pray through" in order to "get the blessing." How often you have been filled with disgust and shame and secret weeping over your inward wrongness!  But in spite of all your agonizing and strivings, you find your resolutions only so many ropes of sand.  Self can never cast out self.  You are becoming weaker and weaker in your struggle against sin.  Even your faith seems to be fading out.  When you "would" take sin a prisoner, bring him along, lock him up, and let him have no liberty, you find that you are actually the captive.  Sin and self are in virtual control of the entire sweep of your life.  What inward tragedy and conflict and defeat!  Oh, the folly and futility of self-effort!

But there is a redeeming feature.  Faith is often born in despair.  To become exceeding sinful in our own eyes may bring us to Paul's heart-rending cry: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:24.)