God's Way Of Holiness by Horatius Bonar

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God's Way Of Holiness
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Reviewer: 
Joseph J. Adrian

All those who are "Believing in Christ" are called to "A New Life," a life of holiness——". . . life wrought out of death, by the death of "The Prince Of Life." "God spared not 'His Only Son' and uses His power, wisdom, and love to rescue us from the dominion of sin and make us partakers of this new life——no longer under law but now under grace. Are we given a new mind, new intellect, a new body? No. They are the same yet, . . . the old man is slain, the new man lives." A Christian now thinks differently of himself because his mind has been renewed by the Spirit of God. He considers himself "dead to sin but alive to God." His affections seek after and delight in "the Things Above." God works this "New Creation" in His People by His divine power. If you are in Christ, God is working in you, restoring in you that which was lost in Adam——"The Image Of God"——in righteousness and holiness.

In considering the 7th chapter of Romans, Bonar wonders how any could consider this chapter to be Paul's description of himself in an unregenerate condition. I reasoned this very point at a John Bunyan's conference in Pennsylvania in the late 1990s with one of the speakers who was making the case that Romans 7 is describing an unbelieving sinner. Bonar asks if sin is not extirpated when someone becomes a believer——"No, it no longer reigns but it fights." All believers still fight against sin once they are converted. In Ephesians chapter 6, we are given "The Armour of God." We are engaged in a fight, a battle, we are engaged in spiritual warfare. Unbelievers are not engaged in this battle. Sin is their master, it rules over them. This no longer is the case with those who are in Christ. They have a new Master. What I asserted at the Bunyan conference as undeniable proof that Paul is not speaking of an unconverted individual in Romans Chapter 7 is Romans 7:22 "I delight in the law of God after the inward man." Unbelievers, unconverted individuals, do not delight in God's law.

"God's Way Of Holiness" is a 19th-century classic on this doctrine. The chapter, "The Saint and the Law" is the best thing I've ever heard or read on how believers view "The Law Of God."