John Murray On The End of Sin's Dominion

Those who know me personally know that John Murray is one of my absolute favorite theologians. A dear brother gave me his Collected Writings a few months back, and they quickly found themselves on my "short list" of must-have Christian literature. For those who have never read anything by Murray before, I would recommend you start with his commentary on Romans, along with his classic work Redemption Accomplished and Applied. You will find that he writes with a mixture of clarity, warmth, practicality and profundity rarely found among Christian authors. A wonderful example of this admirable mixture is found in this quote from his Principles of Conduct:

Sin does not have the dominion over the person who is united to Christ and is under the governance of redeeming grace. This is but an implication of Paul's basic premise, 'we died to sin'. And it is but another facet of the radical and decisive breach with sin which is the consequence of union with Christ. It is the facet, however, which brings to the forefront the aspect of power. Sin is viewed from the angle of the power it wields and the breach with sin from the angle of deliverance from its power. When we die to sin we die to its power. We must not dilute the force of this proposition any more than the others with which we have dealt. There is the same decisiveness and finality. Sin does not rule in the believer. To think so is to deny the lordship which belongs to Christ by reason of his death and resurrection. And just as the deliverance from the power of sin is decisive, so it is inclusive. If the believer were under the dominion of any sin, then the truth of the proposition 'sin shall not have dominion over you' would be abrogated. The deliverance in view must therefore apply to all sin, and the inescapable inference is that the sin which still inheres in the believer and the sin he commits does not have dominion over him. Sin as indwelling and committed is a reality; it does not lose its character as sin. It is the contradiction of God and of that which a believer most characteristically is. It creates the gravest liabilities. But by the grace of God there is this radical change that it does not exercise the dominion. The self-condemnations which it evokes are the index to this fact. It is this destruction of the power of sin that makes possible a realized biblical ethic.

In closing, READ JOHN MURRAY! Will you agree with everything he says? I hope not! He practiced infant baptism for one thing... But if you don't read him, you will be missing out on some of the most profitable literature available to you as a Christian.