Please read to the end of this post: it is a magnificent presentation of the beauty both our faith and the object of our faith. I have included the link to the full sermon here.
My summary of Chalmers is this: You cannot hope to be rid of sin simply by extinguishing the habit from your life. You must replace your affection of your sin with the Spirit-led affection for God. Chalmers says it more eloquently, so please read!
Excerpts taken from Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), "The Explosive Power of a New Affection":
"There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world; either by a demonstration of the world's vanity, so that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment; so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon, not to resign an old affection which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one. . .the former method is altogether incompetent and ineffectual and. . .the latter method will alone suffice for the rescue and recovery of the heart from the wrong affection that domineers over it"
(Translation: there are two approaches to ridding oneself of habitual sin: (1) hope that we can prove to ourselves the utter vanity of sin, or (2) replace the affection for sin with a better affection for God. The first cannot work, and the second is the only sufficient means of ridding ourselves of habitual sin.)
"The ascendant power of a second affection will do what no exposition, however forcible, of the folly and worthlessness of the first, ever could effectuate. And it is the same in the great world. You never will be able to arrest any of its leading pursuits by a naked demonstration of their vanity. It is quite in vain to think of stopping one of these pursuits in any way else but by stimulating to another. In attempting to bring a worthy man, intent and busied with the prosecution of his objects, to a dead stand, you have not merely to encounter the charm which he annexes to these objects, but you have to encounter the pleasure which he feels in the very prosecution of them. It is not enough, then, that you dissipate the charm by your moral and eloquent and affecting exposure of its illusiveness. You must address to the eye of his mind another object, with a charm powerful enough to dispossess the first of its influence, and to engage him in some other prosecution as full of interest and hope and congenial activity as the former. It is this which stamps an impotency on all moral and pathetic declamation about the insignificance of the world. A man will no more consent to the misery of being without an object, because that object is a trifle, or of being without a pursuit, because that pursuit terminates in some frivolous or fugitive acquirement, than he will voluntarily submit himself to torture, because that torture is to be of short duration. If to be without desire and without exertion altogether is a state of violence and discomfort, then the present desire, with its correspondent train of exertion, is not to be got rid of simply by destroying it. It must be by substituting another desire, and another line or habit of exertion in its place, and the most effectual way of withdrawing the mind from one object is not by turning it away from desolate and unpeopled vacancy, but by presenting to its regards another object still more alluring."
(Translation: It doesn't matter how well you argue with yourself about the vanity and worthlessness of sin. The problem is the sense of pleasure you feel in the pursuit. It is wholly unnatural for man to be without desire and without an acting upon desire. Therefore, you cannot simply destroy the desire to sin; you must, rather, replace the desire to sin with a more attractive pursuit.)
"It is seldom that any of our tastes are made to disappear by a mere process of natural extinction. At least, it is very seldom that this is done through the instrumentality of reasoning. . . It is almost never done by the mere force of mental determination. By what can not be thus destroyed, may be dispossest--and one taste may be made to give way to another, and to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind."
(Translation: it is rare that reason alone will remove a person from a habitual attitude. Similarly, it is almost never the case that one can set oneself by the power of willful determination to destroy a habit. It is, however, the case that one habit gives way to another in the course of life.)
"To bid a man into whom there is not yet entered the great and ascendant influence of the principle of regeneration, to bid him withdraw his love from all the things that are in the world, is to bid him give up all the affections that are in his heart. The world is the all of a natural man. He has not a taste, nor a desire, that points not to a something placed within the confines of its visible horizon. He loves nothing above it, and he cares for nothing beyond it; and to bid him love not the world is to pass a sentence of expulsion on all the inmates of his bosom. To estimate the magnitude and the difficulty of such a surrender, let us only think that it were just as arduous to prevail on him not to love wealth, which is but one of the things in the world, as to prevail upon him to set wilful fire to his own property. This he might do with sore and painful reluctance, if he saw that the salvation of his life hung upon it. But this he would do willingly if he saw that a new property of tenfold value was instantly to emerge from the wreck of the old one."
(Translation: Regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential to the process of renewing and replacing our affections properly. The natural man cares for natural things, and it is only by the recognition that something of far greater worth is found in the rejection of the love of the natural world that man is capable of rejecting his love for the world.)
"Let us not cease then to ply the only instrument of powerful and positive operation, to do away from you the love of the world. Let us try every legitimate method of finding access to your hearts for the love of Him who is greater than the world. For this purpose let us, if possible, clear away that shroud of unbelief which so hides and darkens the face of Deity. Let us insist on His claims to your affection; and whether in the shape of gratitude, or in the shape of esteem, let us never cease to affirm that in the whole of that wondrous economy, the purpose of which is to reclaim a sinful world unto Himself, He, the God of love, so sets Himself forth in characters of endearment that naught but faith, and naught but understanding are wanting, on your part, to call forth the love of your hearts back again. . . When (a man) is told to love God supremely, this may startle another, but it will not startle him to whom God has been revealed in peace, and in pardon, and in all the freeness of an offered reconciliation. When told to shut out the world from his heart, this may be impossible with him who has nothing to replace it--but not impossible with him who has found in God a sure and satisfying portion. When told to withdraw his affections from the things that are beneath, this were laying an order of self-extinction upon the man, who knows not another quarter in the whole sphere of his contemplation to which he could transfer them, but it were not grievous to him whose view had been opened to the loveliness and glory of the things that are above, and can there find, for every feeling of his soul, a most ample and delighted occupation. When told to look not to the things that are seen and temporal, this were blotting out the light of all that is visible from the prospect of him in whose eye there is a wall of partition between guilty nature and the joys of eternity--but he who believes that Christ has broken down this wall finds a gathering radiance upon his soul, as he looks onward in faith to the things that are unseen and eternal. Tell a man to be holy--and how can he compass such a performance, when his fellowship with holiness is a fellowship with despair? It is the atonement of the cross reconciling the holiness of the lawgiver with the safety of the offender, that hath opened the way for a sanctifying influence into the sinner's heart, and he can take a kindred impression from the character of god now brought nigh, and now at peace with him."
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