The grace of God frees us from slavery to sin

January 26, 2022 • 1 min

From The Sinner’s Guide, page 192
By Venerable Louis of Granada

You will ask, perhaps, what is the source of this liberty and the glorious victory which it enables us to gain. After God its source is grace, which, by means of the virtues it nourishes in us, subdues our passions and compels them to submit to the empire of reason.

Certain men are said to charm serpents to such a degree that, without injuring them or lessening their venom, they are rendered perfectly harmless. In like manner grace so charms our passions—the venomous reptiles of the flesh—that, though they continue to exist in our nature, they can no longer harm us or infect us with their poison.

St. Paul expresses this truth with great clearness. After speaking at some length of the tyranny of our sensual appetites he concludes with the memorable words: “Unhappy man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?” And he answers: “The grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord.” [Rom. vii. 24, 25.]

The body of death here mentioned by St. Paul is not the natural death of the body which all must undergo, but “the body of sin” [Rom. vi. 6.]—our sensual appetites, the fruitful source of all our miseries. These are the tyrants from which the grace of God delivers us.