Finney on Romans 7:14–24
YOU SEE THE STATE of those who are encouraged by the seventh chapter of Romans, supposing that to be a Christian’s experience. If they have gone no further than that, they are still under the law. I have been amazed how pertinaciously professors of religion will cling to a legal experience, and justify themselves in it by a reference to this chapter. I am fully convinced that . . . interpreting [verses 14 to 24] as a Christian experience, has done incalculable evil and has led thousands of souls there to rest and go no further, imagining that they are already as deeply versed in Christian experience as Paul was when he wrote that epistle. And there they have stayed, and hugged their delusion till they have found themselves in the depths of hell.
By Charles Finney
[Christian History originally published this article in Christian History Issue #20 in 1988]
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From the Archives: Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835)
Finney’ Revival Lectures were extremely popular, and had a great influence on subsequent ideas and practices concerning evangelism, especially in its appeal to methods, and by its insistence on the necessity of personal evangelism— lay witnessing— by all Christians.
Charles FInneyFrom the archives: The Oberlin Evangelist, 16 December 1840
A controversial statement from Finney.
Charles Finney