From Robert L. Millet’s book ‘The Holy Spirit’:
“It is one thing to simply stop doing wrong—which, of course is of great importance—and another thing entirely to undergo the spiritual metamorphosis in which the sinner is truly changed, his desires and longings and ambitions transformed, her inclinations and disposition altered. That is sanctification. Elder B. H. Roberts offered an excellent description of the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying the human soul. He pointed out the forgiven soul may still continue to “feel the force of sinful habits bearing heavily upon him. . . .
“There is an absolute necessity for some additional sanctifying grace that will strengthen the poor human nature, not only to enable it to resist temptation, but also to root out from the heart concupiscence—the blind tendency or inclination to evil. The heart must be purified, every passion, every propensity made submissive to the will, and the will of man brought into subjection to the will of God.
“Man’s powers are unequal to this task: so, I believe, all will testify who have made the experiment. Mankind stand in some need of strength superior to any they possess of themselves, to accomplish this work of rendering pure our fallen nature. Such strength, such power, such sanctifying grace is conferred on man in being born of the Spirit—in receiving the Holy Ghost. Such, in the main, is its office, its work.”13
C.S. Lewis wrote that as we begin to become new creatures in Christ, as we mature in the things of the Spirit, “we begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation [against me] was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself.” He then pointed out that “surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.”
Lewis then offered a clever and memorable analogy: “If there are rats in the cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation [against me] does not make me an ill tempered man: it only shows me what an ill tempered man I am. . . .And if. . . what we are matters even more than what we do—if indeed, what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are—then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about. . . . I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realize that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.”14
13. Gospel and Man’s Relationship to Deity, 170.
14. Mere Christianity, 165-66; emphasis added.
~Robert Millet, The Holy Spirit (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019), 268-69
