Fighting and Killing Sin IV: Mortifying Sin

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me is Jeremy Walker, pastor at Maiden Bower Baptist Church in Crawley, England. Jeremy has been with us in North Mississippi for a while, ministering, and is headed to the East Coast and a couple of other places before he heads back home.

And he's agreed to do these podcasts with us on the theme of the mortification of sin and on temptation. And we've already covered temptation in three previous podcasts, so we're going to pick up now with the theme of the mortification of sin.

And that's a term, it's an old term. We might not, you know, normally use the word mortify in a daily conversation, but putting sin to death. How is that done? Why is it a part of the new covenant? If we're saved by grace, if we realize that we are completely dependent upon God in all these matters of walking with him, why is it that he commands us to put sin to death?

How is that to be understood in light of these truths? And how is it to be done in a practical daily way? So Owen is a great help to us, and Jeremy is going to be guiding us along through that. So Jeremy, why don't you give us the.

Setting of those words that Owen uses for his title? So Owen begins, Jon, with Romans chapter 8 and verse 13. If by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. And he has a typically Puritan approach to this.

He divides up his text. He's got that the people to whom it is directed, that Paul is speaking to believers. And that's important, and that will come out in the course of his treatment, that you can only say this to believers because only they have the power of the spirit in them.

And so there's a condition. If you, and that attaches to a later promise, there's a means of accomplishment, the spirit, there's a duty to put to death the deeds of the body, and there's an associated promise, you will live.

So that's his exposition of the text, and from that he's drawing out this great duty that we need to be putting to death by the spirit the deeds of the body, the remaining sin that is within us. And he says, and there's a strange comfort in it, the choicest believers who are assuredly free from the condemning power of sin should also make it their business all of their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

So sin no longer reigns in you, but sin does remain in you. Yes, you truly are a child of God, but one of the consequences of that is that you must be putting sin to death. And probably the most famous phrase in the whole book, you must be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

So once he's laid this foundation, he's emphasizing then the reason why the flesh must be mortified, why this body of death needs to be put to death. And essentially it's that this is the whole Christian identity coming to fruition in our experience.

We are children of God, that's how we should think and how we should live, that there's an ongoing battle against the sin that remains, that we might become more holy, and that this spiritual growth is the duty of God's people.

Yeah, he says there, even while.

We claim the meritorious mortification of our sin through the work of the cross of Christ, and though the implantation of a new life in Christ is in opposition to and destructive of the expression of sin, sin remains, acts, and works in the best of believers while we are yet in this world.

It must be our constant daily duty to mortify it. He starts off by talking about some vain methods, we would say some ineffective tools, ineffective approaches, to dealing with that remaining aspect of sin in us.

So what are those? Fundamentally he's concerned about.

External restraints rather than inward renovations. He says it's possible to restrain the hand without touching the heart. So his point here is that this sanctification, and in this sense we're talking about our growing likeness to Jesus Christ, that this isn't something that happens as it were from the outside in, from the inside out.

So putting sin to death isn't a matter of outward reformation, but first of all it's a matter of the heart. So true holiness, putting sin to death, begins in the inner man and then is expressed in our behavior outwardly.

And his point then is that that must be accomplished by the Spirit. It's not a matter of effectively putting reins on or putting fences around people or shutting them in. That's not actually changing your nature.

There's no necessary...if I want to perhaps stop you eating your favorite food, I can lock you in a room, I could chain you to a wall, I could put a muzzle over your mouth. I'm not actually changing your desire for that food.

Those are merely external restraints. But if there were a way of altering your appetite, changing the direction of your desires, then we're actually dealing with your desire for something that is not good for you.

So it's that inward working. And, says Owen, that's got to be a spiritual work, and that's emphasized in the text that he's drawing on. Yeah, the context of.

The verse itself, you know, if we look at Romans 8, we have to go back really to Romans 5, where Paul deals with this glorious truth. And some people argue that this is the heart of Paul's theology, union with Christ.

That having been united to this mediator of a greater covenant, no longer united to Adam, the failing mediator who brings death to all united to him, all humanity, all united to Christ, every believer benefits from the obedience of that mediator.

And then chapter 6, you know, unfolding what we think is primarily a lesson on sanctification, but probably is better understood as a lesson on justification. In Christ, what that means, justified, and how that then changes everything in your perspective.

It changes the position, it changes your relationship to sin. You know, he argues there that though we are still capable of sin, sin, the old man has been killed with Christ, a new you is raised to life with Christ.

What about the old sinful, the remnants? Well, these have been so powerfully weakened, a death blow has been given. And though they're like, we're seeing the last thrashing of it until the end, until we see Christ, it can never again be our rightful master.

Chapter 7, the law is not going to fix you. It can expose your need for a savior, and it is a good and holy thing, but it's like an MRI. It shows you that the disease is in every part of you. It shows you how advanced it is, but it does not cure you.

The MRI shows you that you need the surgeon. And driving us to Christ, chapter 8, the sending of the spirit, you know, the indwelling, the work, and all of that, you know, wonderfully resulting in a new being who hates sin, who loves God, and by the spirit, puts sin to death, not merely putting these walls or these fences between me and my favorite sin, which I wish I could get to, but I'm not allowed, but from the heart working out.

And there's a beautiful positivity in this. I think sometimes as believers, we're tempted to think of holiness purely in negative terms. It's the shout nots, it's the cannot haves, and therefore I become holy when I stop doing those things.

But that's only half of it. And Owen's first point about what the spirit does to make us holy is that he actually, and the opposite, you mentioned the language of mortification, the opposite of that is vivification.

So mortification is putting sin to death, but vivification is the stirring up of grace. And Owen says that the spirit causes our hearts to abound in grace and the fruits that are contrary to the work of the flesh.

So we're not just clearing the ground. There's the old wilderness and we've cut down all the junk. Actually, by the grace of God in Christ, new things are being sown. And in the place of what was vile, there is growing something that is not vicious, but virtuous, where there was only ugliness, now there is beauty.

Now, in the UK, we have these great brambles that grow everywhere. And I once had to clear my first home, the garden was overrun with brambles. And starting with my house, I cut back toward the back of the property.

And I thought, great job done. Next growing season, from underneath that lawn, all these brambles start appearing. I pretty much had to dig up the whole lawn. And there were things that I thought were going to grow well there in that garden that didn't because the brambles came back up from underneath.

So yes, there's this growing of virtue. There's this spiritual operation. But alongside of that, Owen says, you've got to be constantly digging down to those roots that are unseen. And when that springs to life again, that's when you need to dig down to the very roots and rip those out.

And you leave the slightest part of that in there, and it's going to grow again. And all of this is accomplished. And this is where he ultimately comes to, as the Spirit brings the crucified Christ into the heart by faith and gives communion with Christ in his death and in his sufferings.

So there's a full orb and quite a rich spiritual picture. So if you pick up this book on putting sin to death, and you think that it's going to be entirely negative or oppressive, and that there's no expectation of anything positive and fruitful.

Now, Owen says, that's part of the whole picture. But you put sin to death, and it's displaced by these spiritual fruit, these virtues that are worked in us in union and communion with Jesus Christ, in whom we've died, and in whom we've.

Risen again to newness of life. It reminds us of the parable of Christ, who warned against a person who only wanted to get rid of the bad things. Right. You know, so I'll be a good person, I'll get rid of the bad things.

So that, you know, the picture is there's a house where, you know, it's full of demons and all the things that would go along with that. And then they're run out, but nothing new is put in the house. The house is nice and clean, but it's empty.

No one moves in, no appropriate, you know, person comes and lives there. And it's not filled with life and happiness. And so then the demon goes and gets all of his friends and they come in and it's worse at the latter end than it was at the beginning.

We can go to a church, we can kind of scrub clean the certain areas that we find most embarrassing. When we show up at church and we look around and nobody, maybe nobody's acting the way we act or talking the way we talk, eating, drinking, dressing the way we do.

And so immediately we learn, if I want to fit in this group, I have to scrub these areas. So I scrubbed the areas, I removed some of these things, but nothing, nothing positive fills, you know, the realities of Christ do not flood in.

After a while, you're just empty and we're not created to live with that emptiness. And the enemy lies about God and says, well, that's all you can expect from Christianity. And if you believe those lies, and instead of embracing Christ, you've embraced kind of a self-righteous, sterile, like a hospital environment.

It's a clean room. Yes, but nobody wants to live there, you know. So I got rid of the disease, but nothing moved in. And so we go back. I also think of the quote that you gave in a previous podcast from Thomas Chalmers when he said, there is an expulsive power in the new affection.

Regeneration, the new birth, eyes opened to see the truth about Christ. Heart melted, thawed, you know, the stony heart is removed, a responsive soft heart is placed. I understand now. I love what is clean now.

And then the will is freed from its chains. I choose him. And that new love expels all the old lesser loves. There have been times in my life where, you know, old clinging sins that I have really prayed about, looked into the scripture to find, you know, to gather material, to help me to see these things correctly, you know, and they just seem so rooted in, so entrenched.

And so I'm asking the Lord, you know, and these are not horrible, outward things, the things of the heart, but it bothers the believer.

And I remember... Yeah, it's not just the outward acting, it's the inward desires. That's what grieves us. Why is my heart like this? And I remember crying out to the Lord and saying,.

I want to ask for more of you, you know, in the sense of experience. I want to know more of your love and more of your nearness, you know, a reviving of my own soul, personal revival. But first, you know, I've got these old lovers that keep hanging around in the back rooms of the house.

And the thought came to me, bring Christ in the front door. He'll run them all out the back windows, you know. And so I'm not saying that repentance is not necessary. I was really laboring to put these old things to death.

And I just got to the point where I said, Christ, if you will come in the front door in like, you know, in a new way, in a greater way, and fill every room of the heart, they will run out the back.

I think that's what Owen has in mind when he says, if by the spirit, you put it, it's one thing for us to say, you know, that the hypocrite is content to appear holy. The true believer wants to be holy.

And we're wrestling against these things. And again, you think of Owen speaking about temptation again, and we're doing that in our own strength. But the work of the spirit is to bring Christ to bear upon us.

And so when there's that deeper delight in him, that sense of not just as a sense in the shallow idea of an emotional awareness, but the power of union with him in his death and resurrection being worked out, that's when there's this real overcoming of sin, and there's nowhere left for them to come back.

Well, Owen deals with two big issues up front, and that is what mortification is not, and then what mortification is. Can you walk us through those?

I remember the first time reading this and finding this to be perhaps one of the most helpful realizations in my grappling with this personally, as well as pastorally. He says that well, let's begin with our own experience.

I think most Christians, most reasonably healthy Christians imagine that mortification means it's gone and it's done. I have put that sin to death. That means it no longer exists in my experience. I'm never going to have to deal with it again.

It's gone, it's removed, it's entirely blotted out, and it never, ever comes back. I never have trouble with this again. He also says it's not just changing the outward aspects of some sin. It's not just putting a little makeup on the sin, as it were, or dressing it up in a different appearance.

It's still sin, but it doesn't look as bad as it used to. It's not just improving our natural constitution. Again, it's that sort of that reformation. You mentioned the guy who comes in, he says, well, these people don't turn up with a hangover, so I'll stop drinking on a night.

These people, they tend to dress up on Sunday, so I'm going to maybe wash my clothes and even iron them from time to time. And these people talk, and I say, well, I can talk like that. That's all the natural constitution, and just a bit of polish on the outside isn't the same as mortification.

It's not diversion. I don't know if you find this. It's again that the vile intelligence of our adversary. Satan will often tell me, prompt me, encourage me, this is a lesser sin. Don't commit that horrible sin.

Commit this slightly less horrible sin. Why am I taken in by this? That's not putting sin to death. Exchanging one sin for another. I didn't hit my mother, I hit my sister. Oh, okay, is that better? I didn't burn down my friend's house, I burnt down my enemy's house.

Right, and you're calling that improvement? No, it's just running out in a different direction. And then occasional victories over sin are not mortification. Now, got to be careful, because we want to make sure that we're walking the biblical path here.

But Owen's saying that there are circumstances in which, for a time at least, there's something that drives you away from this sin. Perhaps you're so afraid of its consequences, or you feel something of its bitterness.

And so you say, I'm going to overcome this. And it's for a week, maybe for a month, maybe for a year. And you imagine that a temporary respite means a final victory. Owen says, don't make these mistakes.

Now, the reason why I say this is so illuminating and so helpful, is because it stops us doing two different things. First of all, it stops us from a sinful despair. Because we imagine that something is mortification when it isn't.

And because we don't have it, we're thinking, I'm not making any progress. But it also stops us from jumping to the conclusion that we've achieved something or accomplished something or are safe free from something when we actually aren't.

So it's Owen, again, clearing the ground. Don't jump to these wrong conclusions. Don't make these wrong assumptions. And imagine that you have now put sin to death or are putting sin to death when you're not striking at the root.

Yeah, we talked, I think, in an earlier podcast, or it might have been one of our times today between podcasts, that it is very natural for a believer, because we see God now, not just in his absoluteness, but through the lens of the cross in the person of his son.

And it's not just that he is so infinitely transcendentally big compared to us, it is that he is so infinitely good. And not just pure, but there is a kindness and a pity and a compassion that we hardly dared to believe there could be for us.

And when we see him in this way, and then as a believer, find ourselves capable of sinning again. The young believer, I think, especially with the very tender conscience, and maybe not a clear grasp of what the scripture says we are to expect, asks this question of their pastor.

I don't know that I could be a Christian. How can I be a Christian if I could still sin? And that's a very good question. We don't want young believers to say, well, I'm just gonna keep sinning because I'm saved by grace.

That really calls into question, has there even been a heart change at all? But the enemy will use the wonderful work of God and the new tenderness of conscience. If he can't get you to be okay with sin, he can get you to the point where you think, while I'm no Christian at all, and this doesn't work for me, and maybe I should apostatize.

Maybe I should just turn my back in kind of an honest acceptance. I'm not the kind of person this would work for, and God doesn't want me. And so Owen's warnings are really needed,.

Especially for those that love the Lord. Yeah, and there's this then wonderful and hopeful realism about this ongoing battle with sin, that the positive, what mortification is, that the three points that he brings out, that's an habitual weakening of the lust, it's a constant fight and contention against sin, and it's a degree of success in the battle.

Now the reason why I say it's hopeful but realistic, the hymn by John Newton when he asked the Lord that he might grow in grace, and I hope that in some favoured hour, once he'd answered my request, that's it, God's going to effectively, the Lord will click his fingers and the whole deal's going to go away.

No, Christian, you are going to be fighting all your life against some sins, and in some degree, all sin. This is until you come to glory, there is going to be this combat. So let's be realistic about it.

And you know, sometimes the prospect of that is disheartening. Really? There's no respite? No, there's no respite, but there is heavenly resource. You're not on your own in this. So what does progress really look like?

Owen says, first of all, a habitual weakening of the lust. And here he's talking about the inclination of the heart towards sin. You know, that over time, that perversion in the soul that twists you toward something that is contrary to God's will, that's going to be addressed.

And he's, again, helpful. He says, remember, a different lust is going to show itself in the same man in different ways at different times, and in a different man in different ways in different times.

There are different constitutions. We've mentioned this with regard to temptation. There are different opportunities that different men have. At the end of Proverbs, I don't want to be rich because then I'll forget God.

Lord, spare me from being poor and tempted to steal. Give me a competent portion. Give me enough that I may be satisfied. Well, I may be too poor to be tempted to think that I can make this by myself.

You may be too rich ever to think that you need to steal. Our different circumstances are going to put it in different circumstances. He also reminds us, just because that lust doesn't break out in some flamboyant or scandalous fashion, don't imagine it's not there.

You know, the man, for example, who commits multiple adulteries over a course of a year, and another man may be in the same situation who commits no physical fornication, but in his mind he has committed adultery with more women than the other man.

And Owen's saying, don't imagine that that one man is there for just, you assume he's more holy than the other. Because what both of those men need, regardless of the outward expression, is this habitual weakening of that lust.

And worth pointing out, Owen doesn't just mean sexual lust here, he means that that appetite towards something forbidden. So mortification involves an habitual weakening of the lust, a changing of that heart inclination.

Then a constant fight and contention against sin. And again, there's encouragement here. We learn to do this better. We begin to see the first approaches of sin. We begin to understand the way that temptation, or a particular temptation, works in me.

Don't go there. Don't watch that. Don't spend time with this. Don't go with that person. Why? Because you've learned that if you go there with them, under those circumstances, at that time, something's going to come down the line.

Almost these sort of triggers. They say, right, that's where I need to go into battle. That's where this begins. And I am constantly aware of this, constantly fighting and contending against sin, using the spiritual weapons that have been provided to overcome at that particular point.

And then the third thing is a degree of success in the battle. And again, there's your hope. Now, I sometimes, when I'm trying to encourage people in this regard, I use the illustration of a volcano that is erupting.

So let's say a man is prone to anger, or a woman is prone to anger. What does mortification look like? If I say to you, John, you're prone to anger and the only way you'll ever know you made, if you're never angry again.

Well, actually, that's neither realistic nor hopeful. But if I say to you, brother, what you should expect is that over time, you should grow to hate your anger more and more. And in its place, there's going to become an habitual self-control.

And you're going to start recognizing, you know, you're driving down the road and someone cuts you and you're ready to go. Hang on, hang on. You know, it's rush hour. Maybe you say, I'm not going to drive right now.

Or maybe, no, I know where I'm going to go with this. And I'm conscious of that. And I'm going to remind myself of certain things. But over time, that volcano is not erupting as often. And the lava of your anger is not being spewed so high.

And the time between the eruptions becomes longer and longer. And if you move out of the analogy, you are quicker than you used to be to repent of your sin with your wife, your children, your friends, that there's a greater sensitivity to this sin.

Are you still an angry man? Less so. Is there still a temptation to act? Yeah, that's still there. But I'm starting to see that coming. I'm starting to understand when it happens and under what circumstances.

I'm beginning to avoid more consistently the occasions of sin and the opportunities for sin. And when I sin, it's not as aggressive. It's not as constant. It's not as regular. I repent more rapidly. I contend more earnestly.

And Owen says that's the spiritual reality of a true believer who is putting sin to death. Not I have and not maybe sometime I will. But in the course of this pilgrim life, I will be killing sin lest this sin should be killing me.

So Owen has given us so much already.

In these early pages. What is mortification of sin? What is it not? It is not adjusting our sins. It's not trading the ugly and maybe more humanly viewed extreme version of self for a more respectable version of self.

It's not temporary stopping of sin that comes from what we would consider natural motives or natural circumstances that, you know, that anybody would feel, embarrassment, consequences. And so for a season, you put it away.

You know, we think of like a binge drinker, you know, that kind of...you're a slave to that habit. But even though you're a slave to that habit, there are seasons where you put it away in disgust. And that is not mortification.

But mortification is by that new nature that God has placed within us, the new birth, because of what He's done for us, Christ for us, Christ in us in the work of His Spirit, there is a continuing transformation that includes not just grabbing hold of the truths of Christ and then filling us, but also putting to death the roots of these sins, you know, weakening the pride, weakening the self-centeredness or the unbelief that always is, you know, a breeder sin producing these sins that come up above the surface.

It is battle. And it is seeing, thankfully, it is a life that sees a progressive movement, a trajectory of growth. And, you know, there are other options when we think of what do people say about holiness or how do people present holiness?

And one of the most popular options, and we don't use the word today very often, the phrase, the Keswick Movement. For Americans, it looks like Keswick, a little town in northern England in the Lake District, beautiful area where there was a conference held in the, what, 1860s.

Yeah. And I have my views on, you know, what the Keswick Movement was about. You know, it seems to me a real work of revival was occurring there, America, at the same time. And I wonder if you don't have a bunch of, you know, basically Church of England members who have a head full of Bible's truths, but have not been born again, and then they're born again, and the change is so gloriously dramatic, you know, how do you interpret this?

Whatever it was, they interpreted sanctification along this model. You're going along trying to struggle and do your best, trying to fight against sin, but that's a losing battle. What you need to do is, by faith, you just kind of hand it over to God.

They talked about kind of going to a white funeral. Some of the authors, we know their names, Oswald Chambers, Andrew Murray, Hudson Taylor, in many ways,.

Held to this. And often genuinely godly people, no doubt. Yeah, yeah. What I tend to think is.

They lived godly lives. How they then explained their experience was not biblical, but it was.

Real. This massive step change. I used to be like this, then I gave everything over to God,.

And now I live above sin. Yeah, and you just go to a plateau. Yeah, yeah. And so I go to a plateau, I've just handed it over to the Lord, and I live at this plateau. Not sinless perfection, but a totally different life.

And sometimes I wonder, was that your conversion? Right. You went from being a church member to alive, and you look back and think, this is a second blessing.

Because if you didn't realize that you perhaps weren't a Christian beforehand, that step change,.

You have to interpret it somehow. Yeah. So whatever it was that occurred in their lives, we're not doubting that these men were genuinely godly. Some of our favorite characters in Christian history were men that held to this.

Amy Carmichael was actually the first Keswick missionary sent out. But I have to say, in reading Amy Carmichael's works, she seems to be very militant, which is not a Keswick view. Because the other view is the one that Owen, the Puritans, the evangelicals have tended to hold, because we believe it's what the scripture holds.

And that is, instead of the motif of like, I die as a Christian, I die again. I put that old man to death, instead of Paul saying Christ put him to death. And by doing that, by faith, I'm lifted to live here.

But we believe that scripture and the Puritans taught that the motif of battle and slow progressive. So not perfect. You know, sometimes I feel like we look like this. But if you look at the trajectory of a life, there's a general line of God is growing me, and there is maturing and advancing.

And it is not consistent. It's not a wonderfully straight line, you know.

And it's not consistent, either sometimes positively or negatively. I think it's worth pointing out that the Keswick theology has shifted since then. It's healthier, I believe somebody went and addressed it at some point in the 20th century.

But that upward line that we're talking about, we're not saying, are we, that there aren't sometimes great advances, some distinct operations of the Holy Spirit, and, and perhaps we do leave behind some sins that have dogged us for years.

Or there are plateaus, where we're just not getting very far, or there are backslidings. But in the true child of God, if you look over time, there's this, this genuine, definite, deliberate, upward line of best fit.

So while justification is immediate and complete, sanctification has a beginning, the new birth, but it's progressive. We cannot progress in justification, we will progress in that transformation into that beautiful moral image of our Lord.

And it will one day be complete.

Be holy, as I am holy. Well, we now belong to him. And now we're working out what we are.

Next week, we'll look again at what Owen says about mortification of sin. And we're coming to the end of his book, we're only able to hit a few of the highlights. Owen is going to give us nine conclusions or preparations for his conclusion, kind of a classic Puritan, very thorough.

If you've ever read Owen, you'll know that I actually don't find Owen to be the most difficult to read. I kind of find Jonathan Edwards to be more difficult. He's just so philosophical, I just think, where are you at?

I'm lost. Owen, though, is precise. So I always read Owen with a notebook and a pen. Because I think, what a great argument, what a great quote, what a great point. And then I think, but what was he trying to prove?

What was he, you know, substantiating? What argument was he driving home? I have no idea. This is the 13th.

Subject. There's this massive logical development, and he's covering all the territory along the way. So you've got, here are nine things that you need to understand in order that you can then.

Understand the two most important things. Right. And he ends with the two, really the two concluding thoughts that are so helpful. But in those nine, which we're not going to be able to cover, we do want to hit one of them next week.

And that is this issue of what we call universal obedience. Just so important that we understand that, and really very encouraging. So we hope you'll be able to join us next week.