I'm slowly working my way through John Owen's "The Mortification of Sin". It's taking a while not because I'm a slow reader or it's a large book or it's too obtuse. The reason is because I can only handle a few pages at a time. A person could read it in two sittings - or one, with enough coffee - but that would be like sprinting through the Louvre.
Owen constantly recommends that we know our enemy, and the following paragraph was, for me, a small epiphany. Although the thought is obvious, the angle is enlightening:
"Consider what an unclean thought would have; it would have thee roll thyself in folly and filth. Ask envy what it would have; murder and destruction are at the end of it. Set thyself against it with no less vigour than if it had utterly debased thee to wickedness. Without this course thou wilt not prevail. As sin gets ground in the affections to delight in it, it gets also upon the understanding to slight it."
Obviously, sin and sinful desires are not passive! They are set on destroying. James 1:14-15 personifies sin and teaches us plainly that our sinful desires drag, entice, conceive and give birth! What does a filthy though want? To make us more filthy! Does envy have a goal? Yes, to get us to kill and destroy!
So, from the outset, we should resist. As Owen says in another part of the book, "watch against all eruptions of thy corruptions."
5 comments:
What your sin "would have." That's such an interesting way to put it. It's almost a personification of sin. Like if sin were a character in a story. A character with a will, a vicious will. And in the story it turns out it was my own will, not some other separate character at all - it was me all along. My wrong desires....
It sounds like sin (that is, the doings of my sin nature) means to get at me through my affections, my delights, and substitute a counterfeit, and having gained ground, it moves in on my understanding..."to slight it."
So the affections are the gateway for my sin to attack my mind, is that what Owen is saying?
It reminds me of John Piper: "No one sins out of duty. It's pleasure versus pleasure every time." He's talking about sin's relation to the affections. Pleasure! Sheesh, what mixed up wretches we are!
It's harder to read people like Owen, Edwards, even Spurgeon (what little I've read of them), I think because they are so dense and we need to pause and think about what's been said (Selah). So it makes for slow going, but what a feast eh?
Thanks for posting Blaine...your last few have been 'doozies!'
Oh, and I did the Louvre in an hour...ridiculous!
Chris - Well at least you've BEEN to the Louvre! :D I always wanted to take my wife to Paris on our 15th anniversary, but that passed us by a few years ago...:)
But yeah, pretty profound stuff, but soooo good. Owen does talk about our affections, the stuff we're naturally attracted to, and how we must be alert to which way our affections are leading us.
Blaine.. Chris.. are either of you church history buffs? I've been wondering, and this excellent post hits on the subject really well, did the Puritans and the men we now read about/from with their intense approach to sin see a marked change in the church due to such solid teaching? If I were to suggest that this subject is largely ignored or downplayed in our culture... does church history during Owen's time and Spurgeon's time reflect an impact of their teaching? I know I've been being taught in huge ways recently as I look at God's people in the books of Kings and Chronicles, Ezra and now Nehemiah. That history tells a very clear story. Any thoughts?
and thanks for this post. I'm finally catching up with some blog reading ;]
Hey Tim - That's a really good question, and I don't know the answer to it! I would suspect the answer is YES. I think God raises up men at different times to strengthen and challenge the Church. You named some of them: Ezra, Nehemiah, Owen, Spurgeon. Of course there are many others, and I think we have some men in our day who are holding the standard high and declaring God's truth boldly.
It's cool how, no matter when such men lived, their influence still reaches us today. No doubt that's because they were so fervently and intimately connected with the eternal Word of God! :)
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