by John Owen – April 1^st, 2019

Chapter 14

HOW TO MORTIFY SIN

Now, the considerations which I have hitherto insisted on are more about things preparatory to the mortification of sin (chapters 9 through 13), than such as will actually accomplish it. It is the heart’s due preparation for the work itself, without which it will not be accomplished, that hitherto I have aimed at.

There are very few directions that are peculiar to the actual mortifying of sin itself. They are these that follow.

1. Set Faith at Work on Christ

   Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of your sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this, and you will die a conqueror. Yes, you will, through the good providence of God, live to see your lust dead at your feet.

a. How faith acts upon Christ

   But you will say, “How shall faith act itself on Christ for this end and purpose?” I say, in various ways.

1). Fill your soul with Christ’s provisions

   By faith fill your soul with a due consideration of the provision that is laid up in Jesus Christ for this end and purpose, so that all your lusts, this very lust wherewith you are entangled, may be mortified. By faith ponder on this: that though you are in no way able in or by yourself to get the conquest over your distemper, though you are even weary of contending and are utterly ready to faint, yet that there is enough in Jesus Christ to yield relief to you (Phi 4:13). It sustained the prodigal when he was ready to faint that yet there was bread enough in his father’s house (Luke 15:17); though he was at a distance from it, yet it relieved and strengthened him that bread was there. In your greatest distress and anguish, consider that fullness of grace (John 1:16; Col 1:19), those riches, those treasures of strength (Isa 40:28), might, and help that are laid up in Him for our support. Let them come into and abide in your mind. Consider that He is “exalted…to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel” (Act 5:31)—and if to give repentance, to give mortification, without which there is no repentance, nor can there be.

Excerpts from Mortification of Sin by John Owen from: The Chapel Library •  chapel@mountzion.org