The Mortification Of Sin

by John Owen

Every unmortified sin will certainly do two things: [1.] It will weaken the soul, and deprive it of its vigour. [2.] It will darken the soul, and deprive it of its comfort and peace.

An unmortified lust will drink up the spirit, and all the vigour of the soul, and weaken it for all duties.

Mortification prunes all the graces of God, and makes room for them in our hearts to grow.

As to our peace; as there is nothing that hath any evidence of sincerity without it, so I know nothing that hath such an evidence of sincerity in it;

which is no small foundation of our peace. Mortification is the soul's vigorous opposition to self, wherein sincerity is most evident.

He hath got another heart than he had, that is more cunning; not a new heart, that is more holy.

A sin is not mortified when it is only diverted.

Men in age do not usually persist in the pursuit of youthful lusts, although they have never mortified any one of them. And the same is the case of bartering of lusts, and leaving to serve one that a man may serve another.

He hath changed his master, but is a servant still.

Occasional conquests of sin do not amount to a mortifying of it.

These and many other ways there are whereby poor souls deceive themselves, and suppose they have mortified their lusts, when they live and are mighty, and on every occasion break forth, to their disturbance and disquietness.

We will suppose, then, the lust or distemper whose mortification is inquired after to be in itself a strong, deeply-rooted, habitual inclination and bent of will and affections unto some actual sin, as to the matter of it, though not, under formal consideration, always stirring up imaginations, thoughts, and contrivances about the object of it.

But especially, lust gets strength by temptation. When a suitable temptation falls in with a lust, it gives it a new life, vigour, power violence, and rage, which it seemed not before to have or to be capable of.

Some lusts are far more sensible and discernible in their violent actings than others.

An unregenerate man may do something like it; by the work itself, so as it may be acceptable with God, he can never perform.

There is no death of sin without the death of Christ.

dare say of them (I mean as many of them as act upon the principles of their church, as that call it) what Paul says of Israel in point of righteousness, Rom. 9:31,32, -- They have followed after mortification, but they have not attained to it.

It is his duty, but it is not his immediate duty; it is his duty to do it, but to do it in God's way.

So it is in this case: sin is to be mortified, but something is to be done in the first place to enable us thereunto.

I have proved that it is the Spirit alone that can mortify sin;

I say, then, mortification is not the present business of unregenerate men.

Let the soul be first thoroughly converted, and then, "looking on Him whom they had pierced," humiliation and mortification will ensue.

God lays hold by his word and judgements on some sin in him, galls his conscience, disquiets his heart, deprives him of his rest;

"When Ephraim saw his sickness, he sent to king Jareb," popish religion is made up of designs and contrivances to pacify conscience without Christ;

he shall never be able to prevail; he is making a dam against water that increaseth on him. Hereupon he gives over, as one despairing of any success, and yields up himself to the power of sin and that habit of formality that he hath gotten.

this is the usual issue with persons attempting the mortification of sin without an interest in Christ first obtained.

To kill sin is the work of living men; where men are dead (as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin is alive, and will live.

What hath been spoken I suppose is sufficient to make good my first general rule: be sure to get an interest in Christ; if you intend to mortify any sin without it, it will never be done.

And herein is the Roman mortification grievously peccant; they drive all sorts of persons to it, without the least consideration whether they have a principle for it or no. Yea, they are so far from calling on men to believe, that they may be able to mortify their lusts, that they call men to mortification instead of believing. The truth is, they neither know what it is to believe nor what mortification itself intends.

They may make men self-justiciearies or hypocrites, not Christians.

It grieves me ofttimes to see poor souls, that have a zeal for God and a desire of eternal welfare, kept by such directors and directions under a hard, burdensome, outside worship and service of God, with many specious endeavours for mortification, in an utter ignorance of the righteousness of Christ, and unacquaintedness with his Spirit, all their days.

If ever God shine into their hearts, to give them the knowledge of his glory in the face of his Son Jesus Christ, they will ...

Without sincerity and diligence in a universality of obedience, there is no mortification of any one perplexing lust to be obtained.

but in the meantime, perhaps, in other duties, -- in constant communion with God, -- in reading, prayer, and meditation, -- in other ways that are not of the same kind with the lust wherewith he is troubled, -- he is loose and negligent.

This is a condition that not seldom befalls men in their pilgrimage.

This kind of endeavour for mortification proceeds from a corrupt principle, ground, and foundation; so that it will never proceed to a good issue. The true and acceptable principles of mortification shall

If thou hatest sin as sin, every evil way, thou wouldst be no less watchful against every thing that grieves and disquiets thine own soul.

God's work consists in universal obedience;

The rage and predominancy of a particular lust is commonly the fruit and issue of a careless, negligent course in general, and that upon a double account: [1.]

for as with wicked men, he gives them up to one sin as the judgement of another,

Was it not a correction to Peter's vain confidence, that he was left to deny his Master?

Hast thou permitted worldliness, ambition, greediness of study, to eat up other duties, the duties wherein thou oughtest to hold constant communion with God, for some long season?

When a lust hath lain long in the heart, corrupting, festering, cankering, it brings the soul to a woful condition.

In such a case an ordinary course of humiliation will not do the work: whatever it be, it will by this means insinuate itself more or less into all the faculties of the soul, and habituate the affections to its company and society; it grows familiar to the mind and conscience, that they do not startle at it as a strange thing, but are bold with it as that which they are wonted unto; yea, it will get such advantage by this means as oftentimes to exert and out forth itself without having any notice taken of it at all, as it seems to have been with Joseph in his swearing by the life of Pharoah.

For, first, How will he be able to distinguish between the long abode of an unmortified lust and the dominion of sin, which cannot befall a regenerate person?

When a man hath secret thoughts in his heart, not unlike those of Naaman about his worshiping in the house of Rimmon, "In all other things I will walk with God, but in this thing, God be merciful unto me," his condition is sad.

To apply mercy, then, to a sin not vigorously mortified is to fulfill the end of the flesh upon the gospel.

But now if a man be so under the power of his lust that he hath nothing but law to oppose it withal, if he cannot fight against it with gospel weapons, but deals with it altogether with hell and judgement, which are the proper arms of the law, it is most evident that sin hath possessed itself of his will and affections to a very great prevalency and conquest.

and so far is he fallen from grace, and returned under the power of the law.

What gospel principles do not, legal motives cannot do.