Author: Meredith Beatty

A little over 8 years ago I seriously started memorizing Scripture. Large portions of Scripture. It has been the most helpful discipline of my now 25 year Christian life.

The life of a Christian is a journey that is described as a fight of faith and a striving after holiness. No Christian would say it is easy but we are called to participate in this work God is doing in us. We don’t glide along or accidentally become holy.

I cannot recommend this practice of memorization more highly and so I would like to give some practical advice here at the end of the year.

Number one is this: Do you desire God’s Word?

You cannot “gin up” some feeling or begin with a feeling of duty or “have to”. If you have not been in the Scriptures regularly you may not have any desire to memorize. 

If that is the case, and you are a believer, I urge you to prioritize getting into the Word to fan the flames of your affections for God. And cry out to him for more desire.

The Word is living.

The Word is active.

Take some time to read Psalm 119. Notice that almost every verse mentions his Word. His precepts, rules, statutes, testimonies, etc. 

And notice the words he uses to describe his affection for the Word. They are words of longing and desire. Ask yourself if you have those same affections.

I have been doing this for over 8 years and must honestly confess that I have to regularly ask God for more desire, more “want to” as my faithful pastor would say. I am not an expert here. Just a fellow pilgrim.

So let’s start here. Let’s get into the Word. It is that simple. And let’s pray for God to develop in us the hunger and the desire we need. For man does not live by bread alone.

I can truly say that his statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. (Psalm 119:54)

Paul is clear in Galatians 5 that there is an ongoing battle for the Christian –

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

We have an enemy – sin – and it is constantly opposing us. Our job is to kill it, mortify it. But what if we don’t? Does sin shift into neutral? No. It acts like any other enemy seeking to gain ground.

John Owen explains –

1. Unmortified sin weakens the soul and deprives it of strength. See Psalm 38. Have you ever felt sick in your soul because of unconfessed sin?
2. It untunes and unframes the heart itself and entangles its affections. Have you ever struggled to sincerely tell God that He is your portion? Does your soul have other lovers?
3. It fills your thoughts with things that please the flesh. Do you understand the power and influence of your thought life? Paul said in Romans 12 that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Your thoughts supply your affections either unto righteousness or unrighteousness.

These are some of the ways sin works and it is always working. But remember this – Christ has already done the decisive work. So we work because he already has.

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin…..Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.” Romans 6:6,12

Sometimes we are aware of the sin plaguing us, but attack it in the wrong way. Owen’s point in chapter three is that there is a way of mortifying that is utterly futile because it uses the wrong weapons.

God has told us to put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit.  If we approach this task by other means it’s like entering the battle with the wrong weapons. 

This is the problem with so many of the attempts we make at conquering sin. We do it in our own strength, through fleshly will power. We may even use spiritual disciplines like fasting and prayer and taking vows. But if we look on those things as the ends and not the means, we will fail. Owen calls this will-worship and at its extreme, self-maceration! (Think of monks wearing rough garments and purposely afflicting their bodies to drive out sin.)

You can go to the extremes of self-denial and asceticism but those things are rusty, dull swords in the battle against the flesh.

Owen is writing in the 17th century so this is still a time of great tension between Catholics and Protestants. Many Puritans described Catholic practices with adjectives nobody uses anymore like popish and Romish. Here is an example:

“Neither will the natural popery that is in others do it. Men are galled with the guilt of a sin that has prevailed over them; they instantly promise to themselves and God that they will do so no more; they watch over themselves and pray for a season until this heat waxes cold and the sense of sin is worn off – and so mortification goes also, and sin returns to its former dominion.”

What is this “natural popery”? I think he is referring to the natural tendencies in our flesh to want to combat sin with the weapons of the flesh. We are no different than those who lived in the past. Haven’t you experienced this same thing in your life? You see something in you that you’d like to change and you immediately jump on it with strategies to deny yourself and set up accountability. In years past monks would take vows of silence or severely restrict their activities to combat sin. Today it’s called will power or habit strategies or New Year’s resolutions, but it’s the same approach. And it always fails.

Christians who have been saved through faith in Christ have at their disposal the Spirit who lives inside them. It is this Spirit who gives power to resist and fight and mortify sin.

“And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” Ezekiel 36:27

I got a friend of mine interested in the Puritans and we have been discussing Jeremiah Burroughs’ book Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. One thing we are constantly saying is this, “Who writes like this???!!!”

The title of this post is from Owen and again I find myself saying, “Who writes like this??!!”

This is why I love reading the Puritans. They had their faults and shortcomings but their strengths seem to shine a spotlight on our 21st century faults and shortcomings. In my humble estimation I believe a huge shortcoming of 21st century American Christianity is our neglect of holiness. 

Have we been teaching a cheap kind of grace?

Have we forgotten the depths of sin’s treason and evil?

In this post I just want to let Owen speak on the danger of not daily mortifying our own sin. Consider his words and your reaction to them. Indeed, no one writes like this anymore.

“Not to be daily employing the Spirit and new nature for the mortifying of sin is to neglect that excellent succor which God has given us against our greatest enemy.”

“Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts.”

“The root of an unmortified course is the digestion of sin without bitterness in the heart.”

This post is dedicated to Jerry Bridges whose book, The Pursuit of Holiness, has challenged and encouraged me on this path.

There are times when I come to a time of confession and sincerely pray the words of Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart….see if there is any wicked way in me…”

And I wait for conviction, for the Holy Spirit to bring to my mind a transgression.

And I wait and wait…and ….. nothing.

What is this? Why? Have I achieved a state of sinless perfection? Certainly not.

So I move on in prayer and most of the time, later on,  when contemplating something else, the Holy Spirit faithfully puts his finger on a sin I have failed to see.

And this is the point – I couldn’t see my own sin. Only God searches the depths of my heart. Only God can see to the bottom.

Sin is deceptive. It never takes a break. I, however, can lull myself into a false sense of piety. That I am doing okay. I can read the list in Galatians 5:19-21 (adultery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, wrath, murder, drunkenness, etc.) and give myself a pass.

This is why Owen’s words are so refreshing. He says,

“Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could; every covetous desire would be oppression, every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head.”

Sin is never presented to us first in its ugliest form. Sin aims at our destruction but first it deceives. It may aim at adultery but will first deceive us by having us excuse our wayward, lust-tinged glances. It may aim at drunkenness but will first deceive us by having us tell ourselves that we deserve one more drink to take the edge off.

Owen goes on,

“it is modest, as it were, in its first motions and proposals, but having once got footing in the heart by them, it constantly makes good its ground, and presses on to some farther degrees in the same kind.”

and,

“There is not the best saint in the world but, if he should give over this duty, [of mortification], would fall into as many cursed sins as ever any did of his kind.”

No wonder then that the author of Hebrews exhorts his readers this way,

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Hebrews 3:12-13

Some questions —

Do you believe you are immune to the gravest sins?

Do you feel the need to daily put sin to death?

Every day sin aims to deceive and destroy. And so every day we must, by the Spirit, put it to death.

One thing I have learned from reading John Owen is the difference between sin and sins. That may sound confusing at first, but the Bible makes a distinction.

David says in Psalm 51:

“Hid your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.”

In this passage it is clear that David is referring to the many transgressions he has committed.

But Paul says in Romans 7:

“But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” v. 8

and this:

“For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” v. 22-23

In these two passages we see a difference between transgressions we may commit, such as covetousness, and a principle, or law of indwelling sin that still dwells in our flesh as believers.

Understanding this has shed a lot of light on other passages that speak of “the old man” or “the old self” such as Ephesians 4:22,

“to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires..”

It’s not just the case that we commit sins. More than that, and at the bottom of that is a lingering law of sin that still dwells in our flesh. Yes, we have been crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6, Gal. 2:20) and as a result the body of sin has been brought to nothing so that we are no longer enslaved to sin. But Paul still tells us not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies (Rom. 6:12). This law of sin is still in our flesh.

Owen describes our responsibility better than I can in this quote:

“Indwelling sin is compared to a person, called ‘the old man,’ with his faculties and properties, his wisdom, craft, subtlety, strength; this, says the apostle, must be killed, put to death, mortified – that is, have its power, life, vigor, and strength to produce its effects taken away by the Spirit.”

Avoiding certain sins is only half the battle. There is an enemy that still dwells in our flesh and we are commanded to put it to death.

Here is another challenge from Owen which includes one of his most famous quotes:

Do you mortify;

do you make it your daily work;

be always at it while you live;

cease not a day from this work;

be killing sin or it will be killing you.

Does this sound too serious? Too, too, … (dare I say it)… Puritanical? I think maybe we take sin too lightly and don’t understand its intrinsic evil, depth of power and ability to deceive. If we did, perhaps we would treat it as the enemy it really is. After all, the only way sin and death were defeated was for God to send his only Son to die on our behalf. There was no other way.

My aim in blogging through Owen’s book is not to rehash all his arguments but to highlight the points God has impressed on me and to encourage you to pick up his book.

What strikes me in chapter 1 is the necessity of mortification. If you are a believer you must fight sin. We may believe this but are our actions consistent with that belief? I think the gospel has unfortunately been watered down to an extent that Christians can feel like the only thing necessary is their prayer of repentance. Practical holiness then becomes optional.

Certainly the Scriptures proclaim that we are saved by faith alone (Eph.2:8-9), but as Martin Luther said, the faith that saves is never alone (James 2:14-26).

Romans 8 describes the life of a Christian and it offers no middle ground.

You either walk according to the flesh or according to the Spirit. (v. 4)

You either set your minds on the things of the flesh or on the things of the Spirit. (v.5)

The mind set on the flesh is death; the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. (v.6)

Your mind is either hostile to God or it submits to God. (v.7)

You either possess the Spirit of God or you don’t, and therefore don’t belong to him. (v.9)

So there are two options: living according to the flesh or living according to the Spirit. Living according to the flesh means your mind is set of the things of the flesh, you are hostile to God and the Spirit of God does not dwell in you. But living according to the Spirit means your mind is set on the things of the Spirit, you submit to God and the Spirit of God dwells in you.

This is the background that comes before Romans 8:13 which again says this –

“For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

If you are a believer you are not to live according to the flesh. I think we all know this and have an understanding that we are to avoid certain sins. But Romans 8:13 says that we are not just to avoid certain sins but to put all sin to death. Putting something to death is far different from just avoiding it.

Owen’s opening argument is this:

“The vigor, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.”

Romans 8:13 tells us to put sin to death. This is what mortification is and this is the theme of Owen’s book called Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers. Part 1 is an exposition of this one verse.

How many sermons have you heard on mortification? Not many I guess. I don’t think this is a popular topic. We may have heard a lot about victory and even sung about it. “O victory in Jesus!” you know? This is certainly true and praise God for it! Without Christ defeating sin and death on the Cross, we have no hope and we have no redemption.

But we still have this enemy. Because we still live in these mortal bodies, we still battle the remaining sin in us. Many different passages in the New Testament command believers to battle sin.

We are told to put off the old self (Eph. 4:22), to cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Rom. 13:12), to put to death what is earthly in us (Col. 3:5) and to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against our souls (1 Pet. 2:11).

Put off, cast off, put to death these practices, this sin, that wages war against our souls.

Owen says, “The mortification of indwelling sin remaining in our mortal bodies, that it may not have life and power to bring forth the works or deeds of the flesh, is the constant duty of believers.”

Mortification is a duty of believers. We must fight.

Are you aware of this battle? Do you care? Do you know how to wage war?

What a terrible loss when we only read what is recent and trendy! I commend to you the Puritans – those wonderful friends from the 17th and 18th centuries. I call them the “old dead guys”.

Their language is arcane and their arguments are long but they are so worth digging into and pouring over. They had a clear-eyed vision of the Christian life that few, if any, have today.

My aim here is to help those who want to read by giving my thoughts on the books I have been able to finish. I have a stack of Puritan gems and I am embarrassed to admit how few I have finished, but the ones I have finished have become precious to me.

First up is John Owen. Here is the book –

Included in this book are three works by Owen on sin and temptation. The original titles are very long, so they have been shortened.

Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

Of Temptation, the Nature and Power of it

The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin

I am by no means an expert on Owen. There are others way more capable than I. My goal here is just to share my thoughts and encourage others to dig deeper.

This specific collection of Owen’s works makes reading him a lot easier. Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor have done a great job in editing so you can track with his arguments.

Before the next post let me just give you a brief sketch of Owen’s life.

He lived from 1616 to 1683 in England. It was a politically tumultuous time when the country moved from a Puritan influenced government back to a monarchy.

Owen was an army chaplain, a pastor, a friend of Oliver Cromwell and a Vice Chancellor of Oxford.

He was married and had eleven children with his first wife but only one survived adolescence.

And now let me leave you with a very famous Owen quote –

“Do you mortify;

do you make it your daily work;

be always at it while you live;

cease not a day from this work;

be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

Next time we will discuss what mortification means.

Yesterday I went on a run at Sweetwater Creek State Park. As you can see from the picture, it is beautiful. In January I ran a 50K race there and fell in love. Yesterday was the first time since then I could take the time to go back and enjoy it.

I usually run with my GPS watch strapped to my wrist. It faithfully gives me all the info I want to determine speed and distance. In running, these are the usual measures of success.

About two miles in, the trail descends into some sweet single track bordered by baby ferns and gurgling streams. I kept stopping to look and admire. Each time I stopped I would stop my watch. Why? Because the watch records your average pace and I also wanted to know how well I was doing in that department.

After several stops  I asked myself why I cared about pace. Why was I here anyway? The goal wasn’t to run the course as fast as I could, right?

What was the goal?

About halfway through comes what my friend calls, “The Stairs to Mordor”. If you’ve seen the LOTR movies you’d get it. The trail brings you right to the banks of the creek and now you have to go up. And up. And still further up.

I stopped at a particularly picturesque part of the steps overlooking the powerful currents washing over the rocks.

This was the goal. Right here drinking in the majesty of God’s creation and taking time to reflect and thank Him. Numbers on a watch can’t measure that.

As I reflected I thought about the previous day’s experience. It was a culmination of the past 3-4 months of working my way back to professional clarinet playing. In God’s kindness I was able to get an opportunity to audition with the Atlanta Symphony. They had one opening and I’d been practicing more than I had in years.

I didn’t make it past the first round but I wasn’t disappointed in that as much as my performance. I didn’t play as well as I knew I could.

But what was the goal?

Was it to win?

No. I knew there were many, many more people there who had more talent and definitely more experience than I.

So what was the goal? What was the measure of success in attaining that goal?

It’s funny that I hadn’t really thought it through until that moment. Success in music had always meant perfect performances and winning auditions. That mindset was still ingrained.

In running long distances you learn the wisdom of setting different kinds of goals. Most people who run marathons don’t win and don’t set a PR every time so it helps to have other things to shoot for. Usually the first goal is to finish. Who cares about the time on the watch, just cross the finish line.

If my goal yesterday was not winning the audition, what was it? As I thought about how long it had been since I had prepared for such a thing, and how major an audition it was, I began to realize what the goal was.

To finish. To do all the preparation and then actually walk out on that stage in front of some world class musicians and put myself on the line in that one moment.

So what is the goal? I am learning how clarifying that question can be.