Call to Worship July 21, 2024
“I say, then, mortification is not the present business of unregenerate men. God calls them not to it as yet; conversion is their work,—the conversion of the whole soul,—not the mortification of this or that particular lust. You would laugh at a man that you should see setting up a great fabric, and never take any care for a foundation; especially if you should see him so foolish as that, having a thousand experiences that what he built one day fell down another, he would yet continue in the same course. So it is with convinced persons; though they plainly see, that what ground they get against sin one day they lose another, yet they will go on in the same road still, without inquiring where the destructive flaw in their progress lies. When the Jews, upon the conviction of their sin, were cut to the heart, Acts 2:37, and cried out, ‘What shall we do?’ what doth Peter direct them to do? Does he bid them go and mortify their pride, wrath, malice, cruelty, and the like? No; he knew that was not their present work, but he calls them to conversion and faith in Christ in general, verse 38. Let the soul be first thoroughly converted, and then, ‘looking on Him whom they had pierced,’ humiliation and mortification will ensue. Thus, when John came to preach repentance and conversion, he said, ‘The axe is now laid to the root of the tree,’ Matt. 3:10. The Pharisees had been laying heavy burdens, imposing tedious duties, and rigid means of mortification, in fastings, washings, and the like, all in vain. Says John, ‘The doctrine of conversion is for you; the axe in my hand is laid to the root’. And our Saviour tells us what is to be done in this case; says he, ‘Do men gather grapes from thorns?’ Matt. 7:16. But suppose a thorn be well pruned and cut, and have pains taken with him? ‘Yea, but he will never bear figs,’ verses 17, 18; it cannot be but every tree will bring forth fruit according to its own kind. What is then to be done, he tells us, Matt. 12:33, ‘Make the tree good, and his fruit will be good.’ The root must be dealt with, the nature of the tree changed, or no good fruit will be brought forth.”[1]
[1] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 35–36.