Order of Worship July 14, 2024
“I have proved that it is the Spirit alone that can mortify sin; he is promised to do it, and all other means without him are empty and vain. How shall he, then, mortify sin that hath not the Spirit? A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit. Now, how is he attained? It is the Spirit of Christ: and as the apostle says, ‘If we have not the Spirit of Christ, we are none of his,’ Rom. 8:9; so, if we are Christ’s, have an interest in him, we have the Spirit, and so alone have power for mortification. This the apostle discourses at large, Rom. 8:8, ‘So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.’ It is the inference and conclusion he makes of his foregoing discourse about our natural state and condition, and the enmity we have unto God and his law therein. If we are in the flesh, if we have not the Spirit, we cannot do any thing that should please God. But what is our deliverance from this condition? Verse 9, ‘But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you;’—’Ye believers, that have the Spirit of Christ, ye are not in the flesh.’ There is no way of deliverance from the state and condition of being in the flesh but by the Spirit of Christ. And what if this Spirit of Christ be in you? Why, then, you are mortified; verse 10, ‘The body is dead because of sin,’ or unto it; mortification is carried on; the new man is quickened to righteousness. This the apostle proves, verse 11, from the union we have with Christ by the Spirit, which will produce suitable operations in us to what it wrought in him. All attempts, then, for mortification of any lust, without an interest in Christ, are vain. Many men that are galled with and for sin, the arrows of Christ for conviction, by the preaching of the word, or some affliction having been made sharp in their hearts, do vigorously set themselves against this or that particular lust, where-with their consciences have been most disquieted or perplexed. But, poor creatures! they labour in the fire, and their work consumeth. When the Spirit of Christ comes to this work he will be ‘like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap,’ and he will purge men as gold and as silver, Mal. 3:2, 3,—take away their dross and tin, their filth and blood, as Isa. 4:4; but men must be gold and silver in the bottom, or else refining will do them no good. The prophet gives us the sad issue of wicked men’s utmost attempts for mortification, by what means soever that God affords them: Jer. 6:29, 30, ‘The bellows are burned, and the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them.’ And what is the reason hereof? Verse 28, They were ‘brass and iron’ when they were put into the furnace. Men may refine brass and iron long enough before they will be good silver.”[1]
[1] John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 34–35.