Live to See Lust Dead at Your Feet

John Owen's counsel on how to mortify sin:

"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; yea, you will, through the good providence of God, live to see your lust dead at your feet."

Overcoming Sin and Temptation, p. 131.

Make this your Business

Chapter 1 of John Owen's Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers contains a fantastic outline and meditation on Romans 8:13: "If you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body you shall live."

Here is Owen's outline:

-A duty prescribed: “Mortify the sins…”
-The persons to whom it is prescribed: “if YOU mortify."
-A promise annexed to the duty: “You shall live.”
-The cause or means of the performance of this duty: “if through the Spirit.”
-The conditionality of the whole proposition: “IF you…”

Thesis:
"The choicest believers,
who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin,
ought yet to make it their business all their days
to mortify the indwelling power of sin."

Owen says:
"The vigor, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life
depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh."

The Glory of Christ

Spend $10 to get The Glory of Christ by John Owen. Specifically, let me recommend this particular edition of The Glory of Christ. This edition offers some small helps to reading Owen. This edition contains meanings of hard words so that you don't have to read with a dictionary near by. This edition also breaks up the text into managable sectons so that you can pause and ponder what you have just read.

So, here is a recommendation: Spend $10 to get this book and then carve out time daily for about a month to slowly work through The Glory of Christ. The benefits will be immeasurable.

Contending for Our All

I just got Piper's new book Contending for Our All last night. It is the fourth book in his "The Swans are not Silent" series. This book looks at the lives of Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen and their fight for the truth.

Just a little hint: The introductions to these four biographical books are fantastic! Having read the previous three, I immediately read the introduction last night to this new one. I was once again humbled and broken. In these introductions, Piper merges the lives of the three men he is writing about and describes the dominant theme of their lives as he sees it. These introductions are among Piper's best writing. One day, when he publishes "The Swans are not Silent, book twenty", I hope someone will combine all the introductions into one powerful book.

Piper ends this introduction with a quote from Martin Luther:
"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."