We come now to the penultimate chapter of John Owen’s classic, The Mortification of Sin. In this chapter Owen concludes his nine directions for making ourselves ready to mortify sin. Next week, he will conclude the book with two final directions for killing our sin before it kills us. The 9th Direction and subject of …
And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said …
Continue reading The Parables of the Lamp & the Measure | Mark 4:21-25
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes,but the LORD weighs the heart. Proverbs 21:2 ESV As this verse states, self-justification comes all too easy. For example, I immediately condemn the driver who cuts me off, but whenever I cut someone off, then it is justified as being either an accident or …
Here in chapter 12, Owen presents us with his 8th Direction for mortifying sin, which is to “use and exercise thyself to such meditations as may serve to fill thee at all times with self-abasement, and thoughts of thine own vileness” (119). This is to build up within us a hatred against the sin that …
And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these …
It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife,but every fool will be quarreling. Proverbs 20:3 ESV Although all of Proverbs applies to all ages of humanity, this verse feels particularly relevant today. With advent of the Internet and especially social media, it sometimes seems as though life has become one massive …
With Owen’s first two directions for mortifying sin covered by the previous two chapters, our present chapter continues with not one but five more directions to follow (3-7). Direction 3, as alluded to last week, is to “load thy conscience with the guilt of it. Not only consider that it hath a guilt, but load …
Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he …
Continue reading He Who Has Ears to Hear, Let Him Hear | Mark 4:1-12
“A totalitarian state,” writes Rod Dreher, “is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decide it is” (pp. 7-8). He notes that this should not be confused with an authoritarian state, which “is mere dictatorship” (7). Totalitarian states are driven by ideologies under which reality itself …
Having established the first direction for mortifying sin in the previous chapter, Owen now moves on to discuss the second direction: “Get a clear and abiding sense upon thy mind and conscience, first, of the guilt, secondly, of the danger, thirdly, of the evil, of that sin wherewith thou art perplexed” (99). The chapter is …
