MORTIFICATION OF SIN

John Owen
[1656]

Chapter 3

THE WORK OF THE

SPIRIT IN
MORTIFICATION

The Holy SpiritHe only is

sufficient for this work; all
ways and means without him
are useless; and he is the great
efficient of it,he works in us
as he pleases.

In what ways do many

people attempt to
destroy the sins that
trouble them?

Such outside endeavors, such

bodily exercises, such selfperformances, such merely
legal duties, without the least
mention of Christ or his
Spirit,...

are varnished over with

swelling words of vanity,
instead of using the only
means and expedients for the
mortification of sin, as
discover

which shows a deep-rooted

unacquaintedness with the
power of God and mystery of
the gospel.

How do we often use

the right thingssuch as
reading the Bible,
prayer, fasting, etc.in
the wrong way to
accomplish
mortification?

What do they trust in to

change them?

What are the reasons

such things just dont
work?

Attempting rigid
mortification, they fell upon
the natural man instead of
the corrupt old man,upon
the body wherein we live
instead of the body of death.

Spiritually sick men cannot

sweat out their disease with
working.

Where does this

getting-tough-on-sin
approach actually
focus our attention?
Where does the real
problem lie?

Internal disease:
Defective love love the
wrong things.
Defective reasoning see
reality incorrectly.
Defective will choose the
wrong things.

The new creature therefore

does not consist in a new
course of actions, but in
renewed faculties, with new
dispositions, power and
ability to perform them.

Why must mortification

be the work of the
Spirit? How does the
particular work of the
Spirit correspond to the
work of Christ?

How does the Spirit

mortify sin?

If mortification is the
work of the Spirit, why
do we have to do
anything at all?

How does the Spirits

work relate to our own
obedience?

He works upon our

understandings, wills,
consciences, affections,
agreeably to their own
natures; he works in us and
with us, not against us or
without us.