Last week I had the privilege of sitting down and having a heart to heart with that great Puritan, John Owen. This week we got together again for another brilliant discussion on how sin works and how to kill it. Here’s the transcript of our conversation:

Stephen Altrogge: John, why do you make such a big deal about fighting sin? Why should I make all this effort to fight my sin?

John Owen: Oh that’s an easy one. I’ll just give you two reasons for now. First, if sin isn’t continually battled, it will give birth to great, cursed, scandalous, soul-destroying sins. Think for a moment: how does adultery happen?

SA: Simple, a guy cheats on his wife.

JO: Wrong. It starts much smaller, in the thoughts. A man finds himself thinking a little longer and more affectionately about a woman at work. If these thoughts are left unchecked they lead to “small” actions, like longer conversations at the water cooler. Conversations lead to lunches, lunches lead to evenings, evenings lead to adultery. With each sinful concession, his heart grows harder and he becomes more deceived. That’s why, by the power of God, sin must be consistently battled.

SA: What’s the second reason I should fight my sin?

JO: So you can be happy! Your spiritual happiness is directly related to your holiness. You want spiritual strength, comfort, power, and peace, right?

SA: That would be a “yes”.

JO: Sin and Satan are in the business of stealing these things from you. Sin will entangle your affections and cloud your communion with God. It will drive out your love for God and suck the life out of your spirit. If you want to be happy you need to be holy.

SA: So John, what hope is there for me?

JO: Oh there is much hope for you my friend. You have the living God at work within you. He, along with you, is making war on your sin. That ultimately is your hope. You fight because God is fighting with you.

O that I were this dedicated…to anything.

My friend Bill Kittrell was recently honored by the church he pastors in Knoxville for 25 years of faithful ministry.

He told me how he sat there amazed as one person after another thanked him for how he had blessed them over the years.  Bill told me, “They only remembered the good things.  They could have said, ‘I remember that lame message you preached,’ or ‘I remember that lousy counsel you gave me,’ but instead all they seemed to be able to recall were good things.” He said, “It reminded me of what it’s going to be like when Jesus comes back,” and quoted 1 Corinthians 4:5:

Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

Many of us probably think that when Jesus returns he’ll shake his head in disappointment at us and remind us of all the ways we could have served him better.  But Jesus will commend us, not condemn us!  Rather than rehearsing all our failures, he’ll recount all the good his grace accomplished in us, and he’ll express his pleasure in us.

What a wonderful God!  He covers our mountains of sin and magnifies our molehills of grace.  He “forgets” our sins and focuses on the good we do.  I want to be like him, rejoicing in any smoldering wicks of grace in my family and friends, and fanning them into flame with encouragement.

photo by .robbie

I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. (Psalm 3:5)

Because God knows that we’re both forgetful and self-sufficient, he’s kindly woven many reminders into each day that we are dependent on him. Sleep is a beautiful example of this.

On average we need somewhere between six and eight hours of sleep every night. Things begin to unravel when we don’t get those precious hours. I remember being at a conference with a friend who had only gotten two hours of sleep the previous night. He informed me that during the morning session he actually lost the ability to focus his eyes on the speaker. Without sleep our bodies fall apart.

Our daily need for sleep is a daily reminder that we need God. Sleep is a divine Post-It note with the following words written in bold, capital letters: YOU ARE NOT GOD. Only God doesn’t slumber or sleep, and he’s the one who keeps life flowing through our bodies while we sleep. Sleep is a wonderful reminder that we’re weak, frail little creatures who turn into babbling idiots when deprived of sleep.

Every night before bed we have the God-given opportunity grow in humility by expressing our dependence and need for God. Let’s not let that opportunity slip by. Instead of drifting into dreamworld without a second thought, let’s seize the moment to express our desperate need for God. Let’s ask him to keep us breathing through the night, ask him for the gift of sleep, and praise him as the only one who doesn’t need sleep.

In doing these things sleep will become more than closing the eyes. It will be a means of glorifying God by humbling ourselves before him.

NOTE: Most of my thoughts on this have been shaped by C.J. Mahaney’s outstanding message A Biblical Understanding of Sleep.

When we have faith in God, we obey him.  We don’t say “I’ll obey after I see the results,” but “I will obey in faith, trusting that I’ll see the results later.”

Paul tells us that the gospel he preached had been “made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith.” (RO 16.25-26)

Years ago my friend Brent took a group of us rock climbing.  We stood atop a small cliff, maybe 30 feet high.  Brent lashed a rope around a large tree trunk, then rigged me up to rappel backwards over the face of the rock.  “Go ahead, just lean back and push off,” he urged, “the rope will hold you.”  I leaned back slightly and furtively glanced at the ground.  Though it wasn’t that high a cliff, I might as well have been leaning backwards over the rim of the Grand Canyon.  This would require all the faith I could muster.  I had to trust Brent’s ability to select good rope and tie strong knots.  I could have talked about my faith in Brent all day, but my faith would have been empty until I acted on it.  So I launched myself backwards into space, and found that Brent’s promise that the knot would hold me came true.

Faith is the engine and feelings are the caboose of our spiritual lives.  In faith we obey, then feelings eventually follow.  Jeremiah proved this:

Your words were found, and I ate them,and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts. (Je 15.16)

First Jeremiah obeyed by “eating” God’s words; later he experienced joy and delight.

Most mornings when I sit down to open God’s word, I’m not initially brimming with joy.  Reading the Bible is an act of faith.  I read, trusting that God will bless me. I don’t usually experience rapturous feelings as I’m reading, but as I have sought by God’s grace to be consistent over the years, God’s word has truly become a joy and a delight to me.

Whether it’s reading God’s word, rejoicing in a trial, or forgiving an offence, the obedience of faith comes first; delight comes later.

photo by patrickkeane

Thanks to modern technology (books), I recently had the privilege of hanging in Starbuck’s with that great puritan, John Owen. Here’s the transcript of our conversation.

Stephen Altrogge: John, you’ve done a lot of study on how sin works. How would you describe the way sin works in the life of a Christian?

John Owen: Scripture refers to the sinful nature as the “old man”, and in many ways sin is like a person. It brings all its wisdom, craft, subtlety, strength, and powers of deception to the table, and it seeks to put these things to work in your life. Sin is your enemy, and it is seeking to destroy you. Listen closely my friend, you need to be killing sin or it will be killing you.

SA: You make it sound like sin is opposing me. Is this what you mean?

JO: Yes, exactly! Sin will violently fight against every godly thing you try to do. It’s always either inclining you to evil, hindering you from good, or trying to disrupt your fellowship with God. It’s restless and relentless. From the moment you wake in the morning sin is at work. When you sit down to read your Bible, sin will fight you. When you begin singing on a Sunday morning, sin will kick and scream. When you start to serve your wife, sin will propose 10,000 reasons why you should sit down in the recliner instead. Don’t play with sin, because it’s not playing with you. It’s fighting you.

SA: Wow, that sounds really discouraging. What should I do?

JO: Apart from the Spirit of God at work within us, it would be discouraging. But here’s the good news: you have the power of God’s spirit working within you to help you conquer sin. That, my friend, is your only hope. You’ll never kill your sin by your own power. But by cooperating with the Holy Spirit, you can daily overcome your sin.

TO BE CONTINUED…

(Note: All of this was paraphrased from the John Owen book Temptation and Sin)

So hilarious, so true.

HT: Z

“Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the LORD spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death.” - 1 Samuel 2:22-25

Oh the deep and wonderful mystery of God’s sovereignty and man’s free choices. We see it so clearly in this passage. Eli’s sons were making free, sinful choices. They weren’t being forced, not having their arm twisted in any way. Their was no divine coercion at work here. They were doing exactly what they wanted, giving into their wicked desires.

Yet we also see that God sovereignly ordained these choices. God willed that Eli’s sons rebel against Him, and He willed to put them to death. It wasn’t as if God was acting as a master chess player, reacting to the wickedness of Eli’s sons and then using their actions for His plans. No, God sovereignly ordained their sinful choices to fulfill His sovereign plans.

What a beautiful, mind-blowing mystery. Each one of my actions is free and of my own decision. And each one of my actions is ordained by God. I choose, yet God wills. How can such a thing be? Only an infinitely wise God could being these two together. My mind simply cannot grasp such deep and glorious truths.

When we see God’s wisdom and sovereignty so clearly displayed, the only proper response is worship. How wise and good our God must be! As our reason falters in the face of divine sovereignty and man’s free will, let’s praise our infinitely wise God.

–

Originally published June, 2007

God revealed the gospel to us not only for our salvation from our sins, but “to bring about the obedience of faith” (RO 16.26).

Faith leads to obedience; obedience eventually produces feelings.  In faith we obey God, even when we don’t feel like it, trusting that feelings will follow.  Faith is the engine of the train and feelings are the caboose.

Corrie ten Boom discovered the principle of the obedience of faith.

While speaking in a church in Munich in 1947, she was approached by a man whom she recognized as a cruel guard from the Ravensbruck concentration camp where she and her sister had been sent after being arrested for hiding Jews in their home during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!

It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

“You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard there. But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein–” again the hand came out–”will you forgive me?”

And I stood there–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses.”

Still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then. (© 1972 by Guideposts Associates, Inc.)

Faith obeys, feelings follow. Where do you need to obey God in faith today?

photo of Corrie ten Boom by www.radiotheatre.org/images

On Monday I wrote a post encouraging us to read more books than blogs. Let these words by John Piper further inspire you to read:

“Don’t let long books daunt you, like John Calvin’s Institutes. To be sure, finishing a great book is not as important as growing by it. But finishing it is not as hard as you might think. Suppose you read slowly like I do - maybe about the same speed that you speak - 200 words a minute. If you read fifteen minutes a day for one year (say just before supper, or just before bed), you will read 5,475 minutes in the year. Multiply that by 200 words a minute, and you get 1,095,000 words that you would read in a year. Now an average serious book might have about 360 words per page. So you would have read 3,041 pages in one year. That’s ten very substantial books. All in fifteen minutes a day.”

“Or, to be specific, my copy of Calvin’s Institutes has 1,521 pages in two volumes, with an average of 400 words per page, which is 608,400 words. That means that even if you took a day off each week, you could read this great biblical vision of God and man in less than nine months (about thirty-three weeks) at fifteen minutes a day. The point is: The words and ways of God will abide in you more deeply and more powerfully if you give yourself to some serious reading of great books that are saturated with scripture.”

-Taken from When I Don’t Desire God