This past Sunday while preaching on Romans 8:12-13, I quoted several times from John Owen’s work, Mortification of Sin. I wanted to share some of those quotes again so you can be better able to consider them and give you a few more besides.
“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.”
“Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.”
“Indwelling sin is compared to a person, a living person, called ‘the old man,’ with his faculties, and properties, his wisdom, craft, subtlety, strength; this, says the apostle, must be killed, put to death, mortified, that is, have its power, life, vigour, and strength, to produce its effects, taken away by the Spirit.”
“The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.”
“…be killing sin or it will be killing you.”
“[The Spirit] only is sufficient for this work; all ways and means without him are as a thing of nought; and he is the great efficient of it,—he works in us as he pleases.”