This again was a chapter that caught my eye when I read it at first. The chapter stresses the importance of mortification, the fact that we are either killing sin or being killed by it, and goes so far as to even call out those who claim to be Christian and yet live as carnally as any other.
Largely the chapter speaks of the continual fact that sin is alive in us while we are alive on this earth, no matter how much we seek to deny this by changing the criteria by which holiness may be evaluated, if we are true to the level and standards of what is truly holy we know that in us lies nothing good other than the Spirit who has been given us which is in constant and direct opposition to the sin in us. |And that daily mortification of sin must be our duty.
The biggest idea that struck me was that sin never stops, but desires to push forward to the largest and worst sin of its type. What may start as a quick lustful glance, if not killed, will stop at nothing until it has fulfilled the deepest and darkest deeds related to lustful living. And in so many cases we settle and compromise with sin saying that so long as it not be getting worse, it is fine as it is. That is to allow what is a small wound to stay a wound lest it grow larger. Rather than to heal and aim at what was good beforehand, we say 'well, it isn't that bad, it could be much worse, so this is fine.'
"This new acting and pressing forward makes the soul take little notice of what an entrance to a falling off from God is already made; it thinks all is indifferently well if there be no further progress; and so far as the soul is made insensible of any sin—that is, as to such a sense as the gospel requires—so far it is hardened: but sin is still pressing forward, and that because it has no bounds but utter relinquishment of God and opposition to him; that it proceeds toward its height by degrees, making good the ground it has got by hardness, is not from its nature, but its deceitfulness." page 53
But truly, this mortification is to be painful in some senses. How can it not be? Dying, by the nature of the action is to be painful. So our only option is to set our face against that which is evil in us and fight. To choose the Spirit over the flesh and allow the battle to be fought regardless of the pain we may suffer now. The second idea that really struck me was the idea that if you are not facing opposition, is what you are doing really good? If it is not a work that is aimed at holiness, why would sin have any reason to stop you?
"Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks
not over the bellies of his lusts. He who does not kill sin in his way
takes no steps toward his journey’s end. He who finds not opposition
from it, and who sets not himself in every particular to its
mortification, is at peace with it, not dying to it." page 55
Hmmmm.
"When a man has confirmed his imagination to such an apprehension of grace and mercy as to be able, without bitterness, to swallow and digest daily sins, that man is at the very brink of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness and being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." page 56
"But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of
any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's
holy people." (Eph5:3)
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