As I said before, I’ve been reading through Of The Mortification of Sin in Believers by John Owen, as well as The Sinfulness of Sin by Ralph Venning. The texts bear some similarities; Mr. Venning quotes and references scripture a lot more, which is good for me to plant my feet in the Word that is the wisdom of God. When I first began reading these books, I heard on several occasions, people say things like, “This book changed so-and-so’s life,” or talking about how highly esteemed the books are in different circles of influential people. To be honest, hearing these things, somewhere in my heart I said, “they’re going to be good and add to my intellectual ammunition, but ultimately not really affect me.” What a wicked thing to say, “O sinful sin” as Mr. Venning says repeatedly in his book. I like it.

Well, fitting right into God’s character, I couldn’t be more wrong. Both books bear similarities to one another, and I’m not going to go into them, I just want to point out one thing that Mr. Owen says in the second chapter of Of The Mortification Of Sin In Believers. “Sin aims always at the utmost;” he says, “every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind.” At first the saying just seemed really quotable; but in ordinary life, the statement illuminated the nature of sin in my life. Habakkuk 2:5 says death is never satisfied; that is like the nature of sin. Mr. Owen says, “Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could… every thought of unbelief would be atheism.”

All this has rung really true in my life; by the grace of God, I’m seeing the deceitfulness of sin more clearly than before. I’m finding easier, I think, to bear up under temptation in the Lord, when in my heart I really truly hate sin.

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