Killing Sin and Romans 8:13 (Part 1)

In The Mortification of Sin, John Owen essentially exposes and applies Romans 8:13:

If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

There are five important things in this verse. Here are the first two:
1. The exhortation is directed toward believers. Only those who are made alive by the Spirit can fulfill this duty. As Owen notes:

The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, should also make it their business all of their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

By this I take Owen to mean that the condemmning power of sin was killed at the cross (”there is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” - Rom 8:1) and has no dominion over us. The indwelling power of sin refers to the presence of sin remaining within us, no longer a tyrant, yet retaining some degree of power. Within a genuine believer there has been a “regime change” and the dethroned sin wages war to regain its total control. We are to be killing that remaining sin.

2. There is a condition which expresses a certainty. The condition, “If you”, points to a most certain connection between killing sin and living. It is a relationship of the means and the end.

The intent of the text… is that there is a certain infallible connection and coherence between true mortification and eternal life: if you use this means, you shall obtain that end; if you do mortify, you shall live.

Scripture teaches that all true believers will persevere to the end. This text shows us that one of the means of our perseverance is killing sin. In other words, a genuine believer will have some evidence of sin-killing in his life. Our eternal life is at stake.

~ by edify on May 30, 2006.