The Guilt of Your Sin

This is my once-monthly post on the Puritan John Owen. In this series of posts I am sharing some of what John Owen says about putting sin to death, or what he calls mortification. I have been going through his book Overcoming Sin and Temptation and trying to distill each chapter to its essence—to a few choice quotes that capture the flavor of what Owen is trying to communicate.

So far we’ve looked at The Foundation of Mortification, we’ve been encouraged to Daily Put Sin to Death, to understand that It Is the Holy Spirit Who Puts Sin to Death and to acknowledge that Your Spiritual Life Depends Upon Killing Sin. Then we saw What It Is Not to Put Sin to Death and What It Is to Put Sin to Death. Then, at least, he began to move to the actual instruction on putting sin to death. First he dealt with a couple of foundational issues and then with dangerous sin symptoms. Last month he told us that when you identify a sin in your life you need to get a clear and abiding sense upon your mind and conscience of the guilt, danger, and evil of your sin. Now he adds that you need to load your conscience with the guilt of sin and that you need to long for deliverance from sin’s power.

Load Your Conscience with the Guilt of Sin

 

Owen is going to take you to the gospel to put your sin to death, but he doesn’t want to get there too quickly. Before you begin to put that sin to death, he wants you to acknowledge the actual guilt of that sin, not just your guilt in a general sense. Here is how to do that:

Charge your conscience with the guilt which comes when you compare your sin with God’s holy law. You need to ponder God’s holiness as reflected in his revealed will, admit how far you have missed the mark, and then allow yourself to acknowledge the weight of that guilt. “Bring the holy law of God into your conscience, lay your corruption to it, pray that you may be affected with it. Consider the holiness, spirituality, fiery severity, inwardness, absoluteness of the law, and see how you can stand before it. Be much, I say, in affecting your conscience with the terror of the Lord in the law, and how righteous it is that every one of your transgressions should receive a recompense of reward. … Persuade your conscience to harken diligently to what the law speaks, in the name of the Lord, unto you about your lust and corruption. Oh! If your ears be open, it will speak with a voice that shall make you tremble, that shall cast you to the ground and fill you with astonishment.”   Continue at Tim Challies

Thoughts on The Hunger Games

By now everyone and his brother has read and/or watched The Hunger Games, so here’s another book review to add to the pile...

Plot summary:

 

The story takes place in what was formerly the United States. Panem is its new name, a tyrannical government with 12 vassal districts that are predominantly controlled by slow starvation and martial law. As punishment for a past rebellion and to keep the populace under its thumb, two “tributes”, a girl and boy, are chosen at random from the children in each district to participate in the annual Hunger Games. These are fights to the death in a specially prepared arena for the televised entertainment of the Capitol’s hedonistic citizens and the torture of the districts. The victor’s reward is fame, money, and above all no fear of starvation ever again. The heroine, Katniss Everdeen, from District 12 volunteers to take her 12-year-old sister’s place to save her from almost certain death. Her fellow tribute is Peeta Mellark, the son of a baker, who saved Katniss and her family from starvation. As the story unfolds, Katniss and Peeta must fight for their lives until only one tribute is left. Who will be the victor?

 

[Warning: Spoiler alert.]

 

Author Suzanne Collins knows how to spin a gripping tale. The reader is drawn immediately into the horror of the games and the anguish of families who are forced to send their children to be murdered at the hands of other children year after year. You feel the battle in Katniss’ soul as she hates the Capitol’s machinations but is drawn to the idea of returning as a victor so her family will never want again. Katniss also knows she and her family owes Peeta their lives, yet it is kill or be killed. The story is violent but Collins is not overly graphic. However, I admit to quickly skimming over several sections.    Continue at Persis

Thrown Over the Fence — Infanticide, Canadian Style

Mark Steyn hit the nail on the head when he accused a Canadian appeals court of allowing for a “fourth-trimester abortion” — that’s right, the killing of a baby that is already born.

The case emerged from the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta, where a judge faced the fact that a woman had been convicted of strangling her newborn son and then throwing the baby’s body over the fence into her neighbor’s yard.

A CBC News reported, the woman was given a three-year suspended sentence and will spend no time in jail for the killing of her baby. Katrina Efferts “will have to abide by conditions for the next three years but she won’t spend time behind bars for strangling her own son.”

JudgJustice Joanne Veit, whose name should now go down in legal and moral infamy, tied this woman’s act of infanticide to Canada’s lack of legal restrictions on abortion. The judge’s decision stated that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.”    Keep Reading...