A Cry for Help

The following blog entry is part 8 in a series of blog posts entitled “A Fight Worth Picking,” in which I’m writing about John’s Owen’s Biblical principles for fighting sin in ‘The Mortification of Sin.’  I’ll be referencing Banner of Truth’s 2004 edition, abridged by Richard Rushing.  (If you’d like a detailed outline of Owen’s work, click here.)

If you’ve been following this blog and dealing with your sin, you may be feeling quite desperate by now.  We’ve looked thoroughly and deeply at the dark corners of our lives.  We’ve considered the guilt of what we’ve done.  We’ve considered the danger we’re in.  And we’ve considered the sheer evil that causes our sin to flourish. 

If God’s grace is upon you, Owen’s next step will come quite natural.  If we are in the valley of our sin and we catch a true vision of God our deliverer – We will cry out.  Christian, you know you are sinful.  Christian, do you long for deliverance from your sin?  Christian, look to Christ for your deliverance. 

2 Corinthians 7:11

For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.

Only by grace do we even look to God for help.  A proud heart helps itself, while a humble heart recognizes the need for power without to help within.

“Longing, breathing, and panting after deliverance is a grace in itself, that has a mighty power to conform the soul into the likeness of the thing longed after… unless you long for deliverance you shall not have it.”  (page 81).

With Paul, let us cry out

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”  (Romans 7:24-25).