This is one of the most important truths for a believer to grasp. Thomas Boston puts it like this: “The great stay of the believer is not the grace of God within him; that is a well whose streams sometimes run dry; but it is the grace of God without him, the grace that is in Jesus Christ, which is an ever-flowing fountain, to which the believer can never come amiss.”
(Thomas Boston, Human nature in its Four-Fold State, p. 312)
Prayer
Calvin says in his Institutes that “whatever we need and whatever we lack is in God and in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
(Inst. III. xx. 1, p. 850)
Worldliness
The sin of letting your ambition, your appetites and behavior conform you to earthly values. It is the lust of the eyes, the flesh and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). It is not a quaint way of describing our understanding or appreciation of the world.
Soul Exercise
What a great word from John Owen on temptation near the end of his little work on the same. I love this part:
“Let a soul exercise itself to a communion with Christ in the good things of the Gospel. Pardon of sin, fruits of holiness, hope of glory, peace with God, joy in the Holy Spirit, dominion over sin, and he shall have a mighty preservative against all temptations.”
(John Owen , Works Vol. 6, p. 144.)
So, let us exercise our souls in this way.
Some John Owen Quotes
The vigor and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of deeds of the flesh.
If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: ‘God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled.’ When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage.
Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.
If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world: at least, we should be better enabled to bear them.
All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless, it must be done by the Spirit.
Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.
The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it.
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