The Marks of a Dangerous Sin

Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. 2 CORINTHIANS 7:1

A good physician does not treat every illness the same way. Some complaints yield to ordinary care; others carry signs that call for urgent and unusual measures. Owen approaches sin in the same spirit. Before he gives particular directions for dealing with a troublesome sin, he lays down a second general rule, and then asks his reader to take the pulse of his own soul.

Hating sin as sin

The general rule is this: there is no mortifying one sin while you are careless about the rest. Owen imagines a man tormented by some particular lust. He prays against it, groans under it, longs to be free; but in other things, in prayer, in reading Scripture, in the ordinary duties of the Christian life, he is loose and negligent. Such a man, Owen says, will never overcome the sin that troubles him.

Why not? Because his fight against it springs from the wrong root. He hates this sin because it hurts him, not because it offends God. If he hated sin as sin, he would be just as watchful against the neglect of prayer, which does not trouble his conscience, as against the lust that does. Owen names the true foundation of the whole work: “Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting, a sense of the love of Christ in the cross, lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification.” And then, addressing the troubled man directly, he gives one of his most piercing sentences: “Did it not disquiet thee, it should not be disquieted by thee.”

Much of what we call fighting sin is really an attempt to get rid of discomfort. God, Owen says, will not simply relieve us of the one sin that bothers us so that we may be at ease in the others that bother Him. “Let not any man think to do his own work that will not do God’s.”

He adds a further thought, gently. Sometimes God allows a particular sin to gain strength in a believer precisely to chasten him for a general carelessness, or to wake him up. Paul was given a thorn in the flesh lest he be lifted up; Peter was left to deny his Master as a correction to his self-confidence. If that is so, it is no use seeking to remove the symptom while leaving the cause.

The dangerous symptoms

Owen then gives his first particular direction: consider whether your sin has any dangerous symptoms. If it has, ordinary remedies will not be enough. He names six.

The first is long standing. A sin that has been allowed to lie in the heart for a long season, unresisted, grows familiar. The conscience stops being startled by it. It weaves itself into the affections. Owen quotes David’s complaint that his wounds stank and were corrupt through his foolishness, and he draws the lesson in two short sentences: “Old neglected wounds are often mortal, always dangerous.” And again: “As it never dies of itself, so if it be not daily killed it will always gather strength.”

My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. PSALM 38:5

The second is the heart’s secret pleading for peace while the sin remains. Owen describes two forms of it. In one, a man troubled by his sin, instead of dealing with it, turns to count up his evidences of grace, reassuring himself that he is a Christian after all, so that his conscience may be quiet without the sin being touched. In the other, he applies the promises of mercy to a sin he is not really fighting. He is like Naaman, who asked leave to go on bowing in the house of Rimmon: in everything else I will walk with God, but in this one thing may the Lord pardon me.

In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon … the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing. 2 KINGS 5:18

Owen’s verdict on this is severe and exact: “To apply mercy, then, to a sin not vigorously mortified is to fulfil the end of the flesh upon the gospel.” It is to turn grace into an excuse, which is exactly what Paul refused.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? ROMANS 6:1–2

The third is frequent success in winning the will’s consent. A sin may not be carried into outward action, for fear of consequences, and yet the will has agreed to it with pleasure.

The fourth is fighting a sin only with arguments from its punishment. If the only thing a man can say to his temptation is that it will bring shame or hell, then, Owen says, he has in effect decided he would do it if there were no penalty. Those who belong to Christ have better weapons: the love of God, the death of Christ, the preciousness of communion with Him, a hatred of sin as sin. Owen points to Joseph, who met temptation not with a calculation of risk but with a question about God.

How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? GENESIS 39:9

A man who has been driven back from these gospel defences to the law alone is, Owen warns, in a weak place, and he will not hold it long. “What gospel principles do not, legal motives cannot do.”

For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. ROMANS 6:14

The fifth is the possibility that the sin is a chastening from God for earlier neglect. Owen asks the troubled believer to look back. What was the state of your soul before this sin took hold? Had you grown careless in prayer? Had you received some great mercy and been unthankful? Had you drifted into the ways of the world?

The sixth is a sin that has already withstood God’s particular dealings with it: warnings in Scripture, in preaching, in affliction, which touched the conscience for a while and were then shaken off. Owen finds this in Isaiah.

For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, and will heal him. ISAIAH 57:17–18

Where these signs are present, Owen says, borrowing the words of Christ about a stubborn evil spirit, this kind goes out only by prayer and fasting. An ordinary course will not do; extraordinary seriousness is required.

A necessary caution

Owen ends this section with a caution that is easy to miss and important to keep. He has said that true believers may fall into these conditions. But no one should conclude from finding them in himself that he is therefore a believer. A man might as well reason that because David committed adultery, every adulterer is a David. The evidence that a person is a Christian must come from what makes a Christian: faith in Christ, the Spirit’s work, love to God. The marks in this chapter are not badges of grace. They are warnings. If you find them, do not take comfort from them; run from them to Christ.

For the love of Christ constraineth us. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:14

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name a duty you have been neglecting while you fight one particular sin. Take it up again this week, as part of the same fight.

2. Ask yourself honestly why you want to be rid of your besetting sin. Is it because it offends God, or chiefly because it troubles you?

3. Go through Owen’s six symptoms and mark any that apply. If any do, set apart a day for prayer, and perhaps fasting, about that sin.

4. Notice what you say to yourself in the moment of temptation. If your only argument is fear of consequences, learn Joseph’s question and use it.

A PRAYER

Holy God, I confess that I have often hated my sin only because it hurt me, and not because it grieved You.

Forgive me for the sins I have been careless about while I fought the one that troubled me most, and for the times I have asked Your pardon for a sin I meant to keep.

Where my sin is old and familiar, and has shaken off Your warnings, do the extraordinary work that only You can do.

Let the love of Christ constrain me, so that I fight sin as sin, for Your sake and in Your strength. Amen.