Load the Conscience

And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. EPHESIANS 4:30

One of the first things a sin does, once it has settled in the heart, is to make itself look small. Owen knew its voice well. Is it not a little one? Others have done far worse. Many godly people have struggled with this. God is merciful. Together such thoughts work like a fog. The middle chapters of The Mortification of Sin are Owen’s answer to that fog. He gives a series of directions, and the first of them is to get a clear and lasting sense of what the sin really is.

Guilt, danger and evil

He asks us to consider three things.

Consider, first, its guilt. Owen makes a point that turns our usual reckoning upside down. We tend to think that a Christian’s sins are less serious than an unbeliever’s, because the Christian is forgiven and is trying. Owen argues the opposite. A believer sins against more love, more light and more help than anyone else, and so there is more guilt, not less, in the sin that remains in him. God sees more beauty in the faint desires of His children than in the grand deeds of the world; and for the same reason He sees more evil in their cherished sins.

Consider, second, its danger. The chief danger is hardening. Owen warns the tender Christian that if he tolerates his sin he will lose his tenderness. He borrows a phrase he had heard used, that such a person grows “sermon-proof and sickness-proof.” Warnings that once made him tremble will leave him untouched; he will pray, read and hear without being moved; sin will grow a light thing to him. There is also the danger of God’s fatherly rod, as David found; the danger of losing all peace and strength in the Christian life; and, for one who continues under the power of sin, the threat of final destruction, which Owen insists must be held out honestly. He is careful to say that this is a judgement on a man’s ways rather than a verdict on his person. A believer is not being told that he is damned; he is being told where the road he is on leads.

Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. HEBREWS 3:12

Consider, third, its present evil. It grieves the Holy Spirit, who has chosen the believer’s heart as His dwelling, as a loving friend is grieved by a friend’s unkindness. It wounds Christ afresh. And it takes away a person’s usefulness. Owen thought that many barren lives in the church could be explained by hidden sins lying like worms at the root.

Law, then gospel

Owen’s next direction is stronger still: load your conscience with the guilt of it. He means that the believer should deliberately bring his sin before God’s law and God’s gospel, and not let it escape either.

Bring it first to the law. Let the holiness and severity of God’s commandments speak to it. If the conscience objects that the Christian is no longer under the law’s condemnation, Owen replies that a man who shelters a cherished sin behind that doctrine has no right to its comfort.

Then bring it to the gospel, not for relief, he says, but for deeper conviction. Look on Him whom you have pierced, and mourn.

And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son. ZECHARIAH 12:10

Owen writes out the words such a person might say to himself, and they are among the most moving in the book: “Is this the return I make to the Father for his love, to the Son for his blood, to the Holy Ghost for his grace?” He goes on to God’s patience with repeated failures and all His kindnesses in providence. Let the conscience dwell on these, he says, until it is humbled in the dust. As long as the conscience can find some way to lighten the guilt, the soul will never seriously fight the sin.

Longing, temperament and occasions

The directions that follow are short and practical.

Long for deliverance. Owen observes that in ordinary life a desire is worth only what it moves us to do; but in spiritual things longing itself is a grace, with power to shape the soul towards the thing it longs for. Paul cried out for deliverance from the body of this death. “Assure thyself, unless thou longest for deliverance thou shalt not have it.”

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? ROMANS 7:24

Consider whether your sin is rooted in your natural temperament. Some people are by constitution more prone to anger, others to melancholy, others to sensual indulgence. Owen will not allow this to excuse the sin; it is, he says, simply the particular form original sin has taken in you, and it should humble you. But it does call for particular measures. Here, somewhat against the grain of his polemic against monastic discipline, he commends Paul’s practice of keeping his body under, by fasting and watchfulness and restraint of appetite, so long as these are used only as means through which the Spirit works and never as though they had power in themselves. He adds a sharp warning against making bodily discipline an end: “A man may have leanness of body and soul together.”

But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. 1 CORINTHIANS 9:27

Watch the occasions of your sin. Consider what company, what places, what studies, what moods have given it opportunity, and set yourself against them. “Know that he that dares to dally with occasions of sin will dare to sin.” Owen reminds us of Hazael, who was horrified when the prophet foretold his cruelty, but who would soon be king of Syria with every temptation to cruelty in his hands.

And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The LORD hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria. 2 KINGS 8:13

Rise mightily against the first motions of sin. Do not say, it shall go this far and no further. Once a sin has taken one step, it will take another, like water through a breach in a bank. “It is impossible to fix bounds to sin.” Meet an unclean thought, Owen says, with as much indignation as if it had already done all it wanted to do.

A word on proportion

A modern reader may find these chapters heavy, and may worry that so much dwelling on guilt and danger will crush rather than heal. Owen’s answer is that this is preparation, not the cure. He is clearing away the fog so that the sin can be seen clearly enough to be brought to Christ. It is also worth noticing how much of his loading of the conscience is done with the gospel rather than the law: the love of the Father, the blood of the Son, the grace of the Spirit. The deepest conviction, for Owen, does not come from fear of punishment. It comes from seeing what our sin has done to the One who loved us.

I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity. PSALM 18:23

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write down the excuses your besetting sin uses to make itself look small. Answer each one in writing from Scripture.

2. Take ten minutes this week to read slowly the account of Christ’s crucifixion in one of the Gospels, and then ask Owen’s question of your sin: is this the return I make?

3. If your sin seems rooted in your temperament, choose one simple bodily discipline, such as a fast, an earlier night or a limit on a particular appetite, and use it as a help, not a merit.

4. List the three occasions that most often lead you into your sin, and decide on one concrete change for each.

A PRAYER

Father, I have let my sin make itself small, and I have believed its excuses.

Clear the fog from my mind. Show me its guilt, its danger and its evil, and above all show me what it cost Your Son.

Is this the return I make to You for Your love, to Christ for His blood, to the Spirit for His grace? Forgive me, and make me long to be free.

Give me wisdom to watch the doors by which sin comes in, and strength to resist it at its first approach. Amen.