John Owen on Romans 8:13

Mortification - now there's an odd-sounding word. Modern translations sometimes refer to it as "putting to death". Whether we use the word or the phrase, it is still a neglected truth. It seems unusual to us because many of our churches have quit preaching about it. Yet it was considered an essential part of Christianity by many of the giants of the faith.

Romans 8:13 and Colossians 3:5 clearly insist on the need of mortification:

"For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."

"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry."

John Owen wrote a little book on the first of these two verse. It was written on the insistence of friends who were really helped by the original sermons on which this book was based. I recommend this book as one of the easier of his books to read. Whether the terseness of the book is due to originally being delivered at church, or whether Owen consciously restrained his leaden loquaciousness in order to reach as many as possible (as per his preface), this may well be his most easily accessible writing. And yet he has quite profound truths about what it means to die to self.

Owen also wrote this treatise in order to correct the "dangerous mistakes" well-meaning priests and, yes, even preachers fostered, who aimed at producing holiness by fleshly means which can only lead to bad results, even soul-damning disaster.

Romans 8:13 teaches us:

1. We have a duty - "mortify the deeds of the body"
2. To whom prescribed - "you" (plural) "if you mortify" (Christians)

One of the great faults of the Roman Catholic Church (and many Protestant ones as well) is to urge individual listeners to put their members to death when they are altogether still dead in sins. This is putting the cart before the horse.

3. Promise - "you shall live".
4. Cause or means of doing this duty - "through the Spirit".

Lifeless asceticism has no value here. Neither does pursuing� after your own version of righteousness, all the while being ignorant of God's righteousness (Rom. 10:1- 4). We are made holy through God's Holy Spirit, with Him working in us to both will and to do of His good pleasure.

5. Conditionality of the whole - "If you".

The phrase "But if" can mean one of two things:

1. Uncertainty (not likely here)
2. Certainty of coherence. We may tell a man, "If you take this medicine you will get well." That is the sense in which this verse must be taken. It is both a gracious promise and a sober warning, respectively, to the obedient and disobedient. Our obedience in this matter is the (subordinate) means, but not the ultimate cause of our having life (Romans 6:23).

After expounding the text, Owen shows:

1. The elements of true mortification of sins,
2. Essential directions for mortifying sin in general
3. Specific guidance for mortification expanded on.

He returns again to a caution against false notions of mortification and holiness:

"This is the work of the Spirit .... Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul of all false religion in the world."

More on John Owen and the other Puritan writers can be found in the E-mail group ReformationDiscussion