Chapter 8. Universal Sincerity Required

The second general rule proposed. Without universal sincerity for the mortifying of every lust, no lust will be mortified. Partial mortification always from a corrupt principle. Perplexity of temptation from a lust, oftentimes a chastening for other negligences.

The second principle, which to this purpose I shall propose, is this: without sincerity and diligence in a universality of obedience, there is no mortification of any one perplexing lust to be obtained. The other was to the person, this to the thing itself. I shall a little explain this position.

A man finds any lust to bring him into the condition formerly described, it is powerful, strong, tumultuating, leads captive, vexes, disquiets, takes away peace; he is not able to bear it, wherefore he sets himself against it, prays against it, groans under it, sighs to be delivered, but in the mean time, perhaps in other duties, in constant communion with God, in reading, prayer and meditation, in other ways that are not of the same kind with the lust wherewith he is troubled, he is loose and negligent. Let not that man think that ever he shall arrive to the mortification of the lust he is perplexed with. This is a condition that not seldom befalls men in their pilgrimage. The Israelites under a sense of their sin, drew near to God with much diligence and earnestness, with fasting and prayer (Isaiah 58). Many expressions are made of their earnestness in the work (verse 2): They seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, they ask of me the ordinances of justice, they delight in approaching unto God. But God rejects all; their fast is a remedy that will not heal them, and the reason given of it (verses 5, 6, 7) is, because they were particular in this duty. He that hath a running sore upon him, arising from an ill habit of body contracted by intemperance and ill diet; let him apply himself with what diligence and skill he can, to the cure of his sore, if he leave the general habit of his body under distempers, his labor and travail will be in vain. So will his attempts be, that shall endeavor to stop a bloody issue of sin, and filth in his soul, and is not equally careful of his universal spiritual temperature, and constitution.

1. This kind of endeavor for mortification, proceeds from a corrupt principle, ground and foundation, so that it will never proceed to a good issue. Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting, and sense of the love of Christ in the cross, lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification. Now it is certain, that that which I speak of proceeds from self-love. You set yourself with all diligence and earnestness to mortify such a lust or sin; what is the reason of it? It disquiets you, it has taken away your peace, it fills your heart with sorrow and trouble, and fear, you have no rest because of it. But friend, you have neglected prayer or reading, you have been vain and loose in your conversation in other things that have not been of the same nature with that lust wherewith you are perplexed; these are no less sins and evils, than those under which you groan; Jesus Christ bled for them also. Why do you not set yourself against them also? If you hated sin as sin, every evil way, you would be no less watchful against every thing that grieves and disquiets the Spirit of God, than against that which grieves and disquiets your own soul. It is evident that you contend against sin, merely because of your own trouble by it. Would your conscience be quiet under it, you would let it alone. Did it not disquiet you, it should not be disquieted by you. Now, can you think that God will set in with such hypocritical endeavors; that ever his Spirit will bear witness to the treachery and falsehood of your spirit? Do you think he will ease you of that which perplexes you, that you may be at liberty to that which no less grieves him? No, says God, here is one — if he could be rid of this lust I should never hear of him more, let him wrestle with this, or he is lost. Let not any man think to do his own work, that will not do God's. God's work consists in universal obedience; to be freed of the present perplexity is their own only. Hence is that of the Apostle (2 Corinthians 7:1): Cleanse yourselves from all pollution of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. If we will do any thing, we must do all things. So then, not only an intense opposition to this or that peculiar lust, but it is a universal humble frame and temper of heart, with watchfulness over every evil, and for the performance of every duty, that is accepted.

2. How do you know but that God has suffered the lust wherewith you have been perplexed to get strength in you, and power over you, to chasten you for your other negligences, and common lukewarmness in walking before him; at least to awaken you to the consideration of your ways, that you may make a thorough work and change in your course of walking with him. The rage and predominancy of a particular lust, is commonly the fruit and issue of a careless, negligent course in general; and that upon a double account.

(1.) As its natural effect, if I may so say. Lust (as I showed) in general, lies in the heart of every one, even the best, while he lives; and think not that the scripture speaks in vain, that it is subtle, cunning, crafty; that it seduces, entices, fights, rebels. While a man keeps a diligent watch over his heart, its root and fountain; while above all keepings, he keeps his heart, whence are the issues of life and death, lust withers and dies in it. But if through negligence it makes an eruption any particular way, gets a passage to the thoughts by the affections, and from them, and by them, perhaps breaks out into open sin in the conversation, the strength of it bears that way it has found out, and that way mainly it urges, until having got a passage, it then vexes and disquiets, and is not easily to be restrained. Thus perhaps a man may be put to wrestle all his days in sorrow, with that, which by a strict universal watch might easily have been prevented.

(2.) As I said, God oftentimes suffers it to chasten our other negligences; for as with wicked men, he gives them up to one sin as the judgment of another, a greater for the punishment of a less, or one that will hold them more firmly and securely, for that which they might have possibly obtained a deliverance from: so even with his own, he may, he does leave them sometimes to some vexatious distempers, either to prevent or cure some other evil. So was the messenger of Satan let loose on Paul, that he might not be lifted up through the abundance of spiritual revelations. Was it not a correction to Peter's vain confidence, that he was left to deny his master? Now if this be the state and condition of lust in its prevalency, that God oftentimes suffers it so to prevail, at least to admonish us, and to humble us, perhaps to chasten and correct us, for our general loose and careless walking, is it possible that the effect should be removed, and the cause continued; that the particular lust should be mortified, and the general course be unreformed? He then that would really, thoroughly, and acceptably mortify any disquieting lust, let him take care to be equally diligent in all parts of obedience; and know that every lust, every omission of duty, is burdensome to God, though but one is so to him. While there abides a treachery in the heart to indulge to any negligence in not pressing universally to all perfection in obedience, the soul is weak, as not giving faith its whole work; and selfish, as considering more the trouble of sin, than the filth and guilt of it; and lives under a constant provocation of God, so that it may not expect any comfortable issue in any spiritual duty that it does undertake, much less in this under consideration, which requires another principle, and frame of spirit for its accomplishment.

General rules without which no lust will be mortified. No mortification is possible unless a man is a believer. The dangers of unregenerate people attempting to mortify sin. The duty of unconverted people with respect to mortification is examined. The emptiness of Roman Catholic attempts and rules for mortification is exposed from this.

The ways and means by which a soul may proceed to mortify any particular lust or sin — the kind that Satan exploits to trouble and weaken it — come next for consideration.

There are some general foundational matters to address first, concerning principles and foundations of this work without which no person in the world — however stirred by convictions and however resolved to mortify some sin — can ever accomplish it.

The general rules and principles without which no sin will ever be mortified are these:

1. Unless a man is a believer — truly grafted into Christ — he can never mortify a single sin. I do not say 'unless he knows himself to be one,' but unless he actually is one. Mortification is the work of believers (Romans 8:13): 'If you through the Spirit,' etc. — 'you' being believers, to whom there is no condemnation (verse 1). They alone are exhorted to it (Colossians 3:5): 'Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.' Who should mortify? You who are risen with Christ (verse 1), whose life is hidden with Christ in God (verse 3), who will appear with Him in glory (verse 4). An unregenerate person may do something that looks like mortification, but the real work — as it must be to be acceptable to God — he can never do. You know the picture of it that appears in some of the philosophers — Seneca, Cicero, Epictetus — with their passionate discourses about contempt of the world, self-denial, and the regulating and mastering of all excessive desires and passions. The lives of most of them showed that their maxims differed from true mortification as much as the sun painted on a signboard differs from the sun in the sky. They had neither light nor heat. There is no death of sin without the death of Christ. You know the attempts made by Roman Catholics through their vows, penances, and satisfactions. I dare say of them — I mean those who act on the principles of their church — what Paul says of Israel regarding righteousness (Romans 9:31-32): they have pursued mortification but have not attained it. Why? Because they pursue it not by faith but as if it were by works of the law. The same is the condition of all among us who, in response to their convictions and awakened consciences, attempt to give up sin. They pursue it but do not attain it.

It is true that every person who hears the law or Gospel preached is obligated to mortify sin — it is his duty. But it is not his immediate duty. It is his duty to do it, but to do it in God's way. If you direct a servant to pay a sum of money at a certain place, but first to go and collect that money at another — paying the money is his duty and you will blame him if it is not done. Yet paying was not his immediate duty. He was first to collect it as you directed. The same principle applies here. Sin must be mortified, but something must be done first to make that possible.

I have shown that the Spirit alone can mortify sin, that He is promised for this purpose, and that all other means without Him are empty and vain. How then can someone mortify sin when he does not have the Spirit? A man could more easily see without eyes or speak without a tongue than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit. How then is the Spirit obtained? He is the Spirit of Christ. As the apostle says, 'If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him' (Romans 8:9). So if we belong to Christ and have an interest in Him, we have the Spirit — and through the Spirit alone we have the power for mortification. The apostle argues this at length (Romans 8:8): 'Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.' This is his conclusion drawn from his preceding discussion of our natural condition and our enmity toward God and His law in that state. But what is the deliverance from that condition (verse 9)? 'You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.' You believers, who have the Spirit of Christ, are not in the flesh. There is no deliverance from the state of being in the flesh except through the Spirit of Christ. And if the Spirit of Christ is in you, then mortification is underway (verse 10): 'The body is dead because of sin' — or dead to sin; mortification is proceeding; the new man is quickened toward righteousness. All attempts to mortify any lust without an interest in Christ are therefore futile. But poor souls — they labor in the fire and their work turns to ash. When the Spirit of Christ comes to this work, He will be like a refiner's fire and like launderer's soap, purging people like gold and silver (Malachi 3:3), removing their impurity and filth (Isaiah 4:3). But people must be gold and silver at the core, or refinement will do them no good. The prophet shows us the sad outcome of wicked people's most intense attempts at mortification through whatever means God provides (Jeremiah 6:29-30): 'The bellows blow fiercely; the lead is consumed by the fire. The smelter refines in vain, for the wicked are not drawn out. Rejected silver they are called, for the Lord has rejected them.' And what is the reason? (verse 28): They were bronze and iron when they were put into the furnace. A man may refine bronze and iron as long as he likes — he will never make them good silver.

I say, then, that mortification is not the present business of unregenerate people. God is not calling them to it yet. Conversion is their work. The conversion of the whole soul — not the mortification of this or that particular lust. You would laugh at a man who builds a great structure yet never thinks about a foundation — especially if you saw him foolish enough to keep building the same way even after a thousand experiences of everything he built one day falling down the next. This is the condition of convicted people: though they plainly see that whatever ground they gain against sin one day they lose the next, they continue down the same road without ever asking where the destructive flaw in their progress lies. When the Jews were cut to the heart by conviction of their sin and cried out (Acts 2:37), 'What shall we do?' — did Peter direct them to go and mortify their pride, wrath, malice, and cruelty? No, he knew that was not their present work. He called them to conversion and faith in Christ generally (verse 38). Let the soul first be thoroughly converted — and then, looking on Him whom they had pierced, humiliation and mortification will follow. When John came preaching repentance and conversion, he said, 'The axe is now laid to the root of the tree' (Matthew 3:10). The Pharisees had been laying heavy burdens, imposing tedious requirements and rigid means of mortification through fastings, washings, and the like — all in vain. Our Savior tells us what is to be done in such cases: 'Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes?' (Matthew 7:16). Suppose you prune and trim a thorn bush very carefully — it will still never produce figs (verses 17-18). Every tree will inevitably produce fruit according to its own kind. What is to be done? He tells us (Matthew 12:33): 'Make the tree good, and its fruit will be good.' The root must be addressed; the nature of the tree must be changed; otherwise no good fruit will come.

This is my point: unless a man is regenerate and a believer, all his attempts at mortification — however impressive they look, however diligently he pursues them, however earnest his watchfulness and determined his striving — are to no purpose. All the remedies he uses will not heal him. There are several desperate evils that attend the efforts of convicted but unregenerate people to perform this duty.

First, the mind and soul is occupied with what is not actually the person's proper business, and so he is diverted from what is. God through His word and judgments lays hold of some sin in him, wounds his conscience, troubles his heart, takes away his rest. Other diversions will not do — he must address the work before him. That work is to awaken the whole man to a consideration of the state and condition he is in, so that he may be brought home to God. But instead, he sets himself to mortify the sin that wounds him — which is purely an act of self-love, a desire to be freed from the pain, not at all the work God is calling him to. So he is diverted from it. God tells us of Ephraim: when He spread His net over them and brought them down like birds from the sky, and disciplined them (Hosea 7:12), 'They returned, but not to the Most High.' They set themselves to give up sin — but not in the way of genuine universal conversion that God was calling for. In this way people are diverted from coming to God by the very most glorious approaches to God they can devise. This is one of the most common deceits by which people ruin their own souls.

Second, this duty being something good in itself and in its proper place — a duty that evidences sincerity and brings peace to the conscience — a person who genuinely engages in it, whose mind and heart are set against a particular sin, with purpose and resolution to have no more to do with it, is easily led to conclude that his condition before God is good, and so deceives his own soul.

(1) When his conscience has been made sick by sin and he finds no rest — when he should go to the great physician of souls and find healing in His blood — his engagement against sin pacifies and quiets his conscience, and he sits down without going to Christ at all. How many poor souls are thus deceived to their eternal ruin! When Ephraim saw his sickness, he sent to King Jareb (Hosea 5:13), which kept him away from God. The entire system of Roman Catholic religion is made up of schemes and devices to pacify conscience without Christ — all described by the apostle (Romans 10:4).

(2) By this means people satisfy themselves that their state is good, because they are doing something that is good in itself and doing it sincerely. They know they want the work done genuinely, and so they become hardened in a kind of self-righteousness.

(3) When a person has been deceived in this way for a time — having cheated his own soul — and finds in a long course of life that his sin is not actually mortified, or that he has merely traded one sin for another, he begins to conclude that all contending is useless and he will never prevail. He is like a man trying to hold back water that keeps rising against him. At this point he gives up, despairing of any success, and surrenders himself to the power of sin and the habit of formality he has drifted into.

This is the usual outcome for people who attempt mortification without first obtaining an interest in Christ. It deludes them, hardens them, and destroys them. This is why we generally see that some of the most vile and reckless sinners in the world are those who were once convicted and set on this course, found it fruitless, and abandoned it without ever discovering Christ. I say, then, that mortification is the work of believers — and believers only. Killing sin is the work of living people. Where people are dead — as all unbelievers are, even the best of them — sin is alive and will remain alive.

2. It is also the work of faith — the particular work of faith. If only one instrument can accomplish a given task, it is the greatest foolishness for someone to attempt that task without that instrument. Faith is what purifies the heart (Acts 15:9), or as Peter puts it, 'You have purified your souls in obedience to the truth through the Spirit' (1 Peter 1:22). Without faith, the work will not be done.

What I have said should be sufficient to establish my first general rule: make sure you have an interest in Christ before you attempt to mortify any sin. Without it, the work will never be done.

Objection: What then would you have unregenerate people, who are convinced of the evil of sin, do? Should they stop fighting against sin, live carelessly, give their lusts free rein, and become as bad as the worst people? That would throw the whole world into chaos — plunge everything into darkness, throw open the floodgates of lust, and let people rush headlong into every sin with delight and greed, like a horse charging into battle.

Answer: 1. God forbid! It is a great expression of the wisdom, goodness, and love of God that through many means and ways He restrains human beings from rushing into the full excess and disorder that their depraved natures would otherwise carry them into with force. However this is accomplished, it flows from God's care, kindness, and goodness — without which the whole earth would be a hell of sin and chaos.

2. There is a special convicting power in the word, which God is often pleased to send out to wound, astonish, and in some measure humble sinners — even those who are never converted. The word is to be preached, and though this restraining effect may result from it, that is not the intended purpose of preaching. Let the word be preached, then. Let the sins of people be rebuked. Lusts will be restrained, and some opposition to sin will be produced — even if that is not the outcome being aimed at.

3. Though this work of the word and Spirit is good in itself, it is not profitable or effectual toward the main end in those in whom it is worked. They are still in the gall of bitterness and under the power of darkness.

4. Let people know that mortification is their duty — but in its proper place. I am not calling people away from mortification; I am calling them first to conversion. A man who calls another away from patching a hole in a wall, in order to put out a fire consuming the whole building, is not his enemy. Poor soul — it is not your sore finger but your burning fever that demands your attention. You are setting yourself against a particular sin without considering that you yourself are nothing but sin.

Let me add a word to those who preach the word, or who by God's good hand intend to do so. It is their duty to confront people about their sins and press hard on particular sins. But always remember that this must be done with the proper goal of both law and Gospel in view. That goal is to use the sin they address as a window into the sinner's overall state and condition before God. Otherwise they may produce formality and hypocrisy, but little of the true end of Gospel preaching will be accomplished. It profits nothing to drive a man from his drunkenness into a sober formality. A skilled teacher lays his axe at the root and always drives at the heart. To press vigorously against particular sins in ignorant, unregenerate people — as the land is full of — is a good work. But if all that results is that people set themselves most diligently to mortify the particular sins that have been preached against, all that has been done is like defeating an enemy in open battle and driving him into an impregnable fortress — from which he cannot be routed. Whenever you have a sinner at an advantage because of some particular sin, use that sin as a way in. Take him to his state and condition before God. Drive the matter home and deal with him there. Breaking people off from particular sins without breaking their hearts is to waste the very advantages God gives you for dealing with them.

Roman mortification is seriously at fault here. Their teachers drive all kinds of people toward it with no consideration at all for whether they have the inward principle required. They are so far from calling people to believe first so they might be able to mortify their lusts, that they call people to mortification instead of believing. The truth is, they understand neither faith nor mortification itself. With them, faith is merely a general assent to the teachings of their church. And mortification is committing oneself by a vow to some particular way of life in which one denies oneself some use of the world's goods — not without a significant benefit in return. Such people know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. Their boasting about their mortification is nothing but glorying in their shame. Some teachers even among ourselves — who, overlooking the necessity of regeneration, openly prescribe to all kinds of people complaining of some sin or lust that they should take a vow against it, at least for a month or so — seem to have a very limited understanding of the mystery of the Gospel. They tell people to vow to abstain from their sin for a season. This commonly makes the lust more intense. Perhaps with great difficulty they keep their word — or perhaps they do not, which increases both their guilt and their torment. Is their sin mortified at all by this? Do they find victory over it? Is their condition changed, even if they manage to give it up outwardly? Are they not still in the gall of bitterness? Is this not demanding that people make bricks — if not without straw, which would be bad enough — without any strength? What promise does any unregenerate person have to encourage him in this work? What help to perform it? Can sin be killed without an interest in the death of Christ, or mortified without the Spirit? Even if such directions succeeded in changing people's outward behavior — which they rarely do — they never reach the heart or change a person's actual condition. They may produce self-righteous legalists or hypocrites, not Christians. It grieves me often to see poor souls who have a genuine zeal for God and a desire for eternal life, yet are kept — by such teachers and such directions — under a hard, burdensome, outward worship and service of God, with many impressive efforts at mortification, in complete ignorance of the righteousness of Christ and without any real acquaintance with His Spirit — all their days. If God ever shines into their hearts to give them the knowledge of His glory in the face of His Son Jesus Christ, they will see the folly of their present course.