Mortification: The Christian Response to Personal Sin

One of the great acid tests of proving whether or not someone is a Christian, is to ask the question: how do you deal with your own personal sin? For instance, do you repent of it or do you molly coddle it and make excuses for it? Also, is your heart broken over personal sin because it is an offense against God or because it just makes you feel bad? Further, when you do sin, do you keep short accounts with God - confessing it immediately to Him for what it is as "sin?" All of these questions are vital for our own self-examination as professing Christians.

Think about it: there are a lot of people in the visible church who cry down the sins they see in others, but do not ever consider the vileness, guilt, and pollution of their own sin. They are the proverbial "hypocrite" whom Jesus warns us about in Matthew 7:1-5. They are quick to point out the "speck" of sin in their brother's eye, while never seeing the "log jam" of sin in their own. It is a tragically comedic picture of the fool who is always condemning others for the tiny particle of dust in their eye, while not seeing the massive tree trunk gaping out of his own eye. In short, such a person never deals with his own personal sin. But what's worse, by never giving admission to his sin but instead denying it - he is actually proving that he is a total stranger to saving grace (see I Jn.1:8,10).

So, again, how do you deal with your own personal sin? If you are a true believer in Jesus Christ, what do you do about the sin that remains in you (cf. Rom.7:14-25)? The biblical answer to these questions takes us to a passage of Scripture that I intend to camp out in for my next several posts. The passage is Romans 8:13, which says: "...but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." In the language of exhortation, this verse describes what is true of every Christian, in relation to the remaining influence and corruption of sin that dwells in our bodies: by the power of the Holy Spirit, a Christian seeks to kill sin wherever he finds sin in his flesh.

This is how a Christian deals with his own personal sin. In fact, this is a Christian's only course of action he takes by virtue of his life in the Spirit - he puts sin to death! This means that even if a Christian may fall in a state of going back to certain sins, it is only for a season; because his new nature and the indwelling presence of the Spirit will renew him to repentance and declare a revived war on personal sin. In other words, a true Christian does not and cannot live in sin (see Rom.6:1-14; I Jn.3:9), though they commit sin - but instead, the Christian life is a life of war on all known sin that remains in our mortal bodies.

Now the theological term for this warfare is what's called "mortification." This word is derived from a Greek verb Paul uses in Romans 8:13, translated in the words: "you put to death." The King James Version of the Bible actually translates these same terms as "mortify." So then, when it comes to dealing with personal sin in our lives as Christians, we are called by God to "mortify sin."

But what does this mean practically? How do we mortify or put sin to death? My first approach to these questions must be to underscore what mortification does not mean. First, to mortify sin does not mean covering sin up. You can obscure sin from the sight of others, but that is not mortification. Until we confess and forsake our sin we have not begun the work of mortification (Prov.28:13). Second, to mortify sin does not mean to only internalize sin. If you forsake the outward practice of some evil yet continue to ruminate on the memory of that sin's pleasure - beware. Although you may have moved that sin into the privacy of your imagination, where it is known only to you and God, yet it has not been truly mortified. Third, to mortify sin does not mean to exchange one sin for another. What good is it to trade stealing for lying or to trade gossip for gluttony? Neither sin has been mortified. Fourth, to mortify sin does not mean to by-pass the cleansing of our conscience. Having a good conscience is to work through the issue of our guilt. We should be ashamed of our sins, and let that sorrow do its full work in our hearts to produce a deep, honest repentance (II Cor.7:10). Finally, to mortify sin does not mean to merely repress sin. To push sin back rather than to deal with it forthrightly in the light of God's Word, will not bring about true mortification. Instead, it will only create more problems as it remains brushed under the proverbial rug, and allowed to fester and gain more influence. This therefore is not mortification.