Sermon Tone Analysis

On the Mortification of Sin

Quitting a bad habit - smoking or drinking...

You may quit cold turkey, but the desire is something you have to overcome and fight the rest of your life.

You surround yourself with others who have broken the habit, to encourage you and hold you accountable, you find new and healthy options to replace the unhealthy practice - so that eventually the impulse, the desire, is so weakened that it has no power.

You say, I quit that 20 years ago, but I’m still recovering...

“Put to death what is earthly in you...” This is the life we’re called to.

We must be about mortifying sin in our own lives.

Mortify means to deaden, it means deliberately to attack, it means to starve to death; make no provision for them, in other words.

Another good way of mortifying something is not to use it.

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Why must we mortify sin

Because of it the wrath of God is coming

Romans 8:7-8 “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Romans 8:6 - to set the mind on the flesh is death...

Because You Belong to Christ

Sin is already dead to you; it belongs in the ground not to the things above

Tabletalk Quote - "God's message to Christians is not 'you are not yet holy, work on it until you get there,' but you are holy, be what you already are in Christ.

To be mortified unto sin is a higher and holier mystery than to be delivered from any mere acts of sin.

It consists of having union and communion with Christ in His death unto sin (Rom.

6:10, 11).

Arthur Walkington Pink

The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

John Owen