Topic Archives: Man & Sin

Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his clothes, so that he will not walk about naked and men will not see his shame. (Revelation 16:15) Midori Ito, the great Japanese figure skater, who was favoured to win the gold medal at the 1992 Winter Olympics […]

David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her. (2 Samuel 11:4) Recently a former Presidential candidate admitted to an adulterous affair against his wife who has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer. The National Inquirer broke the story last October but the candidate vehemently dismissed the story, […]

This piece was originally published on christianhistory.net. God’s Chemo for My Cancered Soul They called it the Victorious Spirit-filled life. You got into it, they said, by total surrender to Jesus Christ (they assumed no one does this at conversion), and then looking to him whenever you felt sinful impulses stirring. He would then by […]

John Owen’s classic work ‘On Temptation’ has recently been published by Banner of Truth in an updated edition as Temptation Resisted and Repulsed.1 The church which I serve used this newer version as the basis for a series of adult Sunday School classes over a course of months. It became quickly apparent that the material […]

Jeremy Walker provides an outline of John Owen’s Temptation: Resisted and Repulsed,1 from the Trust’s Puritan Paperbacks series. Author’s Preface – Aim stated. – Reasons given. – Warning and exhortation to the carnal, casual, or careless reader. – Warning and exhortation to the careful, Christian reader. Note that although the forms of temptation alter with […]

…and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things. Ephesians 3:9 The 16th century Reformation, which brought so much good to Europe, which delivered people from ignorance, poverty, superstition, and the darkness of paganism and idolatry, had a catch phrase […]

We stood on the green grass sloping towards the deep-blue sea. Below us a burn meandered downwards until it became lost in the sand of the beach which skirts the ocean, while a huge bank of cloud dominated the horizon. It was a beautiful scene. But death cannot be kept out of even a beautiful […]

HOW TO KILL SIN A Sermon on the Mortification of Sin “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the […]

“BUT…YOU MUSTN’T BLAME YOURSELF.” Since the Enlightenment the idea of ‘sin’ – an offence against God – was replaced by the idea of crime – an offence against man, today men find it difficult to attribute the act of sinning to human behaviour Fred Furedi’s brilliantly perceptive article begins, “One upon a time there were […]

ESCAPE FOR YOUR LIFE! A wounded, weak, and helpless worm, On Christ’s kind arms I fall; Be thou my strength and confidence, My Jesus and my all. God speaks. Sometimes He whispers by the still small voice of the gospel to us in tender overtures of mercy through the preached Word. Sometimes He speaks through […]

THE FEAR OF THE LORD Historically, when the people of God take God seriously, the result is true and enduring growth in the Church I am certain that a deep chord was struck in all of us who attended a recent prayer meeting at which we considered a section of the long Psalm containing a […]

JOHN OWEN AND THE PROBLEM OF INDWELLING SIN It is evident that in the shallowness of modern English evangelicalism sin is not dealt with seriously in evangelism or in the battles of the Christian life and many feel that Owen is the man who can teach this generation much that is absent, to our lamentable […]

APOSTASY WE MUST START FROM THE ‘GREAT POSITIVE STATEMENTS OF SCRIPTURE’ John Owen is one who has written comprehensively on this subject. I have, therefore, taken his writings as the basis for what I want to say, while drawing on the contribution of others here and there, and interjecting some comments of my own. By […]

The first and worst cause of error that prevails in our day is spiritual pride. This is the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those who are zealous for the advancement of Christ. It is the chief inlet of smoke from the bottomless pit to darken the mind and mislead […]

I was reading recently some words of George Swinnock (a mid seventeenth century Puritan) that seemed (at least to me) to describe twenty-first century evangelical Christianity: ‘We take the size of sin too low, and short, and wrong, when we measure it by the wrong it doth to ourselves, or our families, or our neighbours, […]