Study indwelling sin!

C. J. Mahaney at the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference exhorted pastors to keep a close watch over our lives and our doctrine. Watching over our lives is the more difficult of the two I believe.

J. I. Packer has written that no one taught him more about indwelling sin than the great Puritan theologian John Owen. He wrote, "Owen showed me that there is far more than I had ever known, both the indwelling sin in believers, and God’s gracious work of sanctification. Owen searched me to the root of my being and he brought God close to me. No one probes the depths of the human heart with such grace, authority, and skill as Owen."

Here is an excerpt from Owen on this all important theme of the believer's duty to deal with indwelling sin.

"Oh, many men live in the dark to themselves all their day. Whatever else they know, they know not themselves. Indeed few labor to grow wise in this matter. Few study themselves as they ought, are acquainted with the evils of their own hearts as they ought, on which yet the whole course of their obedience and consequently of their eternal condition doth depend. This then is our wisdom to repair this omission and to get to know ourselves and to know in particular what damage sin is seeking to do in our spiritual and moral system. Awake, therefore, all of you whose heart is anything of the ways of God. Your enemy is not only upon you as on Samson of old but he is in you also. He is at work by all ways of force and craft which we shall see. would you not dishonor God and his gospel? Would you not scandalize the saints and the ways of God? Would you not wound your conscious and endanger your souls? Would you not grieve the good and Holy Spirit of God, the Author of all of your comforts? Would you not be preserved from the number of apostates in these latter days? Then awake. Awake to the consideration of this cursed enemy which is the spring of all these and innumerable other evils. Study indwelling sin for your own soul’s health, for you need to and are in danger if you don’t."