Self-Justification

"As long as your conscience is able to justify your [moral] failure, your soul will never vigorously attempt the mortification of sin." ~John Owen

The other day I was looking back over some past posts and realized that I was seeing a trend in what I have been writing about.  Due in part to a large influence by who I have been reading, I have noticed that many of my posts tend to deal with sin, and our fight against it.  In the past months I have come to the conclusion that American Christianity rarely, if ever, truly hates sin.  I have reached this conclusion for several reasons.  First, rarely is the "s" word ever mentioned in Christian circles.  Often times sin is treated like an ancillary problem that can be dealt with later after we have introduced teddy bear Jesus.  The problem is, no one ever seems to getting around to dealing with it.  Secondly, as I have pursued conversations about salvation, holiness and sanctification with people, the phrase I think I have heard the most (certainly in the top three), is along the lines of this, "I will never be perfect, that's why there is grace."  That is a true statement, but the context in which that statement is used the most is generally when people are making an excuse for a sin.  And I fear that it used to hide the fact that we rather enjoy the sin we are entangled in and don't want to give it up.  Finally, the fear of God is extinct in most churches.  A poor view of who God is, and our infinite distance from Him because of our sin, has bred a weird familiarity with God that lacks holy fear that He is God and I am a sinful man.  The fact that all of saints in Scripture who see God think that they are going to die is lost on us for some reason.

This has been crystalized for me in my reading of John Owen's The Mortification of Sin which has been abridged (and made easy to read thank goodness) by Richard Rushing.  I would recommend it to anyone who is serious about throwing off the sin which entangles us to easily and running hard after Jesus.  The line from the book that I quote above was kind of an "Aha" moment for me.  We are so quick to justify our moral shortcomings.  We are so quick to either look around us and find someone worse off than we are to compare ourselves to or to write off whatever is pressing on our conscience as just a byproduct of being human that will never be resolved.  And while I am not saying that we will be perfect in this life, I am saying that these excuses are silly because they do not create in us an appropriate hatred of sin that is necessary to run hard after Jesus.  Let me put it this way.  If my wife hates a television show that I insist on watching, I will be deprived of time spent with my wife while I watch that show because she will have nothing to do with it.  If we continually make excuses for indulging in something that Christ hates, what makes us think that we will not be deprived of His presence?  Stop making excuses for sin and start fighting it instead.  Or in other words, stop loving the things of this world and desire instead fellowship with Christ.  And if that last line creates in your heart a response of, "Christ cannot be more interesting than x, y, or z" or "Yes, but what about all that is good in life," repent and ask Jesus to reveal Himself to you and remove whatever idol has a grip on your heart.