Enough Hate to Kill

I know that scripture makes much of turning the other cheek, and loving your neighbors as you love yourself, but it is not cheeks and neighbors that I want to talk about today, it is something much closer to home, something we must hate enough to kill.

I have come to love reading books written dead guys. The most recent read is ''The Mortification of Sin'' by John Owen. I would like to share some quotes with you. Convicting...

''The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.''

"...cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you."

"He that is appointed to kill and enemy, if he leave striking before the other ceases living, doth but half his work."

"Who can say that he had ever any thing to do with God or for God, that indwelling sin had not a hand in the corrupting of what he did?"

"Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt of entice, might it have its own course, it would go to the utmost sin on that kind. Every unclean thought of glance would be adultery if it could, every covetous desire would be oppression, every thouth of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head."

One more!

Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who doth not kill sin in this way takes no steps towards his journey's end. He who finds not opposition from it, and who sets not himself in every particular to its mortification, is at peace with it, not dying to it."

Sin. By God's grace and with the help of His Spirit, let us rise up and mortify this evil that separates us from our God! We cannot hate it enough!