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On the Mortification of Sin
My dear nephew,
When we last spoke, you mentioned that you are striving to deepen your relationship with our Father, but keep falling into sin. My purpose in writing this letter is to assist you in the purpose of mortifying sin in your life by offering a few “tips” based on my own observations, lessons I have learned from the Bible, and examples given in CS Lewis’ Perelandra, which you and I have discussed previously.
To begin, I’d like to define “sin,” lest there is any later confusion on the matter. In a broad sense, “to sin” means “to go against the will of God.” When you repent, you are drawing closer to God; when you sin, you are pulling away from him. Furthermore, there are two different kinds of sin. The first, and the one that most people tend to think of when they hear the word “sin,” is that of disobedience. When God has given a command to not do X, to do X would be to sin. On the other hand, if God gave a command to do Y, to not do Y for whatever reason would be sin. This is the second type of sin, the sin of omitted obedience. As the apostle James says in his letter, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”
The first step in mortifying sin in your life is recognizing it. I know this sounds ridiculous, but recognizing a particular action in your life as sinful and admitting it is one of the hardest parts of overcoming it. As humans, we are constantly justifying our actions to our consciences, saying that a particular action isn’t really wrong in light of our circumstances. The Holy Spirit, however, who lives inside you, has made you into a new creation and is working on changing your mind to recognize sin. Call upon him like David did in the Psalms: “Search me, O God, and know my heart...and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
Secondly, you need to understand when and where temptation is the strongest. Is it when you are bored, with nothing to do? Or when you have had a stressful day and don’t want to deal with people, so you respond sharply? If you know when you are most prone to temptation, you can take ample precautionary measures in order to protect yourself. When we know what our “lures” are, they become easier to avoid. This is a simple example, but if you struggle with alcohol, don’t let yourself go to a bar. The Bible says to flee from temptation--you shouldn’t put yourself in a situation where you’re saying, “It’s ok, I’m strong enough to fight it off.”
In fighting temptation, it is important to recognize that we are not supposed to deal with it on our own. Christ came to free us from sin by taking our sin upon himself. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden,” he said, “and I shall give you rest.” I would even go so far as to argue that we are incapable of resisting temptation for any significant time if we have not surrendered ourselves to Christ. As Paul says in Romans, we were slaves to sin before being redeemed by Christ. We could do no good. But now, “we have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God.”
In addition, we were created to live in community with other believers, and to share our joys and struggles with each other. “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” The Church is one body. The Christian Journey is not a solo trek. In Perelandra, when the Un-Man is tempting the Green Lady, Dr. Ransom is with her, fighting the Un-Man’s cunning words with wise counsel. Oftentimes, during times of temptation, the thing that we need most is sound, Biblical advice from a fellow Christian. While he or she might not have all the answers, it is important to be able to come to a friend with your struggles and prayer requests. For an accountability partner, I would suggest choosing someone from among your peers, who is both of the same sex as you as well as a mature Christian who will take the responsibility seriously.
You cannot gradually wean yourself from sin. If you allow yourself some leeway, like allowing yourself to commit the sin, say, once a week, you’ll never completely defeat it. That “once a week,” even though you promised yourself would eventually change to a “once a month” or “never again,” will always be there, ready to lure you in and entice you, and the next thing you know, you’re right back where you started. To repent of a sin is to ask forgiveness and do a complete 180° turn, never going back.
The final preparation for temptation, and fundamentally the most important, is being “transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” This renewal of your mind comes from constantly steeping yourself in the Word of God. Daily quiet times, even if they are only fifteen minutes, are vital in maintaining a healthy Christian walk. Nephew, the Enemy is cunning, and his words will often sound like wisdom. When he tempted our Lord, he even used Scripture. How, then, can we tell death from life? We must know the Scriptures even better than our enemy, so that we might discern what goes against God’s commands. If Frodo (and Sam) had never looked at Sting, they would have not been able to discern if there were any nearby dangers--namely, orcs and goblins. In the same way, if we never look at the Scriptures, how can we detect danger?
Finally, when the temptation comes--for come it will--you have many tools at your disposal to fight against the temptation. The first and probably the most simple is to distract yourself with other things. One “distraction” that I have found particularly useful is praying for my accountability partner whenever temptation comes my way. Not only does this occupy me and prevent me from falling into the temptation, it also focuses my mind on God--continuing the renewal process--and benefits my partner.
The second tool is outlined for us in Ephesians 6:10-20: the full armor of God. I know it may sound cliche and bring to your mind images of Sunday School coloring pages, but truly, this Armor is our best defense and offense against the Enemy. When we lack faith, we disobey. The Green Lady, when speaking of her previous desire to live on the Fixed Land, said, “It was to reject the wave--to draw my hands out of Maleldil’s, to say to Him, ‘Not thus, but thus’--to put in our own power what times should roll towards us...That would have been cold love and feeble trust.” But when our faith is strong, it is a Shield with which we can “extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.” And when we use the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God--“living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword”--we can engage the Tempter in combat as our Lord did in the wilderness.
This won’t be easy. You will slip and fall many times, and you may feel like you let God down. But you know what the great thing is? You can’t let him down, because you were never holding him up in the first place. Rather, he is holding you up, and he will never let you go. No matter how many times you mess up, he’ll be there to catch you and forgive you. Don’t give up, even though times are difficult.
“The splendour, the love, and the strength be upon you.”
Your uncle,
Alan Smith
*I do apologize, my footnotes are being difficult and refusing to carry over to the blogger post creator. If you'd like them for whatever reason, ask me and I'll send you the original doc.
