Sin’s Painted Pleasures and Sugared Poisions…

As the Scriptures often call attention to the “heart” or “soul” of a person, Owen argues that such references tend to be shorthand for the various  faculties, and thus to deal with sin the whole person must be engaged. Although Owen gives ample attention to each of the faculties, let us focus on the affections as a test case to show the nature of sin and temptation. Far too often Christians working within the Reformed tradition have been guilty of confusing stoic ideals of emotional detachment with maturity in the Christian life. But this Reformed tradition, which Owen self-consciously grows out of, has at its best made significant space for the importance of the affections.

As early as the sixteenth century John Calvin, one of the great fathers of the Reformed tradition, saw this confusion and warned against it. Calvin chided those Christians who acted like “new stoics,” because they believed that groaning, weeping, sadness, and having deep concerns were signs of sinfulness. According to Calvin such comments tend to grow from “idle men who, exercising themselves more in speculation than in action,” do not understand the pain of this world and the ravages of sin, which the Savior who wept and mourned knew so well. The goal of Calvin and of others after him, like Owen, was not the absence of affections, but rightly informed and directed affections.

Affections are a gift from God to all humanity. Far too often the faculties have been “gendered” in the church, for example, when people lump “rationality” with men and “emotions” with women. In addition to empirical evidence that easily contradicts such hastily drawn stereotypes, one should reject such schemas because all Christians are called to love God with their mind, will, and affections. Healthy affections are crucial to the life of faith, and numbing them cannot be the answer. In Owen’s estimation, because the affections are so important to faithful obedience, Scripture often interchanges the language of heart and affections, for here is “the principal thing which God requires in our walking before him. . . . Save all other things and lose the heart, and all is lost—lost unto all eternity.”

The goal of the Christian life is not external conformity or mindless action, but a passionate love for God informed by the mind and embraced by the will. So the path forward is not to decrease one’s affections but rather to enlarge them and fill them with “heavenly things.” Here one is not trying to escape the painful realities of this life but rather endeavoring to reframe one’s perspective of life around a much larger canvas that encompasses all of reality.

To respond to the distorting nature of sin you must set your affections on the beauty and glory of God, the loveliness of Christ, and the wonder of the gospel:

“Were our affections filled, taken up, and possessed with these things . . . what access could sin, with its painted pleasures, with its sugared poisons, with its envenomed baits, have unto our souls?”

Resisting sin, according to this Puritan divine, comes not by deadening your affections but by awakening them to God himself.

Do not seek to empty your cup as a way to avoid sin, but rather seek to fill it up with the Spirit of life, so there is no longer room for sin.

—Kelly M. Kapic, Introduction; Life in the Midst of Battle: John Owen’s Approach to Sin, Temptation, and the Christian Life.

“Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

—Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor, Overcoming Sin and Temptation (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2006)

Read the whole of this most edifying work on Christian Sanctification, mortification of sin and holy living, here. If you’ve found great help in John Owen’s Mortification of Sin I am persuaded that you would find the same in this work, if not more so. It is my hope and prayer that it would lead you ever close to the Lord Christ Jesus as you tread the Pilgrim’s life of holiness for the glory of God.

P.S. Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor has done an awesome job in this. I’m sure you would appreciate it as much as I have.

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FeebleSaint (JM Vergara) is an aspiring Christian blogger. A sinner saved by God's sovereign grace. An Engineer. A GFX afficionado. A lay-theologian. Nothing but a Feeble Saint. Find me on: Twitter - Facebook - Plurk - Multiply - Youtube - email