Fighting Sin by Awakening Affections

// February 4th, 2010 // Affection

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?”(John Owen, Works).

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, Life in the Midst of Battle: John Owen’s Approach to Sin, Temptation, and the Christian Life