Hating Sin as Sin

I've been reading On the Mortification of Sin in the Life of the Believer by John Owen (for anyone who knows John Owen, you understand the kind of intellectual and spiritual undertaking this is) at a time when I'm trying to deal with a specific sin in my life.

The chapters I read today were particularly poignant, as Owen writes on the need to hate sin as sin. What he means by this is that sometimes we hate sin because of the trouble it brings us, or because of the discomfort we feel, rather than hate it because God hates it. We have a tendency to hate sin as a bother instead of as the evil against the Creator that it really is.

Owen writes, "Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling disquieting, a sense of the love of Christ in the cross, lies at the bottom of all true mortification"

What really got me was when he pointed out our flesh and our desire for comfort, "considering more the trouble of sin than the filth and guilt of it". He urges the necessity to "Get a clear and abiding sense upon your mind and conscience of the guilt, danger and evil of that sin wherewith you are perplexed"

This book actually goes really well with The Pleasures of God that I just wrapped up. Whereas the Pleasures are about delighting in what God delights in - chiefly, His glory - Mortification is about hating what God hates - sin, which seeks to undermine His glory. Ultimately both are about the glory of God, in converse ways.

Owen is certain that it is but the work of the Holy Spirit in the believe that can combat sin. Which is why this cry in Jeremiah 14:7 is in such earnest -

Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name's sake; for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against you.

Did you notice that? It says "for your name's sake". The casting away of our iniquity, the slaying of our sin, the healing of our disease is to the fame and glory of His name!