Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
To mortify is to put to death. To mortify is to strike at something until its strength is gone, until it cannot come against you anymore.
If God said slap it one time- you could do that and then kick back. But God said kill it so you can never stop, not till its dead.
So the battle is constant. John Owen “Sin foils or is foiled; prevails or is prevailed on; and it will be so while we live.”
The actual word “mortify” appears as a command to us only twice in the New Testament.
Colossians 3:15
Romans 8:13
Both of those references are essentially saying the same thing – and that is this –
If Christ died for your sins, why don’t you go ahead and set yourself against them also?
If Jesus was bloodied for your sin, do you really want to protect and defend it?
John Owen starts his treatise these words “The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.”
Sin can only be killed by the Spirit. And how can the Spirit be obtained?
Through union with Christ.
Through believing in Jesus Christ.
Through living faith in the gospel.
Mortification of sin is a gift of the crucified, risen, ascended Savior to those He has saved from their sins.
Our will power, our self denial, our choices, are streams but they are not the fountain.
The cross of Christ is the fountain. The work of Jesus is the fountain.
All of our efforts are the streams that flow from that fountain.