Dr Paul Allen

The longer you fight against your sin, the more temptations you may face to no longer fight so hard. Once, perhaps, your zeal burned, your spiritual blood boiled. But as months passed and years passed, desires for a more comfortable Christianity were somehow wedged beneath your armour. Paul talks of killing sin and starving sin (Romans 8:13; 13:14), but you have begun to wonder whether a less decisive, more long-term approach may work just as well. Jesus speaks of tearing out an eye and cutting off a hand (Matthew 5:29) — you theoretically agree but, if honest, can hardly imagine self-denial so extreme. You may have once found relish in the righteous ferocity of a man like John Owen, who wrote of walking “over the bellies of his lusts” (Works, 6:14). But some time has passed since your boots have trampled your lusts. And as another Puritan once put it, you may feel tempted to speak of your sins as Lot did of Zoar: “Is it, not a little one?” (Genesis 19:20). Time makes way for many litt...