Time Well Spent with Cornelius F. Warren featuring Elder Sam Fisher

Have you seen the bumper sticker that says, “Kill your TV!” That may be wise advice, but the apostle Paul gives us even wiser counsel in our text: Kill your sin! It’s a concept that we don’t hear much about any more. But it used to be a widely understood approach to sanctification. The Puritans called it “the mortification of sin.” In our times, to be mortified means to be embarrassed, but the word really means to be killed. The Puritans all knew that we are engaged in mortal combat with an enemy that lurks within: the flesh (or the old man, or indwelling sin). Either you kill it every day or it will kill you.

Paul in Romans 8: 12-13 explains further and applies what he wrote back in verse 6, “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.” The “death” in verse 13, like that of verse 6, is not physical death, which we all must face, but spiritual death, eternal separation from God. In other words, Paul is saying,

Kill your sin or it will kill you!

Paul is saying here what he says in Galatians 6: 8, “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” There are only two ways to live, with only two outcomes: To live according to the flesh ends in eternal death; to live according to the Spirit ends with eternal life. Either sin must be our enemy, or God will. So this is serious business!