GT on mortification of sin

Reformation Heritage Books has a little series of booklets on Cultivating Biblical Godliness and my father-in-law Geoff Thomas has written a 30 page thing How do I kill remaining sin? He simply works though four propositions that apply to every Christian majoring on the one that says that every Christian is to be constantly killing remaining sin. You can get it here. I remember this material being preached at Aber either last summer or the one before.

Aber Mini Conference 3

Directives regarding mortification

The five main points were

1. Keep your heart fuelled with gospel motives not legal ones

especially love for Christ

1 Make use of the means of grace public and private

2 Beware of anything that bleeds away the reality of gospel principles

3 Beware of falling back to legal principles  

2. Keep your conscience sensitive to sin

1 Bring specific sins to the light of the Law in its inward meaning

2 ... to the light of the Word

3 ... to the light of the gospel

3. Avoid dangerous occasions of sin

If you are allergic to cats you will avoid them and so we must be with sin

4. Strike at the first risings of sin

Beware of sin's friendly approach

5. Look consistently to Christ for the killing of your sins

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus"

Aber Mini Conference 1

We are now in Aber for the EMW conference. For many years one of the features of the week has been a sort of mini-conference where my father-in-law Geoff Thomas preaches three themed sermons on the Sunday morning and evening and the Monday morning. The sermon takes place in the Welsh Baptist Chapel Bethel, diagonally opposite Alfred Place and used because it is larger. Half the conference people come to the mini conference and the other half hear the official conference preachers elsewhere (Tim Gill and Pete Campbell this time).

This year Geoff's theme is mortification or putting sin to death. On Sunday morning we had

1. The nature of mortification

A misunderstood and neglected doctrine it needs to be taught in this the "age of addiction".

Biblical propositions:

1 Every unbeliever is by nature dead in sin (See Eph 2)

2 Every believer has died to the dominion of sin and death (see Col 3:3; Rom 7, 8) Geoff called it definitive mortification

3 The Christian has to deal with the living presence of the flesh.(Gal 5:16, 17)
He warned against the myth of perfectionism and recalled a question asked of Cornelius Van Til about it getting easier as you get older which the professor thoroughly squashed.
Other refs were then made including  Psalm 51, Mark 7, Matthew 5, etc, ending with Hebrews 12:1-3 and the observation that mortification is not everything. We need also to look to Jesus.