Putting Sin to Death by the Spirit
To give clear order to the guidance I offer for carrying on the work of mortification in believers, I will lay its foundation in the apostle’s words: “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live” (Rom 8:13). I will develop the whole discussion as an application of the great gospel truth and mystery contained in these words.
After summarizing his doctrine of justification by faith and the blessed state of those whom grace has made partakers of it (Rom 8:1-3), the apostle applies that doctrine to the holiness and consolation of believers.
Among his arguments and motives for holiness, this verse draws one from the opposite outcomes and effects of holiness and sin: “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die” (Rom 8:13). Since explaining what it means to live after the flesh and to die is not my present purpose, I will discuss them only as far as they help explain the latter words of the verse.
In the words chosen as the foundation of this discussion, there are five things.
First, a duty is prescribed: “Mortify the deeds of the body.”
Second, the people to whom it is prescribed are identified: “Ye,” that is, “if ye mortify.”
Third, a promise is attached to the duty: “Ye shall live.”
Fourth, the cause or means by which the duty is performed is the Spirit: “If ye through the Spirit.”
Fifth, the entire proposition, including the duty, the means, and the promise, is conditional: “If ye,” etc.
1. The Condition
The first thing we encounter in the complete proposition is the conditional expression, “But if.” Conditional statements of this kind may indicate two things.
(1) They may indicate the uncertainty of the promised event for those to whom the duty is prescribed. This is the case when the condition is absolutely necessary to the outcome but does not itself depend on any fixed cause known to the person receiving the instruction. Thus we say, “If we live, we will do such a thing.” That cannot be the meaning of the conditional expression here. Of the people to whom these words are spoken, it is said, “There is no condemnation to them” (Rom 8:1).
(2) They may indicate the certainty of the coherence and connection between the things being discussed. We might say to a sick man, “If you will take such a potion, or use such a remedy, you will be well.” The only thing we mean to express is the certainty of the connection between the remedy and health. That is how the conditional expression is used here. It indicates the certain connection between mortifying the deeds of the body and living.
There are several kinds of connection between things, including the connection of cause and effect and that of means and end. The connection between mortification and life is not, properly and strictly, one of cause and effect, for “eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ” (Rom 6:23). It is the connection of means and end. God has appointed this means for attaining the end that he has freely promised. Although the means are necessary, they remain properly subordinate to an end given by free promise. A thing cannot be both a gift and something procured by the person who receives it.
The meaning of this conditional proposition, then, is that there is a certain and infallible connection between true mortification and eternal life. If you use this means, you will obtain that end. If you mortify sin, you will live. This is the chief motive for and enforcement of the prescribed duty.
2. The People to Whom the Duty Is Given
The next thing we meet in these words is the identity of the people to whom this duty is prescribed. They are indicated by the word “Ye,” which is included in the original verb translated “if ye mortify.” It means you believers: you to whom “there is no condemnation” (Rom 8:1); you who are “not in the flesh, but in the Spirit” (Rom 8:9); and you who are “quickened by the Spirit of Christ” (Rom 8:10-11). This duty is prescribed to you.
Pressing this duty directly upon anyone else is a notable fruit of the superstition and self-righteousness with which the world is filled. It is the great work and design of devout people who are ignorant of the gospel (Rom 10:3-4; John 15:5). This description of the people, joined with the prescription of the duty, forms the main foundation of the discussion that follows. It may be stated in this proposition:
The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, must still make it their business throughout their lives to mortify the indwelling power of sin.
3. The Spirit as the Cause of Mortification
The principal efficient cause by which this duty is performed is the Spirit: “If by the Spirit.” The Spirit here is the Spirit mentioned in the surrounding passage: the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of God, who “dwells in us” (Rom 8:9) and “quickens us” (Rom 8:11); “the Holy Ghost” (Rom 8:14); the “Spirit of adoption” (Rom 8:15); and the Spirit “that maketh intercession for us” (Rom 8:26).
Every other way of mortification is vain, and all other helps leave us helpless. The work must be done by the Spirit. As the apostle indicates, people may attempt this work on other principles and by means and advantages supplied on other grounds, as they always have done and still do (Rom 9:30-32). But, says the apostle, “This is the work of the Spirit; by him alone must it be done, and no other power can bring it about.” Mortification undertaken in our own strength, carried on by methods of our own invention, and directed toward the goal of our own righteousness is the soul and substance of every false religion in the world. This is a second principle of the discussion that follows.
4. The Duty of Mortification
The duty itself, “Mortify the deeds of the body,” must now be considered.
Three things must be examined: (1) what is meant by the body; (2) what is meant by the deeds of the body; and (3) what is meant by mortifying them.
(1) The Body
The body at the end of the verse is the same as the flesh at the beginning: “If ye live after the flesh ye shall die; but if ye . . . mortify the deeds of the body” (Rom 8:13), that is, the deeds of the flesh. The flesh is what the apostle has been discussing throughout the passage. This is clear from the contrast between the Spirit and the flesh both before and after these words.
Here, then, the body means the corruption and depravity of our natures, of which the physical body is in large part the seat and instrument. Through this corruption, the very members of the body are made servants to unrighteousness (Rom 6:19). What is intended is indwelling sin, corrupted flesh, or sinful desire. Many reasons could be given for this figure of speech, but I will not address them now.
The “body” here is the same as the “old man” and the “body of sin” (Rom 6:6). Or it may use one part to represent the whole person considered as corrupted and as the seat of sinful desires and disordered affections.
(2) The Deeds of the Body
The expression the deeds of the body primarily denotes outward actions, “the works of the flesh,” as they are called (Gal 5:19). There they are said to be “manifest,” and they are listed. Although only the outward deeds are expressly mentioned here, their inward and immediate causes are chiefly intended. “The axe is to be laid at the root of the tree.” The deeds of the flesh must be mortified in the causes from which they spring.
The apostle calls them deeds because every sinful desire tends toward action. Though it may only conceive and prove abortive, it aims to bring forth a complete act of sin.
Having already treated in Romans 7 and at the beginning of Romans 8 of indwelling sinful desire and sin as the fountain and principle of all sinful actions, the apostle now describes its destruction by naming the effects it produces. The “deeds of the body” amount to the “wisdom of the flesh” (Rom 8:6), by a figure of speech like the previous one. They also mean the “passions and lusts of the flesh” (Gal 5:24), from which its deeds and fruits arise. In this same sense, the body is used in the statement, “The body is dead because of sin” (Rom 8:10).
(3) To Mortify
To mortify means, “If ye put to death.” It is a metaphor taken from putting a living thing to death. To kill a person or any other living thing is to take away the source of all its strength, vigor, and power, so that it cannot act, exert itself, or perform any proper action of its own. So it is in this case.
Indwelling sin is compared to a person, a living person called “the old man,” who has faculties and properties of his own, including wisdom, craft, subtlety, and strength. This, says the apostle, must be killed, put to death, and mortified. By the Spirit, its power, life, vigor, and strength to produce its effects must be taken away.
Indeed, through the cross of Christ it has been utterly mortified and slain as to merit and by way of example. The “old man” is therefore said to be “crucified with Christ” (Rom 6:6), and we ourselves are said to be “dead” with him (Rom 6:8). Sin is also truly, though only initially, mortified in regeneration (Rom 6:3-5), when a principle contrary to it and destructive of it is planted in our hearts (Gal 5:17). But the whole work must be carried on by degrees toward perfection throughout all our days. More will be said about this as the discussion proceeds.
The apostle’s intention in prescribing this duty, then, is this:
The mortification of indwelling sin that remains in our mortal bodies, so that it may not have life and power to produce the works or deeds of the flesh, is the constant duty of believers.
5. The Promise of Life
The promise attached to this duty is life: “Ye shall live.” The promised life is opposed to the death threatened in the preceding clause: “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die” (Rom 8:13). The same apostle expresses this elsewhere as, “Ye shall of the flesh reap corruption” (Gal 6:8), meaning destruction from God.
The word may perhaps refer not only to eternal life but also to the spiritual life in Christ that we possess here. It does not refer to the essence and existence of that life, which believers already enjoy, but to its joy, comfort, and vigor. In another situation the apostle says, “Now I live, if ye stand fast” (1 Thess 3:8). That is, “Now my life will do me good; I will have joy and comfort in my life.” Thus, “Ye shall live”; that is, “You will lead a good, vigorous, comfortable spiritual life while you are here and obtain eternal life hereafter.”
Assuming what was said before about the connection between mortification and eternal life as the connection of means and end, I will add only this as a second motive for the prescribed duty:
The vigor, power, and comfort of our spiritual life depend on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.
A Lifelong Duty
Having laid this foundation, a brief confirmation of the principal deductions already mentioned will lead me to what I chiefly intend.
I. The Lifelong Work of Mortification
The choicest believers, who are certainly freed from the condemning power of sin, must still make it their business throughout their lives to mortify the power of sin dwelling within them.
Thus the apostle says, “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth” (Col 3:5). To whom is he speaking? To those who were “risen with Christ” (Col 3:1); those who were “dead” with him (Col 3:3); those whose life was Christ and who would “appear with him in glory” (Col 3:4).
You must mortify sin. Make it your daily work. Continue in it as long as you live, without ceasing for a single day. Be killing sin, or it will be killing you. Your being dead with Christ in principle, and your being made alive with him, will not excuse you from this work.
Our Savior also tells us how his Father deals with every branch in him that bears fruit, every true and living branch: “He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit” (John 15:2). He prunes it, not merely for a day or two, but for as long as it remains a branch in this world.
The apostle tells us what his own practice was: “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection” (1 Cor 9:27). “I do it,” he says, “daily; it is the work of my life: I do not omit it; this is my business.” If this was the work and business of Paul, who was incomparably exalted above the ordinary measure of believers in grace, revelations, enjoyments, privileges, and consolations, on what possible basis can we claim exemption from this work and duty while we remain in this world?
A brief account of the reasons may now be given.
1. Indwelling Sin Remains
Indwelling sin always remains while we are in this world. Therefore, it must always be mortified.
I will not now concern myself with the vain, foolish, and ignorant disputes of those who claim that God’s commands may be kept perfectly, that perfection may be attained in this life, or that a person may become wholly and perfectly dead to sin. It is more than likely that the people responsible for those abominations never understood what it meant to keep even one of God’s commands. They are so far from perfection in degree that they have never attained completeness in the parts of obedience, that is, sincere and universal obedience.
Many in our own day who have spoken of perfection have therefore been more ingenious. They have claimed that perfection consists in recognizing no difference between good and evil. They are not perfect in the things we call good. Instead, everything is alike to them, and the height of wickedness is their perfection.
Others have discovered a new path to perfection by denying original and indwelling sin and adjusting the spirituality of God’s law to suit the carnal hearts of men. In doing so, they have clearly shown themselves ignorant of the life of Christ and its power in believers. They have invented a new righteousness unknown to the gospel, being vainly puffed up by their fleshly minds.
As for us, who dare not be wise beyond what is written or boast according to another man’s measure about what God has done for us, we say that indwelling sin continues to live within us in some measure and degree for as long as we remain in this world. We dare not speak as “though we had already attained, or were already perfect” (Phil 3:12). “Our inward man is to be renewed day by day” for as long as we live here (2 Cor 4:16); and as the new nature is renewed, the old nature suffers breaches and decay.
While we are here, we “know but in part” (1 Cor 13:12). Darkness remains within us and must be gradually removed through our “growth in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 3:18). “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, so that we cannot do the things that we would” (Gal 5:17). We are therefore deficient in obedience as well as in understanding (1 John 1:8). We have a “body of death” (Rom 7:24), from which we are not delivered until the death of our bodies (Phil 3:21).
Since it is our duty to mortify sin, to keep killing it while it remains within us, we must stay at work. A person appointed to kill an enemy, if he stops striking before the enemy stops living, has done only half his work (Gal 6:9; Heb 12:1; 2 Cor 7:1).
2. Indwelling Sin Continually Acts
Sin not only remains within us but is continually acting, always laboring to produce the deeds of the flesh. When sin leaves us alone, we may leave sin alone. But sin is never less quiet than when it appears most quiet, and its waters are generally deepest when they are still. Our plans against it must therefore remain vigorous at all times and in every condition, even when there seems to be the least cause for suspicion.
Sin not only remains within us, but “the law of the members is still rebelling against the law of the mind” (Rom 7:23), and “the spirit that dwells in us lusteth to envy” (Jas 4:5). It is continually at work. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit” (Gal 5:17). Sinful desire is always tempting and conceiving sin (Jas 1:14). In every moral action, it is either inclining us toward evil, hindering us from doing good, or making our spirits unfit for communion with God.
It inclines us toward evil. “The evil which I would not, that I do,” says the apostle (Rom 7:19). Why is this? “Because in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.”
It also hinders us from doing good: “The good that I would do, that I do not” (Rom 7:19). For the same reason, either I do not perform the good at all, or I do not perform it as I should. All my holy actions are defiled by this sin. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal 5:17).
Sin also disorders our spirits, and for this reason it is called “The sin that so easily besets us” (Heb 12:1). This is the cause of the apostle’s grievous complaints in Romans 7.
Sin, then, is always acting, conceiving, seducing, and tempting. Who can say that he has ever had anything to do with God or for God in which indwelling sin did not take some part in corrupting what he did? Sin will continue this work, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout all our days. If sin will always be acting and we are not always mortifying it, we are lost creatures.
Anyone who stands still and allows his enemies to strike him repeatedly without resistance will certainly be conquered in the end. If sin is subtle, watchful, strong, and always at work seeking to kill our souls, while we are lazy, negligent, and foolish in seeking its ruin, can we expect a comforting outcome? Every day, sin either defeats us or is defeated, either prevails or is overcome. This struggle will continue for as long as we live in this world.
I will release from this duty anyone who can make an agreement with sin and establish a ceasefire in this warfare. If sin will spare him for one day, even during one duty, provided he is a person acquainted with the spirituality of obedience and the subtlety of sin, then let him say to his soul concerning this duty, “Soul, take your rest.” But the saints, whose souls long for deliverance from sin’s perplexing rebellion, know that there is no safety against it except through constant warfare.
3. Unmortified Sin Presses Toward Ruin
Sin will not merely strive, act, rebel, trouble, and disturb us. If it is left alone and not continually mortified, it will bring forth great, cursed, scandalous, and soul-destroying sins.
The apostle tells us what its works and fruits are: “The works of the flesh are manifest, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like” (Gal 5:19-21). You know what sin did in David and in various others.
Sin always aims at the utmost extent. Every time it rises to tempt or entice, if it could follow its own course, it would proceed to the most extreme sin of that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would become adultery if it could. Every covetous desire would become oppression. Every thought of unbelief would become atheism if allowed to reach maturity.
People may reach a condition in which sin is not heard speaking a scandalous word in their hearts, meaning that it does not openly provoke them toward some great and publicly shameful sin. Yet every rising of sinful desire, if allowed to follow its own course, would reach the height of villainy. It is like the grave, which is never satisfied.
A considerable part of sin’s deceitfulness lies here. By this deceit it prevails in hardening people and so brings them to ruin (Heb 3:13). Its first movements and proposals are modest, as it were. But once it has gained a foothold in the heart through them, it steadily holds the ground it has gained and presses onward to further degrees of the same kind.
This renewed activity and forward pressure keeps the soul from noticing how great an entrance has already been made toward falling away from God. The soul thinks things are reasonably well as long as there is no further progress. To the extent that the soul becomes insensitive to any sin, lacking the kind of awareness the gospel requires, it is hardened. Yet sin continues to press forward because it has no boundary short of completely abandoning God and opposing him.
Sin advances toward its height by degrees, securing through hardness the ground it has already gained. This gradual progress does not arise from sin’s nature, but from its deceitfulness. Nothing can prevent it except mortification. Mortification withers the root and strikes at the head of sin every hour, so that whatever sin attempts is opposed.
There is no saint in the world so excellent that, if he abandoned this duty, he would not fall into as many cursed sins as anyone of his kind has ever committed.
4. The Spirit and the New Nature Are Given to Oppose Sin
One principal reason the Spirit and the new nature are given to us is so that we may possess an inward principle by which to oppose sin and sinful desire.
“The flesh lusteth against the spirit.” What follows? “The spirit also lusteth against the flesh” (Gal 5:17). The spirit, or spiritual new nature, has a disposition to act against the flesh, just as the flesh has a disposition to act against the spirit. The same truth appears in 2 Peter 1:4-5.
Our participation in the divine nature enables us to escape the corruption that is in the world through sinful desire. There is also a law of the mind as well as a law of the members (Rom 7:23).
When two combatants are engaged, it is, first, the most unjust and unreasonable thing in the world to bind one of them and prevent him from doing his utmost while leaving the other free to wound him as he pleases. Second, it is the most foolish thing in the world to bind the one who fights for our eternal salvation and release the one who seeks and violently attempts our everlasting ruin. The contest concerns our lives and souls.
To neglect the daily employment of the Spirit and the new nature in mortifying sin is to neglect the excellent help God has given us against our greatest enemy. If we fail to use what we have received, God may justly withhold his hand from giving us more. His graces, like his gifts, are bestowed on us so that we may use, exercise, and put them to work.
Failing to mortify sin daily is therefore a sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who has furnished us with an inward principle by which to do it.
5. Neglect Causes Grace to Wither
Negligence in this duty brings the soul into the exact opposite condition from the one the apostle describes: “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16). In those who neglect mortification, the inward person perishes while the outward person is renewed day by day. Sin becomes like the house of David, growing stronger, and grace like the house of Saul, growing weaker.
Exercise and success are the two principal means by which grace is cherished in the heart. When grace is allowed to lie inactive, it withers and decays. Its remaining things are ready to die (Rev 3:2), while sin gains ground toward the hardening of the heart (Heb 3:13).
This is what I mean: by neglecting this duty, grace withers, sinful desire flourishes, and the condition of the heart grows worse and worse. The Lord knows the desperate and fearful outcomes this has produced in many people.
When sin gains a considerable victory through the neglect of mortification, it breaks the bones of the soul (Ps 31:10; Ps 51:8). It makes a person weak, sick, and ready to die (Ps 38:3-5), so that he cannot look up (Ps 40:12; Isa 33:24). When poor creatures endure blow after blow, wound after wound, and defeat after defeat, yet never rouse themselves to vigorous opposition, can they expect anything except to be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin and to have their souls bleed to death? (2 John 8).
It is indeed a sad thing to consider the fearful consequences of this neglect, which appear before our eyes every day. Do we not see people whom we once knew as humble, tender, brokenhearted Christians, careful and fearful of offending God, zealous for God and all his ways, his Sabbaths and ordinances, who have become earthly, carnal, cold, wrathful, and accommodating toward the people and things of the world because they neglected the watchfulness required for this duty? They bring scandal upon religion and fearful temptation upon those who know them.
On one side, mortification is made to consist in a rigid and stubborn frame of spirit, which is generally earthly, legalistic, censorious, partial, and consistent with wrath, envy, malice, and pride. On the other side are pretenses about liberty, grace, and I do not know what else. Between these extremes, true evangelical mortification is almost lost among us. More will be said about this later.
6. Mortification Is Necessary for Growth in Holiness
It is our duty to be “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1), to be “growing in grace” every day (1 Pet 2:2; 2 Pet 3:18), and to be “renewing our inward man day by day” (2 Cor 4:16). This cannot be done without the daily mortification of sin.
Sin sets its strength against every act of holiness and against every degree of growth we attain. No one should imagine that he is making progress in holiness if he is not treading on the necks of his sinful desires. Whoever does not kill sin as he travels takes no steps toward his journey’s end. Whoever encounters no opposition from sin and does not apply himself in every particular to its mortification is at peace with sin, not dying to it.
This, then, is the first general principle of the discussion that follows. Every sin has been put to death meritoriously, if I may speak that way, in the cross of Christ. The real foundation of universal mortification was laid in our first conversion through conviction of sin, humiliation for sin, and the implantation of a new principle opposed to and destructive of sin. Nevertheless, sin continues to remain, act, and work within the best believers while they live in this world. Its constant, daily mortification is therefore their duty throughout all their days.
Before proceeding to the next principle, I cannot help pausing to lament the condition of many professing Christians in our day. Instead of producing the great and evident fruits of mortification that might be expected from them, they scarcely bear any of its leaves.
A broad light has indeed fallen upon the people of this generation, and many spiritual gifts have been communicated along with it. These gifts, together with other circumstances, have wonderfully enlarged the bounds of Christian profession and multiplied both the number of professing Christians and the extent of their profession.
As a result, the noise of religion and religious duties is heard in every corner. There is an abundance of preaching, and it is not empty, shallow, trivial, and vain as it once was, but is accompanied by a considerable measure of spiritual gifting. If the number of believers is measured by light, gifts, and profession, the church may have cause to say, “Who hath borne me all these?”
But if they are measured by mortification, that great distinguishing grace of Christians, perhaps their number will not appear so greatly multiplied. Where can we find the professing Christian who owes his conversion to these days of light, and who speaks and professes spirituality at a level scarcely known in former days, yet does not give evidence of a miserably unmortified heart? I will not judge them, though perhaps they boast about what the Lord has done in them.
If the badges of Christians are the vain spending of time, idleness, unprofitableness in the stations people occupy, envy, strife, divisions, rivalry, wrath, pride, worldliness, and selfishness, then we wear them and possess them in abundance (1 Cor 1).
If this is the condition of those who have much light, which we hope is saving light, what shall we say of some who want to be regarded as religious while despising gospel light? As for the duty now before us, they know nothing more of it than occasionally denying themselves some outward enjoyments. That is only one of its outermost branches, and even that they seldom practice.
May the good Lord send out a spirit of mortification to cure our disorders, or we are in a sad condition!
Two Evils of an Unmortified Profession
Two evils certainly accompany every unmortified professing Christian. The first concerns himself, and the second concerns others.
1. The Evil in Himself
Whatever he may claim, he has slight thoughts of sin, or at least of the sins arising from daily weakness. The root of an unmortified course is the ability to digest sin in the heart without bitterness.
When a man has settled his imagination upon such an understanding of grace and mercy that he can swallow and digest daily sins without bitterness, he stands at the very brink of turning the grace of God into licentiousness and of being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. There is no greater evidence in the world of a false and rotten heart than to carry on such a practice.
The blood of Christ is given to cleanse us (1 John 1:7; Titus 2:14). Christ is exalted to give us repentance (Acts 5:31). The doctrine of grace teaches us to deny all ungodliness (Titus 2:11-12). To use these things as support for sin is a rebellion that will eventually break the bones.
Most of the professing Christians who have apostatized in our day have gone out through this door. For a time, most of them lived under convictions. Those convictions kept them attending to their duties and brought them into a public profession of faith. In this way, they “escaped the pollutions that are in the world, through the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 2:20).
But after they became acquainted with the doctrine of the gospel, they grew weary of duties for which they possessed no inward principle. They then began to use the doctrine of grace to justify their many neglects. Once this evil had taken hold of them, they quickly tumbled into perdition.
2. The Evil to Others
An unmortified profession has an evil influence on others in two ways.
(1) It Hardens Them
It hardens others by persuading them that their condition is as good as that of the best professing Christians. Whatever good they see in such Christians is so stained by the lack of mortification that it has no value in their eyes.
These professing Christians have zeal for religion, but it is accompanied by a lack of patience and universal righteousness. They reject extravagance but embrace worldliness. They separate themselves from the world but live entirely for themselves, taking no care to practice loving-kindness in the earth. They speak spiritually but live vainly. They talk about communion with God while conforming to the world in every way. They boast of the forgiveness of sin but never forgive others.
By such observations, poor creatures harden their hearts in their unregenerate condition.
(2) It Deceives Them
It deceives others by making them believe that all will be well with them if they can attain the same condition. It then becomes easy for them to find themselves wrestling with the great temptation of religious reputation, since they may go far beyond these professing Christians in everything outwardly visible and yet still fall short of eternal life.
More will be said later about these matters and all the evils of living without mortification.
