John Owen and the biblical priority of holiness (Michael Haykin)

Like many other Evangelicals who encountered John Owen’s writings through the Banner of Truth reprint of the nineteenth-century standard edition, it was for me a literally life-changing experience. I have been intrigued by his life and erudition, as well as his friendship with Oliver Cromwell and John Bunyan (Bunyan drew upon his character for one of his heroes in The Holy War), and taught by his passionate interest in the work of the Holy Spirit that was fully biblical and balanced.

But what especially impacted me was his view of sanctification, which I first met in the treatises The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers (1667), Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656), which were sermons he delivered in the university of Oxford; and Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It, first published in 1658, which also consists of sermon material preached during the 1650s.

Though our technological and historical circumstances are very different from those of Puritan era, the hearts of men and women have not changed. Indwelling sin, now as then, is an ever-present reality, as Owen details in The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers. Basing his discussion on Romans 7:21, Owen shows how sin lies at the heart of even believers’ lives, and, if not resisted by prayer and meditation, will slowly but surely eat away zeal for and delight in the things of God.

Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It, essentially an exposition of Matthew 26:41, further analyzes the way in which believers fall into sin. Owen enumerates four seasons in which believers must exercise special care that temptation not lead them away into sin: times of outward prosperity, times of spiritual coldness and formality, times when one has enjoyed rich fellowship with God, and times of self-confidence, as in Peter’s affirmation to Christ, “I will not deny thee.” The remedy that Owen emphasizes is prayer. Typical of Puritan pithiness is his remark in this regard: “If we do not abide in prayer, we shall abide in cursed temptations.”

The final work, Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, is in some ways the richest of the three. Based on Romans 8:13, it details how to fight indwelling sin and ward off temptation. Owen emphasizes that in the fight against sin the Holy Spirit employs all of our human powers. In sanctifying us, Owen insists, the Spirit works “in us and with us, not against us or without us.” Owen would rightly regard those today who talk about “letting go and letting God” take care of the believer’s sins as unbiblical. Yet, he is very much aware that sanctification is also a gift. This duty, he rightly emphasizes, is only accomplished through the Holy Spirit. Not without reason does Owen lovingly describe the Spirit as “the great beautifier of souls.”

In a day when significant sectors of evangelicalism are characterized by spiritual superficiality and shallowness, and holiness is rarely a major topic of interest or discussion, these books are like a draught of water in a dry and thirsty land. They remind us of the great spiritual heritage that we possess as evangelicals. Even more significantly, they challenge us to recover the biblical priority of holiness.

With this in mind, I close by recommending to you John Owen’s Overcoming Sin and Temptation, the edition edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor which is “an unabridged but updated edition” of these three classic works of Owen, one “that preserves all of Owen’s original content but seeks to make it a bit more accessible” (p.17). Reader, buy this book and read it meditatively. It will change your life!

Michael A. G. Haykin is Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His most recent book is Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church (Crossway, 2011). Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.