Mortification

Jehoash, pounding on the ground only three times, lacks the zeal to see the Lord's wars through to their conclusion. He's content with three victories over Aram, and is not willing to pound them until they are pulverized. He's willing to leave the balance of power comparatively even. He doesn't care to fight long enough or energetically enough to ensure that the Arameans are put down for good.

We have to have a zeal for the battle. This does not begin with zeal for battle against others, though it definitely involves that. We must being with zeal for battle against ourselves. With Lent coming, a period of fasting and penitence, this is worth meditating on for a moment. Like Jehoash, we tend to wound our sins without killing them. We manage our sinful habits, trying to make sure they remain in a private space where they won't embarrass us, but we hesitate to kill the darlings.

Managing and wounding sin is not what we are called to. We are called to kill, and to pound on them with the arrows of the Lord’s victory until they are pulverized to dust. Is this language extreme? No, not a jot. Older theologians talked about "mortification," but we no longer recognize the force of that word. To "mortify" something is to render it "mort," dead, breathless, dust. To mortify is to kill, and Paul says, paradoxically, that we can live only if we murder: "If you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8). And, "put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry" (Colossians 3).

How do you put to death the deeds of the body? How can you avoid being a Jehoash? Not by heroic struggles of self-denial. Not by bodily disciplines, which Paul says profit little. Not by austere asceticism. We put to death the deeds of the body by confessing our sins, to God and to one another; by hearing the Lord's word, which kills and makes alive; by maintaining fellowship and accountability with believers; by remembering that baptism has overthrown Master Sin; by coming to the Lord's table in humble faith; by fervent, persistent, specific prayer to the God who kills and makes alive. Above all, mortification is done in faith, because it is ultimately not our doing but the Lord's.

These are the weapons of our warfare, the instruments for the surgery of mortification.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, February 26, 2006 at 08:56 AM

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