Tuesday, November 20, 2012

"Charge your conscience....."

Owen takes seriously the battle against sin.   Doing so, he maintains, requires us to weigh seriously the holiness of the law:

Bring the holy law of God into your conscience, lay your corruption to it, pray that you may be affected with it.  Consider the holiness, spirituality, fiery severity, inwardness, absoluteness of the law, and see how you can stand before it.  Be much, I say, in affecting your conscience with the terror of the Lord in the law, and how righteous it is that every one of your transgressions should receive a recompense of reward.  (page 103, Overcoming Sin and Temptation edited by Justin Taylor and Kelly Kapic)
One great tool to this end is the Westminster Larger Catechism in its section on the law of God.  If you are as prone to self-righteousness as I am, this may aid in the cure.