Vanavond houd ik een lezing in R’dam-Kralingseveer (www.laankerk.nl) over John Owen en inwonende zonde.
James I. Packer schreef:
“Owen showed me my inside—my heart—as no one had ever done before. Sin, he told me, is a blind, anti-God, egocentric energy in the fallen human spiritual system, ever fomenting self-centered and self-deceiving desires, ambitions, purposes, plans, attitudes, and behaviors. Now that I was a regenerate believer, born again, a new creation in Christ, sin that formerly dominated me had been dethroned but was not yet destroyed. It was marauding within me all the time, bringing back sinful desires that I hoped I had seen the last of, and twisting my new desires for God and godliness out of shape so that they became pride-perverted too. Lifelong conflict with the besetting sins that besetting sin generates was what I must expect” (Packer, “God’s Chemo for My Cancered Soul”).
De structuur van de lezing ziet er als volgt uit:
- John Owen – de persoon (1616-1683)
- eminent godgeleerde
- bekwaam analyticus van de menselijke ziel
- geheiligd christen
- John Owen – zijn werken
“Having preached on this subject unto some comfortable success, through the grace of Him that administereth seed to the sower, I was pressed by sundry persons, in whose hearts are the ways of God, thus to publish what I had delivered” (Preface, 3).
Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656)
Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It (1658)
The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin (1667)
Aan de hand van een aantal stellingen geef ik het merg van de inhoud van de twee vetgedrukte titels van de boeken mee.
- De zonde is een reëel probleem
- De kruisiging van de zonde is een plicht van de gelovige
- De kruisiging van de zonde is een vrucht van de Heilige Geest