A podcast listener named Apollo writes in to ask this. This is a follow-up to episode number 345 in which you asked, "Are you killing sin by the Spirit?" Pastor John, what does this mean? How do I kill sin by the Spirit? All my thinking and praying and practicing on this point of killing sin begins with Romans 8 13.

If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, there it is, by the Spirit kill, put to death the deeds of the body you will live. So there it is from the very mouth of God.

Put to death, kill, slay, murder the deeds of the body, meaning the sinful ones. And of course it doesn't mean just make sure your body doesn't do bad things and doesn't matter what your heart does. Of course that's not what Paul means. He knows that bodily deeds that are wrong are rooted in hearts that are wrong, and so the killing has to begin at the root and not just--or at least it has to go to the root, not just to the fruit in the body.

So kill the deeds of the body means kill the root of temptation, the root of sin in your heart. The old word for put to death was "mortify," but it's become so weak in our day because lots of people think it means just be embarrassed, like, "Oh, I was just so mortified." Well, that's not what John Owen meant when he wrote The Mortification of Sin, which is a book I would highly recommend.

I just got it out again this morning. 85 pages in the collected works, 350 years ago, probably the best thing that's been written on Romans 8:13. 85 pages all in one verse, and it's got that famous line in it, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you." So mortification of sin meant kill it, slay it, put it to death.

So here's my answer to the how question, and I take it straight out of the verse. There is one clue for the how in verse 13 of Romans 8. It says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body." So how do you do it?

You do it by the Spirit. You act in such a way that the Spirit is acting. You kill in such a way that it is the Spirit killing. Now what is that? And that's not a marginal question, like this is, oh, out here on the periphery and central things in the Christian life or something else.

This is as central as it gets in living the Christian life, because for Paul, this was the Christian life. You could call it walking by the Spirit, or bearing the fruit of the Spirit, or being led by the Spirit. He uses all those terms to talk about how do you act towards holiness and sinfulness in such a way that the Spirit Himself is acting in and through you.

So here's my answer in two or three steps of how do you do this. Step number one, Ephesians 617 says that the weapon that the Spirit uses to kill sin is the Word of God. It says, "Take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." The one piece of armor in Ephesians 6 that is used for killing is the sword, and it happens to be the sword of the Spirit, and that happens to be the Word of God.

I don't think that's any accident that when Romans 8 13 says, "Put to death the deeds of spirity," put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit, the Spirit has a sword, and it's used for killing, and it's the Word of God. So my first clue is killing by the Spirit means by the Word.

Well, next question. What does that mean? I mean, what do you do with the Word in order for the Spirit to be active like that in killing sin? And there the clue is Galatians 3 5. "Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?" So the answer is, by hearing with faith, the Spirit works miracles among you.

By hearing with faith, the Spirit is supplied to you in your sin-killing work. So how do you put yourself in a position that the Spirit, wielding his sword of the Word, will kill sin in your life? You do it by hearing that Word and trusting what you hear. Now, very practically, what word should we trust?

And here I think it's absolutely crucial to say more than "trust the gospel." That's common today, real common. I think it's crucial to say more than "trust in your forgiveness" or "trust in your justification." That's essential because everything is based on that, but that's not the way the New Testament talks about this.

The reason that we must hear more, hear and trust more, is because the New Testament illustrates sin-killing over and over by telling us more than "you are forgiven" or "you are accepted" or "you are righteous," because forgiveness and justification are the foundation, and then it says all the promises of God are "yes" in Christ.

So because we're forgiven, because we're justified, all the promises of God, hundreds of promises that are concrete and practical and relate to specific situations, are all true for you. So we never leave the gospel, we're standing on the gospel all the time, but we're preaching specific promises to ourself in order to destroy specific sins.

So let's just end this with one example. Let's take the sin of greed or covetousness, because here's a verse that shows what the paradigm is for how the New Testament says to fight the sin in the power of the Holy Spirit. So here's Hebrews chapter 13, verses 5 and 6.

"Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have." And here comes the dagger with which you're gonna kill the love of money, and you're gonna kill greed in your life. "For God said, 'I will never leave you or forsake you.'" So we can confidently say, "The Lord is my helper.

I will not fear. What can man do to me?" So how do we put to death the sin of greed when the love of money starts to raise its ugly head, and all the fear and the pride that goes with it comes? We hear a word. Well, what word do we hear?

We hear the word, "I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I'll be your sufficient helper. Man cannot destroy you. He cannot ruin you. I am for you." You hear those words about this afternoon. I'm talking about this afternoon, or the rent that can't be paid, or the mortgage that's overdue, that specific promise.

We hear it, we believe it, and God the Spirit, Almighty, with His sword, kills greed and fear and pride in possessions. So, killing sin means daily calling to mind and trusting blood-bought specific promises of God. Amen, excellent. Thank you, Pastor John. And recommended in this podcast was a book by the Puritan John Owen.

The book was titled The Mortification of Sin, but it may actually be easiest to buy this book as a book titled Overcoming Sin and Temptation, which was edited by Kelly Coppock and Justin Taylor for Crossway Books back in 2006. As a bonus, you get two other related books from John Owen on battling sin in the same book.

That's Overcoming Sin and Temptation, edited by Kelly Coppock and Justin Taylor. Another episode we recorded on killing sin is episode number 304 in the archive. It's titled Visualizing Christ to Battle Lust. Tomorrow is Friday and we will close out the week with a question on 2 Timothy 315, specifically, how does Scripture produce faith?

I'm your host Tony Rehnke. We'll see you tomorrow.