Awestruck by the Sovereign LORD

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. Isaiah 1:16-18 Several weeks ago, I asked a friend of mine to write about an issue close to her heart and one that should close to ours, that is, social justice. Dear friends, A few weeks ago, I went to see the movie Amazing Grace , a movie about a man named William Wilberforce who helped bring an end to the slave trade in Great Britain. Wilberforce’s life inspires me, not only because of his passion to abolish slavery but also because this zeal came from his deep faith in God. In one of his addresses to Parliament, he said “Sir, when we think of eternity and the future consequence of all hum...

Apparently, it does not take being pop-culturally savvy to be relevant to the perils of today. Three of John Owen’s works have been collected and edited by Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor in Overcoming Sin and Temptation . They have made the texts more readable and have included some very useful appendices to aid your study. Reading Owen is never easy, but these two have made it more accessible. Our generation is indebted to them. Owen’s treatment of sin and temptation is challenging and an essential tool in understanding how to fight sin. The battle against sin must be waged. If we are to make any progress in holiness, we should prepare ourselves to walk “over the bellies of [our] lusts.” We need to “be killing sin or it will be killing [us].”