Live Dead Joy: 30 Days of Living and Dying with JesusSample

“Mortification”

Mortification is the process by which God progressively weakens the power of sin in our lives. God initiates this grace, but He expects our participation. The weakening of sin’s death grip requires both an act of God and the unrestrained obedience of each person.

God, because of the mercy with which He loves us, will take us by the hand and walk us away from disaster (as He did for Lot in Genesis 19:16). Mercy keeps us from what we deserve. As long as we hold on tight and keep walking, we won’t get vaporized into a pillar of salt. God, because of His unmerited kindness, withholds us from sinning (as He did for Abimelech in Genesis 10:6) and from touching what or whom we should not.

I thank God that He takes the initiative to help me in my temptations. I may always look back (as Lot’s wife did) to my own destruction, but escape is not only possible but orchestrated (and sometimes enforced) by God’s great mercy.

In the divine nature, mercy is always balanced by wrath. God is angry with the wicked every day (Ps. 7:11). The wicked are twofold: the unrepentant in outright rebellion who are unprotected from God’s wrath and those under the blood who are covered and protected but who battle against indwelling sin. The repentant are still wicked in heart, thought, and deed—they are simply counted righteous because of the prevailing blood of Jesus. God’s wrath then is directed at the wicked portion of my heart. He will judge it. God’s mercy in judgment is to expose what is wicked in me, divide it out of me, and destroy it.

We are told not to judge one another (Matt. 7:1) because we all have wicked hearts. Because God’s wrath will divide out my wickedness and destroy it, I must be careful that I view others in the same Calvary light. I must not only see their sins, I must accept that the mercy that covers me covers them as well. A soft heart toward others represents God’s perspective toward ourselves and ensures His kind dealings with our folly. Only when we have a merciful perspective that is reflective of the Father’s heart does He trust us to be rulers and judges of others (Acts 7:27). And God’s judgment always leads to deliverance (Acts 7:35).

Mortification is freedom.

Pray for the Unreached:

Mappila Muslims of India

8,986,000

0.0% Evangelical

Pray that Christians from around the world would work together to reach the Mappila and that the Mappila would be joined to the body of Christ (John 17:20-23).