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Mortify
The word "mortify" is found in Col. 3:
"Mortify therefore your members which are upon the
earth." (Col. 3:5). The word "mortify"
means to "put to death." The 20th Cent.
translation reads, "Therefore destroy all that is
earthly in you." It has been believed and taught that
every thing earthly about us is put to death when we are
sanctified as a second work of grace or a cleansing of the
heart from carnality. They think that there is nothing to
be put to death or to mortify after we are sanctified.
These people to whom Paul was writing were dead and their
life was hid with Christ in God. They were dead and yet
there is something about them that needs to be put to
death. This can be because man is a two-fold being. The
inner man may be dead to sin and the
world—sanctified—yet the outward man has passions,
desires, appetites that must be controlled, that must not
be allowed to break out beyond their legitimate bounds.
Now we will tell you a secret. What we are now going to
tell you is the secret principle of holy living. It is the
thread that runs through the entire life. It is
"sacrifice." Listen, no man can keep the body in
perfect control who does not keep that body on the altar
of daily sacrifice. If you cease to sacrifice, you cease
to control. To sacrifice is to mortify. Habits of virtue
cannot be acquired except at the expense of sacrifice. He
who is not constantly making sacrifice is not advancing in
the Christian life. Sacrifice in the little things of
daily life. The secret of living holy is sacrifice in the
little things. It is not in being absent from ball rooms,
ball games, theatres, political gatherings, and such like
worldly things. These things have but little or no
temptation to people who are sanctified. It is no
sacrifice for them to abstain from such evils. Where the
holy need to watch is to not let love of self get in. Holy
people have a self, but they must guard against an undue
love of self. Keep that self on the altar of sacrifice.
Guard against taking too much thought about bodily
comforts. It is no sin to give the body some comfort if it
is not done at the expense of another's comfort. Then you
need to have a care when you are alone not to provide too
greatly for the body's comforts, lest you become selfish
and find it difficult to sacrifice your comforts for
another's comfort.
To indulge the body in late rising, in dainty foods, in
luxuries, in ease, in things pleasant to the eye—fine
things, in idleness, in the avoidance of hardships, in the
shrinking from bearing another's burden, and a disposition
to lay your own on another is the way to become selfish.
Sacrifice is the law of the Christian life. Sacrificing
bodily comforts daily in the home for the comforts of
others is helpful to the soul in its upward way. Where
there is no sacrifice there is no holiness. Where there is
no self-denying, there is no love to God. Where the body
is not kept under, the soul is enslaved. The beauty of
holiness never grows out of bodily indulgence, but out of
bodily sacrifice. If you would live holy, destroy that
which is earthly, sensual, and lustful in you.
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