John Owen’s Writings on Sin

George Whitefield wrote about the Puritans: “Though dead, by their writings they yet speak; a peculiar unction attends them to this very hour.”  That quote appeared in 1767.  J. I. Packer felt that same unction in the 20th Century, and multitudes would testify that the unique power of Puritan preaching can still be experienced today.  Packer has written that the Puritans shaped his spiritual life in at least seven ways.  The first way was probably the most important.  At a crucial time just after his conversion, John Owen helped him to a realistic, biblical understanding of the continuing presence of sin in a believer’s life.  It was Owen’s three great treatises on sin and temptation—On the Motification of Sin, On Temptation, and On Indwelling Sin in Believers—that delivered Packer from the harmful error of perfectionism.  Packer acknowledged that he had been introduced to a form of perfectionist teaching that almost drove him to despair.  He wrote: “Without Owen I might well have gone off my head or got bogged down in mystical fanaticism, and certainly my view of the Christian life would not be what it is today.”  Owen’s writings are regarded by many as the best ever written on the subject of indwelling sin.  Today there are a number of popular books that claim to represent the biblical teaching, but will only lead to confusion.  By contrast, all of the Puritan literature on this subject will solidly ground a Christian in life-sustaining biblical truth.