Mortification of Sin

Pastor Martin completes his treatment of agency in progressive sanctification by showing that the believer himself, as a new man in Christ, is also an active agent. He surveys the general teaching of Scripture (Matthew 5, Matthew 26, Romans 8, 2 Corinthians 7, 1 John 3, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 2 Peter 1) and then expounds Philippians 2:12-13 as the pivotal text that epitomizes the whole biblical doctrine: God works in us both to will and to do, and therefore we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. He warns equally against sanctification by naked human effort and sanctification by the negation of human effort, insisting that God's working and our working are concurrent realities, neither negating the other.

Having excluded both works done by us and grace wrought in us, Pastor Martin now sets forth the positive ground of justification: the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ alone. He develops three lines of biblical truth - that the ground is in the person of Christ alone, in His perfect obedience alone, and in His full satisfaction alone - drawing on Romans 5:19, Philippians 3, 2 Corinthians 5:20-21, and Hebrews 10:5-10. He briefly explains the active and passive obedience of Christ as one indivisible obedience.

Returning to the cardinal blessings after a two-month digression, Pastor Martin moves from the legal to the experiential privileges of adoption and expounds the first and chief one: the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption. Working through Galatians 4:4-6 and Romans 8:12-26, he shows that Christ was sent precisely to secure sonship, that the Spirit is freely given to every adopted child, and that the Spirit's primary work in adoption is to impart a filial disposition expressed in the cry 'Abba, Father.' He guards the witness of the Spirit from both dead orthodoxy and fanatical subjectivism, insisting it is never independent of the Word and the other fruits of the Spirit.

Transitioning from the negative to the positive description of the blessed man, Pastor Martin expounds 'his delight is in the law of the Lord.' He defines delight as a spontaneous affinity rooted in one's nature, demonstrating that only the new birth can produce genuine delight in God's law. He explains four reasons why the regenerate man delights in Scripture: it reveals the Lord Himself, it is the truth by which he was born again, it reveals his duty, and it is the instrument of his sanctification. He closes with pastoral counsel on recovering lost delight.