Take Up the Fight Against Small Sins

Gluttony will kill you. Not just your body; the stakes are far higher. Your very soul could hang in the balance with gluttony. So also with other seemingly minor sins like grumbling and gossip, fruitlessness and impatience.

“Be killing sin,” John Owen wrote so memorably, “or it will be killing you.” It’s not just the “big sins” that put our souls to death; it’s also the seemingly “small sins” like laziness, stinginess, and worldliness — sins we often tolerate in ourselves and in the church.

But no sin is safe. Sin, at bottom, is preferring other things to God. Sin is an anti-God and anti-Christ impulse lurking in our own souls. Sin is not only a matter of what we do but what we believe and love. Our sin — however seemingly small and private — is an affront to God, his purpose in all he does, and his calling on our lives to honor him. For all creatures, sin dishonors our Creator. Worst of all for professing Christians, sin dishonors our Redeemer.

Indwelling Sin and Spirit

While we cannot rid ourselves of all sin in this life, a great day is coming for those who fight against their sin — an eternal, unending day without sin. All the difference in the world (and in eternity) exists between those who only have indwelling sin and those who also have the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Spirit works and moves in Christians. He prompts, inspires, enlivens, and empowers the fight against every anti-God impulse — both big and small — in our souls. The Spirit hates the sins we often tolerate. And he’s ready to help.

“It’s not just the ‘big sins’ that put our souls to death; it’s also the seemingly ‘small sins.’”

We can scarcely appreciate the trembling reality that we have the Spirit of God in us. But how will we do our part? Practically, what does it feel like to have the Spirit animating us to take up arms for God in our own souls and bodies? What does it look like when the indwelling Spirit goes to war in and through us on our indwelling sin — small and “respectable” sins included?

We will answer this question in at least seven ways this month at Desiring God as we focus on defeating “seven sins we tolerate.” But before we begin that journey, let’s make two quick stops in Romans 8 to rehearse the great call and great cause in the fight.

Great Call to Fight

First, consider the very passage that inspired Owen to say, “Be killing sin”: “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).

Apart from divine intervention, to be a sinner is to have a terminal diagnosis. In a moment we’ll address the action of the divine Son in providing a cure; in verse 13, the actor is the divine Spirit. The great call for every Christian is to fight our sin “by the Spirit” — big ones and seemingly little ones as well. Romans 8:13 makes no distinction.

Sinners who receive the indwelling Spirit do not settle in with their indwelling sin. They have received a Spirit who is not passive. He’s not along for the ride. He pricks. He energizes. He counsels. He convicts. He pushes. He shoves when he has to (John 14:26; 16:8–14; Romans 8:26–27).

But the Spirit does not put to death sinful deeds of the body apart from us. We participate. You are involved: “you put to death by the Spirit.” How does this work?

Our team of teachers will say more in the days ahead, but here we emphasize that God’s Spirit joins his power to God’s word. The divine Spirit directs our conscious minds to the staggering promises of God in Scripture for our good. He equips us not with sheer willpower but with God-honoring promises of superior pleasure in him so we might overcome sins great and small.

Every sin holds out some promise of pleasure. Such promises are deceitful (Hebrews 3:13), but they are promises nonetheless. The Spirit specializes in directing us to God’s word for the better promises and superior pleasures that he offers. And in so doing, the Spirit goes to work in us, on our hearts, to change us from the inside. We defeat sin’s pull not by pretending it doesn’t exist, but by giving ourselves to the superior pull of God’s promises.

Great Cause for Hope

Then comes the great cause of real hope for the fight. Romans 8:13 highlights the Spirit; Romans 8:32 holds up the Son as our guarantee of genuine triumph: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

If Romans 8:28–39 are the Himalayas of God’s promises, verse 32 is Mount Everest. Its seeming simplicity (God “did not spare his own Son”) paired with its unbounded extent (“all things”) powerfully feeds our hope for victory over sin. This remarkable verse takes the gospel we believe — that the divine Father gave his own Son to rescue sinners — and pairs it with a vastness and depth of deliverance we might otherwise hardly dare to believe.

Romans 8:32 is a promise of God’s “future grace.” Without demeaning the “past grace” shown at the cross, this verse adds, If you believe that, then all the more should you believe God will give you everything you need to get safely home — even victories against your tolerable sins. If God was so committed to saving sinners that he gave his own Son, how could he not see you through the smaller things — through “all things”?

“Faith in future grace” is one way to phrase our hope. “For the joy set before us” is another. Amazingly, as Piper writes, “Most of our experience of God’s active grace lies in the future. The grace that we have already experienced from God is infinitesimally small compared to the future grace that we will experience from now to eternity” (Battling Unbelief, 140).

And that is the grace through which God will help you put to death the sins, however tolerable, that continue to dog you.

Battling Unbelief

The call to battle our own sin extends beyond the level of behavior to unbelief in the heart — to fight the fire of sin’s deceitful promises with the superior promises of God’s word.

“The call to battle our own sin extends beyond the level of behavior to unbelief in the heart.”

John Piper’s book Battling Unbelief applies this paradigm to eight common sins: anxiety, pride, misplaced shame, impatience, covetousness, bitterness, despondency, and lust. In honor of this (newly republished) book, our team will apply the same paradigm to seven more subtle struggles, sins we may be prone to tolerate rather than kill: gluttony, grumbling, laziness, gossip, stinginess, fruitlessness, and worldliness.

During the month of October, we invite you to reflect with us on the slight, private sins we secretly harbor — and to take up fresh arms against them. Cast away the false promises of sin and embrace the superior promises of God. Embrace the Spirit’s prompting and power. Put to death grumbling and covetousness, irritability and laziness. And rejoice that whether you contend against complaining or squandering, jealousy or lethargy, the Spirit of God himself stands ready to help with his own touch of omnipotence.