Sin is like an aggressive snake. If we don’t proactively attack sin, it will prove deadly. Thankfully, we aren’t alone in the fight. The power to kill sin comes from Christ through the Holy Spirit. As we focus on snuffing out sin, we must also draw near to the throne of grace. It’s there we’ll find grace to help in our time of need (Hebrews 4:16).
The deadliest snake in the world is Australia’s inland taipan. The venom from one bite can kill 100 full-grown humans. Imagine you came home to find this venomous killer coiled up in your living room. What would you do? You wouldn’t encourage your kids to play with it. You wouldn’t keep it around as a pet. No, you’d grab a shovel and aim for its head!
We have something far more dangerous in our homes and hearts. Sin. Sadly, too many people play with sin instead of putting it to death.
John Owen famously warns Christians, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” His book The Mortification of Sin is an exposition of Romans 8:13: “For 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.” Though Christians cannot eliminate sin in this life, Owen encourages us to diligently fight sinful desires and put them to death.
What is the shovel we use to attack our sin? Owen gives us nine practical directives:
1. Diagnose sin’s severity.
When a person has struggled with a sin for a long time, it’ll be more difficult to kill. This is especially the case if there have been long seasons when that person has indulged the sin rather than actively trying to kill it. Making excuses, justifying sinful behavior, or too quickly applying grace and mercy to a sin also contribute to the sin’s severity and lead to a hardened heart and conscience. Consider such factors when diagnosing a sin’s severity, because a more severe struggle calls for more focused effort in mortification.
2. Grasp sin’s serious consequences.
Even for the Christian, who has been declared righteous positionally, sin remains dangerous. Owen outlines four dangers sin poses for the believer: being hardened by sin’s deceitfulness, God’s temporal discipline, losing peace and strength, and, finally, the danger of eternal destruction—that by continuing in sin, one may prove he was never truly converted. A Christian’s sin grieves the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:25–30), wounds the Lord Jesus (Heb. 6:6), and can cause a Christian to lose his or her usefulness for ministry.
3. Be convinced of your guilt.
We understand guilt through the law and the gospel. “Bring the holy law of God into thy conscience,” Owen writes, “lay thy corruption to it, pray that thou mayst be affected with it.” Meditate on biblical commands that speak to sin’s sinfulness then also consider your sin in light of the cross. Ask yourself, “Why have I gone on sinning when I’ve been shown such grace and mercy? How can I show such contempt?”
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What should be apparent is that the essence of worship is itself the language of the gospel—a drawing near to God in relationship with him, made impossible because of sin that demands eternal judgment, yet restored through the substitutionary atonement of the God-man for those who place their faith in him. The gospel of Jesus Christ makes worship possible.

Many of the “worship wars” today are fueled by, I believe, differing views of the nature of worship itself. Clearly differences over what worship is and the function of various worship elements would lead to significant differences over how churches would approach corporate worship, and so I believe that a fundamental step toward resolving these debates is to seek to understand how the Bible itself defines worship.
At its most basic level, worship is drawing near to God in fellowship with him and obedience to him such that he is magnified and glorified.
Created to Worship
This idea of drawing near to God in worship permeates the storyline of Scripture. It is what Adam and Eve enjoyed as they walked with God in the cool the day (Gen 2:8). It is described in Exodus 19:17 when Moses “brought the people out of the camp to meet God” at the foot of Mt. Sinai. He had told Pharaoh to let the people go so that they might worship their God in the wilderness, and this is exactly what they intended to do at Sinai. It is what Psalm 100 commands of the Hebrews in temple worship when it says, “Come into his presence with singing and into his courts with praise.” It is what Isaiah experienced as he entered the heavenly throne room of God and saw him high and lifted up. To draw near to God is to enter his very presence in fellowship and obedience.
Ultimately, this is why God created people. God created the world to put on display the excellencies of his own glory, and he created people therein that they might witness that glory and praise him for it. In Isaiah 43:6–7 God proclaims, “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Likewise, Paul commands in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.”
Worship—magnifying God’s worth and glory—is the reason God made us.
Sin Prevents Worship
Adam and Eve’s fall into sin—their disobedience of God’s commandments—was essentially failure to magnify the worthiness of God to be their master and bring him glory, and thus it was a failure to worship him acceptably.
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We get a chance to love the stranger as a beautiful gospel picture to the lost world. Let us, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9), let us reach out most specifically to those who are the least known, and let us seek to be hospitable using all resources at our disposal. 

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
Romans 12:13
I have a confession: I am a hopeless extrovert. I love being around people. Put me in a good conversation or in a group and I’m immediately rejuvenated. Having people in my house is better than shot of espresso. In God’s mercy, I married an introvert. She loves people, but her battery gets depleted in a group setting. She charges up to have people over and needs a rest when they leave. I’d say these two types probably describe a large number of people. Neither are superior and both have their shortcomings, but both types are called to, “seek to show hospitality.” One thing I’ve come to learn over the years is that hospitality is about more than food.
When I think of hospitality, I immediately think of having someone over to my house, feeding them a meal, and spending the evening in good conversation. And while that has biblical precedence (think Abraham and the angel of the LORD in Genesis 18), I think we can miss the heart behind hospitality when we simplify it to a meal in our homes. Here’s what I mean: The word we translate as “hospitality” is literally “philoxenia”. Do any of those parts look familiar? It literally means “love” (philo) for the “stranger” (xenia). So when we are commanded to show hospitality, we are commanded to show love for the stranger.
Who
How does this change the way we should think of hospitality? For one, this should sharpen the focus of whom hospitality is primarily directed toward.
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