The 17th century Puritan John Owen is perhaps most famous for one line that you've probably heard before.

Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

And in that one line, we hear the life and death reality of our fight for holiness,

a reality that we're often so dull to in our everyday lives.

It's so easy for us to downplay the seriousness of our sin, instead focused on an endless array of distractions.

But that's where John Owen can help.

In my interview today, I'm speaking with Kelly Capuch, someone who spent years mining the riches of John Owen's works.

And although Owen was writing hundreds of years ago, his insights into the corruption of the

human heart and the gospel's power to change us from the inside out are truly profound.

Kelly serves as a professor of theological studies at Covenant College and served as an editor on one volume in the complete works of John Owen entitled Sin and Temptation from Crossway.

Let's get started.

Well, Kelly, thanks so much for joining me today on the Cross Fight podcast.

Oh, I'm happy to be with you, Matt. Thanks.

So today we're going to talk about John Owen and some of the helpful insights that he can

offer to us today when it comes to fighting against sin as Christians.

And I think he's probably perhaps most famous. If people have heard of John Owen, they've probably

heard a quote that directly relates to this topic. And the quote is, be killing sin or it will be

killing you. Yeah. I wonder if you could just reflect a little bit back to when you first heard that quote.

Do you remember when you first encountered that line and even what you thought about that?

Yeah, I probably can't tell you

exactly when I first heard it or read it. But I can tell you, I've had a little bit of a mixed

relationship with the quote because, you know, the idea of be killing sinner, it be killing you,

...