Paris Hilton’s Mortification

I’m not into entertainment news, but Paris Hilton has become political, sociological, and now spiritual news.

In turns out, while doing time in jail, Paris made a collect call to family friend Barbara Walters. According to Walters, Hilton said: "I feel as if I'm a different person.” Walters reports that Hilton has retained a spiritual adviser and has taken to reading self-help books, which have inspired an awakening. Walters described it as knowing she has "a power she can use for different things." Paris is said to even be reading the Bible.

Mortification is a spiritual discipline. According to John Owen, the gifted puritan scholar and pastor, “mortification consists in a habitual weakening of sin.” When I speak of Hilton’s mortification I am speaking of her work to be transformed by being released from a pattern of behavior or sin that has sought to destroy her life.

I hope Hilton’s life is transformed, but I realize the challenge she faces.

It is the challenge most people face and that most people fail. It is the challenge to weaken sin so that it no longer controls us so that we can be free to live Spirit led lives.

I have seen many people year after year try and change their life like Paris. They face a painful, embarrassing, or traumatic experience and they decide in their moment of enlightenment to be done with a certain sin or lifestyle. They look to God and some even go to church and make a profession of faith asking Christ to forgive them of their sin.

Sadly, in time most take their eyes off of God and fall back into sin. Why is that? Psalm 78:34-37 “Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again. They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer. But then they would flatter him with their mouths, lying to him with their tongues; their hearts were not loyal to him, they were not faithful to his covenant.”

People make promises to God in the midst of pain, but once the crisis is averted they go back to life as before. They do this because they are not committed to God. They are only committed to themselves and use God. Once they feel they are ok they drop God.

The only way to truly experience transformation is through mortification.

First, admit your sin, believe on Christ for salvation, and confess Him as savior and Lord. Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Only after your sin has been pardoned and God's Spirit has entered your life can you be free from the power of sin.

Second, spend the rest of your life seeking to destroy the influence of sin in your life through the power of Holy Spirit. You will never destroy sin this side of death, but you can weaken its control over you. Again, John Owens helps us with his awkward sentence structure, “Now, though doubtless there may, by the Spirit and grace of Christ, a wonderful success and eminency of victory against any sin be attained, so that a man may have almost constant triumph over it, yet an utter killing and destruction of it, that it should not be, is not in this life to be expected.”

Pray for Paris. Pray for me. Pray for us all. Pray that we will fight the good fight of faith. 1 Timothy 6:12 “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”