Death by Degree

Week Two | The Purgative Way

Mortification is difficult because it uncovers the depth of our brokenness. There’s a kind of anguish we experience as God gently reveals to us our sin, layer after layer. It would be much easier if we could experience death-to-self as a one-time event, but of course mortification is a life journey that never happens fast.

To “mortify” means to kill off by degree. Think of paying a mort-gage, and you get the idea. The way you settle a mortgage is by making a series of small payments over a string of years. That’s mortification. We kill off that old, duplicitous self by degree, not all at once.

Johannes Tauler, a twelfth-century German theologian wrote:

This dying has many degrees … a man might die a thousand deaths in one day and find at once a joyful life corresponding to each of them.

Mortification is a series of transactions we make all our life; it’s a cycle of successive and small surrenders. We give a little and grow a little. That’s how we die. Bit by bit.

Room to Reflect

1. Where in my life may I be resisting the slow work of dying to self?

2. How can I view mortification not as punishment, but as grace?

3. How might I be encouraged today that “death by degree” is not failure, but faithfulness?