In the eleventh chapter of Indwelling Sin in Believers, John Owen described how sin entices our emotions or desires (affections). “The mind is drawn away from duty, and the affections are enticed to sin.” He said this enticement can be likened to a fishing lure. “For there is an allusion in it to the bait wherewith a fish is taken on the hook, which holds him to his destruction.” The first thing he wants us to know about this kind of sinful enticement is what it is like to have our affections entangled and corrupted by this lure.

First, our affections become entangled when sin awakens a desire for the coveted object. And if sin prevails, it becomes an obsession, filling our imagination with images and likenesses of the object continually. Such a person devises wickedness; they obsess over the evil in their sleep. “That is, their imaginations are possessed with a continual representation of the object of their lusts.”

The apostle John tells us the things that are in world are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and pride of possessions (1 John 2:16). The lust of the eyes does not refer here to the bodily sense of seeing, but to how the imagination becomes fixated on whatever is the object of our desire. The act of seeing initiates the process of coveting it. A person’s heart can have a steady, secure hatred of the desire. However, if they find that their imagination frequently attends to it, they need to realize their affections may be secretly enticed by this sin.

This entanglement is intensified when the imagination prevails upon the mind to fantasize about the object of desire. This may occur even when the person would never actually do the thing they fantasize about. These thoughts are like couriers carrying sin to and fro, between the imagination and the affections. They inflame the imagination and increasingly entangle the desires. And if the will separates from what rules it, sin is conceived.

A readiness to rationalize sin, or the pardons offered against sin when it is committed, show how the affections are entangled with it. “Is it not a little one;” or “there is mercy provided;” or “in time I shall relinquish it” is the language of a deceived heart. When there is a readiness in the soul to entertain such secret insinuations, “it is evidence that the affections are enticed.” When the soul is willing to be to be tempted or courted by sin, it has lost its conjugal affections to Christ and is entangled.

When the deceit of sin has prevailed thus far on any person, then he is enticed or entangled; the will is not yet come to the actual conception of this or that sin by its consent, but the whole soul is in a near inclination thereunto. And many other instances I could give as tokens and evidences of this entanglement. These may suffice to manifest what we intend thereby.

Second, taking advantage of such times, it presents sin as attractive to our corrupt affections. It gilds over the object of our craving with a thousand pretenses, which it presents to our corrupt desires. This is when the bait is presented to the now hungry creature for its sinful pleasure. This pleasure consists of the ability to satisfy the flesh, to corrupt our affections. So, Paul cautioned us to “make no provision for the flesh” (Romans 13: 14).

Thus, therefore, the deceit of sin endeavours to entangle the affections, by proposing to them, through the assistance of the imagination, that suitableness which is in it, to the satisfaction of its corrupt lusts, now set at some liberty, by the inadvertency of the mind. It presents its wine sparkling in the cup, the beauty of the adulteress, the riches of the world, to sensual and covetous persons, and somewhat in the like kind, in some degree, to believers themselves. When, therefore, I say, sin would entangle the soul, it prevails with the imagination to solicit the heart, by representing this false painted beauty, or pretended satisfactoriness of sin: and then if Satan, with any peculiar temptation, fall into its assistance, it oftentimes inflames all the affections, and puts the whole soul into disorder.

Third, it hides the danger of sin. It covers the danger as the hook covers with the bait. However, it is not possible for sin to entirely hide its dangers from a person. “But this it will do, it will so take up and possess the mind and affections, with the baits and desirableness of sin, that it shall divert them from an actual and practical contemplation of the danger of it.” This is what Satan did with his first temptation, and what sin had done ever since. Sin uses a thousand different tricks to distract us from seeing the terror of the Lord as the ultimate consequence of our transgressions. The hope of pardon will be used to hide it; the hope of future repentance will hide it; the persistence of lust will hide it; fixing the imagination on present objects will hide it; the enjoyment of lust will hide it. It has a thousand tricks that cannot be repeated here.

Let us pause here for a while and convey some suggestions to prevent this work of the deceitfulness of sin. If we want to avoid the enticement and entanglement of sin, we must not stroll on the road that leads to death. Be mindful of your affections, which in the Scriptures are referred to as the heart—the principle thing God requires as we walk before Him. Proverbs 4:23 tells us to watch or keep our hearts with all vigilance.

You have many things in your life that you watch over—your life, your properties, your reputations, your families. But above all, watch over the heart; your affections. Keep it from being entangled with sin. If you save all other things but lose your heart, all is lost. What then can you do?

Generally, guard your heart by setting your minds on things above and not on earthly things; put to death what is earthly in you (Colossians 3:2, 5). If you set your mind on heavenly things, this will enable you to put sin to death. Let your mind be preoccupied with God Himself in all His beauty and glory; the Lord Jesus, who is altogether lovely; the mysteries revealed or the promises given in the gospel. If our minds were taken up with these things, what access could sin gain with its painted pleasures and sugared poisons? “For, what are the vain, transitory pleasures of sin in comparison of the exceeding recompense of reward which is proposed to us?

Specifically, set your mind on the cross of Christ, which is of overwhelming value for the frustration of indwelling sin. If the heart is filled by the cross of Christ, it crucifies all the baits and pleasures of sin. “It leaves no seeming beauty, no appearing pleasure or comeliness in them.” It roots up corrupt lusts, and leaves no starting point for the flesh to fulfill its lusts. “Fill your affections with the cross of Christ, that there may be no room for sin.”

Watch over the vigor of your heart towards heavenly things. If it is not regularly attended to, excited, directed and forewarned, it is apt to decline. And sin lies in wait, ready to take every advantage it can over them. Scripture speaks repeatedly of losing your first love, of letting your heart decay. So be jealous over it; regularly examine it; call it to account and supply it with what is needed to excite it to do its duty.