Faith and Repentance, and More Faith and Repentance

Sinclair Ferguson on John Owen's understanding of the ongoing life of the believer:

The Christian, according to Owen, maintains a sense of his continuing sinfulness; he gathers together his thoughts about individual sins, and, deliberately remembering that Christ died for these, and hearing the summons to come to him, makes an exchange, laying down his sins at the cross of Christ, and taking from him the righteousness, in all its dimensions, that he procured.

Here we meet again the recurring theme in Owen's teaching, that the pattern of inauguration into Christian experience is the foundation on which the whole of it is to be built. If becoming a Christian involves faith and repentance, then the whole of the Christian life will also bear that character.

Sanctification is the flower from the seed of regeneration.

--Sinclair Ferguson, John Owen on the Christian Life (Banner of Truth, 1987), 89