he Christian life is a war and one of your most lethal enemies hangs its helmet inside your heart. This infernal, internal enemy is sin, which even after new birth continues to reside in every believer. As followers of Jesus, we’ve been given a simple mission regarding sin: search and destroy. Put it to death. But in the words of Cornelius Plantinga Jr., “sin has a thousand faces.” It is one thing to oppose sin in principle, quite another to actually do the bloody work of crucifying specific sin patterns in our lives. Sometimes these patterns are difficult to detect. Always they fight back, tooth and nail, mounting vehement resistance in counter-maneuvers of a variety and complexity that would send General Schwarzkopf’s mind spinning like a tilt-a-whirl.

The most famous faces of sin are the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. Not merely corrupting vices in themselves, these seven are gateway sins leading to countless others. They are the leading undercover operatives for the world, the flesh, and the devil—that evil complex of powers arrayed against our souls. And while we may recognize these sins by their names, we are often misled by the subtlety of their methods and ways. These sins are masters of disguise, adept at masking their true nature in charades of harmlessness, acceptability, and fun.

In Hit List, Brian Hedges helps us take aim at the seven deadly sins by providing detailed dossiers for each one and equipping us with rich gospel resources for replacing vice with the virtue of Christ.