What Does God Say About Habitual Sin?

Tom:

In this part of our program where Dave and I have been going verse by verse through the scriptures, I would like to go over some of the scriptures that clearly instruct us how we are to deal with habitual sin in our lives, sins which seem at times beyond our control like drunkenness, drug abuse, gambling, pornography, gluttony or the other end of the over eating spectrum, anorexia, bulimia, and so forth.  One reason I am eager to get into the scriptures on this issue is the comment we hear almost like a broken record, especially from Christian psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, that we are doing great psychological and even physical harm to the body of Christ by maintaining that prayer, submission to God’s Word, and the enabling power of the Holy Spirit are completely sufficient for overcoming every habitual sin, or so-called addiction.  First of all, doesn’t the Bible claim the sufficiency that I just stated?  Martin, Deidre, what do you think?

Deidre:

The Bible has definitely claimed the sufficiency, but the sufficiency is for those people who are in Christ, who are new creatures in Christ.  They believe that he is God, the Savior of the world and according to II Cor.5:17-20, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature:  old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”  If a person does not believe that Jesus is the Son of God, if he does not believe that Jesus died in his place and someone says, well, here the Bible says this, he will not receive it into his spirit, and he’s still living in darkness.

Tom:

Deidre and Martin, you write in your book, The Twelve Steps to Destruction, the standard of truth is both objective and external as a written document and an internal living reality through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Deidre:

Right.

Tom:

So, my understanding of what you said is that somebody has to begin with the living Word, with receiving Christ as Lord and Savior, then Jesus transforms their life immediately, not over—there is sanctification and we do go through a process of maturity and growing in the Lord, but basically becomes a new creature in Christ, he has the indwelling Holy Spirit, but we have the enablement to live the life as a new creature in Christ, not by might nor by power but by God’s Spirit, as the Word says.

Martin:

Yes, one of the verses, well, two of the verses that we use quite often are II Timothy 3:16-17, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:  That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”  Now, if someone does have this problem, we have to say right away this is a very serious problem.  In fact, in case of disabilities that people claim for it’s probably the fourth leading cause of disability and by projection by another fifteen, twenty years, if the Lord should tarry, it’s going to be, it looks like the second leading cause of disabilities, alcoholism.  And so, we don’t want to diminish a problem in any way, it’s a huge problem but we have a whole arsenal, a manufacturer’s guidebook to deal with this problem.  The beginning point though is that instead of like the AA, any God will do, that’s basically AA. We have to go to scripture, and we are told that “…neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”  That is the beginning.  Now, to sanctify a person who has been born again, converted, saved, then we have to draw alongside, help bear that burden and that’s very often a weakness and a shortcoming of individual Christians and individual churches.  They are often not there in order to help somebody and so they resort to this twelve step program that originated from kind of an occult caldron and it’s being internationalized.  Wherever you go in the world you see AA programs whether it’s in Asia or Europe or whether it’s in South America, there are AA programs all over.  And they are resorting to these people, and these places, and these programs who are of the world, they are worldly programs, but they are religious programs and they are a religion that becomes a substitute for the true faith in Christ Jesus.

Tom:

Right.  Martin, I find that although Christians have a concern about these things, evangelical Christians, that is, Bible-believing Christians and they would say, yes, I am a Bible believing Christian; I believe in the inerrancy of the Word and the authority of God’s Word but where it, (to me), it sort of falls down is they are not really confident in the sufficiency of God’s Word.  That’s why I want to go over some of these scriptures.  II Peter 1:3 says, “According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.”  God has provided—again, we call it the manufacturer’s handbook—if he hasn’t given us the instructions, not only the how-to but the enablement to deal with sin in our lives, well, you know, what can the world provide?  Now, only God can forgive sin and can really change lives.

Deidre:

And it is truly the Lord’s work in each person and he works in each person individually, uniquely.  We have a common faith, but the order of what he does is not the same in every person.  One person may be delivered from a particular sin right away, and another person there are other things the Lord to deal with first, because he is in the process of conforming each person to the image of Christ.  So he has the process of how he is going to do it. And we know that he has that personal interest in us and he is working in us.  He doesn’t have—you know, the scripture does not have a methodology of one, two, and three.

Tom:

Right.

Deidre:

And, we would like to have—oh, now first I do this, and then I do that, and then I do this, and then I do that, but this is religion.  People say if I do this, then this will happen, if I do that, that will happen.  But God uses his Word and his Holy Spirit is living in the person and I think the truth of the matter is that we are so easily distracted from the life of Christ in us by everything in the world. We need to continually come back and remember who he is in us, and what he is doing in us, and what his plans are for us.

Tom:

You know, one other aspect of this, when we turn to, not just the twelve steps and we are going to continue on evaluating that next week, but there are things that are contrary to scripture.  Scripture claims to be the truth.  Jesus said, “Sanctify them through thy truth, thy Word is truth.”  In John:8:31Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
See All..., 32 we find, “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him.  If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  So, what’s the option here?  You go to God’s Word, which claims to be truth. God gives us the instruction in how to deal with sin in our lives. Or we turn to the world and we turned, as you said, methodologies, systems, oh, we want to get through this really quickly, we want instant gratification or instant results.  But that has nothing to do with the reality, if you know Christ, the reality of a personal intimate relationship with him, he has drawn alongside us, he has given us these things, yet we are opting for what the world has.  It’s really grievous.

Deidre:

It is, and, you know, in Colossians:3:1-7 [1] If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. [2] Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. [3] For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. [4] When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. [5] Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: [6] For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: [7] In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.
See All..., “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”  In other words, that old man, the flesh, all of that which drives a person to drunkenness is to be counted dead.  In other words yes, it still has its effect, it’s still living and big, but we are to count it dead.  In other words, we’re to count it as something that is of that which Christ already died for.  And then it says, “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness…” and he lists a number of other things here and I am sure that the idea of drunkenness would be in that.  It’s not listed here but inordinate affection would certainly be one of the things, affection for the feelings that come with the alcohol.  So, here we have a new life in Christ and we need to nurture that new life.  How do we nurture that new life?  By talking about the temptation, by talking about various things that they talk about in AA, or about learning more about Christ by learning what the Bible says, by learning to walk according to that new life in us?  It’s a bigger program because as serious as alcoholism is, eternal death is worse.