God's Way of Escape

Carl’s hooked. Badly. He didn’t intend to become addicted but he’s caught now and can’t see how to get free. The pictures just fire him up; they make his brain blaze with lust. And there is the intense, gratifying release that always results, driving Carl on into more and more images, and lust, and bondage. He knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew it would bend him, corrupt his thinking, and darken his soul. But the pleasure of his sinful addiction is fierce and powerfully habit-forming!

Everywhere Carl looks there is something that provokes his sexual lust. On billboards, magazine covers, in t. v. commercials, music videos, on ten-foot store signs at the mall Carl sees women in various states of undress, lips slightly parted, heavy-lidded eyes staring suggestively, arching invitingly toward him. All around Carl, females in skin-tight yoga pants that reveal every crevice, and curve, and crease of their womanly form walk past, careless of the blaze they ignite in Carl’s mind. After a few hours out-and-about, what choice does Carl have but to return home powerfully aroused and dive headlong into the sexual images he’s collected on his phone or p.c.?

It’s so easy to find the dirty images he so strongly craves! Way too easy. It seems like there are millions of pictures and videos to see; millions of women eager to satisfy Carl’s addiction. What can he do? He’s helpless before the tidal wave of sexuality sweeping over him from the ‘net.

Carl’s out of control. This scares him, this feeling of being on the edge of a kind of lust-madness. And he’s slowly spiraling downward into harder, more violent, more warped images and videos. If he can’t find a way out, he’s terrified of what he might become and do.

To the few people to whom Carl has spoken of his…problem, the advice has been less than helpful: Take a cold shower, stay busy, work-out lots, go for a run, think of the naked women he looks at as his sisters, get a girlfriend with whom he can fornicate, install controls on his phone and p.c. None of this stuff has helped. Is Carl out of luck, then, doomed to be forever a inappropriate content addict?

No. God’s got a way out. Here it is:

Romans 13:12-14
12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

There are two parts to the advice given here:

- cast off the works of darkness, make no provision for the flesh.

- put on the armor of Light who is Christ.

Make no provision for the flesh. Get rid of the p.c. Get rid of the cell-phone. Stay away from the mall. Stop watching t.v. As much as possible, remove everything through which temptation is entering. The drunk must avoid the pub and the inappropriate content addict must avoid the internet. Usually, this is where the addict finds out how serious he (or she) is about breaking out of their addiction.

Put on Christ. In other words, get saved. Become a child of God through trusting in Christ as Savior and Lord (Romans 10:9-10). When one does, they are clothed in the Armor of Light, in the righteousness, truth and power of Christ, they become a “new creature in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) The born-again person also becomes a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) and in the Spirit obtains all they need to be a holy, stable, controlled person. (Ephesians 3:16; Ephesians 5:9; 2 Timothy 1:7)

There are lots of addicted Christians, though, aren’t there? There are lots of people who have "put on Christ," that is, they have been saved, but who live bound in all sorts of sin. Yes, more and more, it seems – especially to inappropriate content. How come they’re addicted if the Holy Spirit is in them? Shouldn’t the Spirit free them from all addictions?

God doesn’t make puppets of His children. The Spirit gives believers spiritual life, placing them in Christ, but he won’t coerce those in whom he dwells to live as he wants them to live. At every turn, they must be agreeing to his transformation, his change, of them. This is done by way of submission to the Holy Spirit, by a constant yielding to his will and way throughout every day.

Romans 6:12-18
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.
13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

The Holy Spirit brings believers into conformity to Christ, out of bondage to sin and into a life of consistent holiness and purity, as they “present themselves to God as instruments of righteousness.” This isn’t a once-a-day thing, though, but often a moment-by-moment one. As often as the crossroads of choice to live one’s own way rather than God’s appears within, the believer must choose again to go God’s way by renewing their submission to Him. (Romans 8:14; Romans 12:1; James 4:6-10; 1 Peter 5:6; Acts 20:18-19)

As the born-again believer remains in humble submission to God throughout each day, the Spirit works naturally, subtly, but profoundly in them, altering their desires, teaching them the freedom-giving Truth of God, strengthening them to stand free of sin and Self. As the believer remains yielded to God, the Spirit “mortifies” or “puts to death” the deeds of their flesh (Romans 8:13), in their conduct reflecting the truth of who they have become in Christ.

Sin is just a symptom of something else: Self. The Real Problem isn’t addiction to inappropriate content – or any addiction, for that matter. The reason there’s addiction, plaguing sin, at all is that Self is ruling upon the throne of one’s heart. What do I mean by “Self”? I mean the “old man” of whom Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Rome. (Romans 6:6) The “old man” is who we are apart from God, ruled within by our own will and desires, selfish, temporal and short-sighted, ordered by the impulses of our flesh rather than by the will and way of the Spirit. Out of the rule of the “old man” – Self - come all the sins and addictions under which we labor.

Until the “old man” is dealt with, the symptoms of sin, the addictions to sin, cannot be dissolved. But the “old man” is so rotten, so incorrigibly evil, that it cannot be remediated. (Jeremiah 17:9; Ephesians 2:1-3; Titus 3:3; Romans 8:5-8) God cannot improve Self, our “old man,” and so He has put him (or her) to death with Christ on the cross of Calvary. How? No idea. But this is what the Bible tells us is the case, regardless.

Romans 6:1-7
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2 God forbid. How shall we, who are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
3 Know you not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.

This is why it is so vital for a person to be born-again, saved, and made a new creature in Christ. The person who is “in Christ” has been united spiritually with him, dying to the “old man” and rising to newness of life in Jesus, freed from the power sin and Self. When a person lives by faith in the truth of their co-crucifixion with Christ, humbly yielding themselves to the control of the Spirit throughout every day, they reflect more and more in their daily living the reality of their spiritual position in Jesus.

This is God’s way to freedom from all sin. In a nutshell:

1. Make no provision (opportunity) for the flesh.

2. Put on Christ (get saved).

3. Live in constant submission to the Holy Spirit.

4. By faith, count on the truth of your death to Self.

There’s one other thing to add: Keep short accounts with God. (1 John 1:9) Sin hinders the work of God in one’s life (Psalms 66:18; Isaiah 59:2; 1 Peter 3:10-12); it obscures God, makes Him seem distant and unreachable. Until we confess our sin and are cleansed of it, sin stands in the way of being set free by God. As sin crops up, then, deal with it before God, confessing it to Him and receiving His cleansing from it.

It takes time to develop an addiction and it takes time to come free of it. The work of God is, generally, a progressive one, growing and changing us subtly and naturally over time, after the manner of a branch of a tree (John 15:4-5). One, then, must be patient, persistent and consistent in living in the way Scripture prescribes in order to come fully into freedom from sin and Self.

Neither Carl, nor you, reader, is helpless against an addiction to inappropriate content. God can bring you free, totally and permanently. But, He will only do so His way. At the end of His transformation of you isn’t just liberty from addiction, you see, but a greater, deeper experience of Him which is the real goal – and reward – of living a holy life.

What will you do? Will you submit to God’s “way of escape” and not only come free of sin but deeper into communion with God? It’s what you were made for, you know. God won’t just set us free from addiction but sets us free to know and delight in Him. What a great God He is!

Philippians 3:7-8
7 But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

Psalm 16:8-11
8 I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.
10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.
11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Do you want God, though? Or do you just want freedom from your addiction? What you do with what you’ve just read will reveal the truth.

Bump.