The Problem of Copper Nails

February 23, 2012 Leave a Comment

The noted preacher Dr. F.E. Marsh once preached a sermon on the importance of confession of sin and wherever possible the restitution for wrong done to others. At the close of the service one of his church members came to him with a troubled conscience. “Pastor,” he said, “you have put me in a sad fix. I have wronged someone and am ashamed to confess it or try to put it right. You see, I am a boat builder and the man I work for is an infidel. I have talked to him often about his need of Christ and urged him to come and hear you preach, but he scoffs and ridicules it all. Lately, though, I’ve become guilty of something that, if I should acknowledge it to him, will ruin my testimony forever.”

The church member then went on to explain that sometime ago he had started building a boat for himself in his own yard. He had needed to use copper nails for the job because such nails don’t rust in water. Copper nails are expensive, however, and so he had been carrying home large quantities of them from work. He had rationalized the stealing by telling himself that his employer wasn’t paying him a large enough salary and that the employer had so many nails that he wouldn’t miss them anyway. That reasoning had kept the fellow’s conscience reasonably appeased until Dr. Marsh’s sermon.

Dr. Marsh, of course, counseled the church member to go to the employer, confess the stealing, and make the theft right. But the man just couldn’t bring himself to do it. In his mind such a thing would simply be too embarrassing. So weeks passed, and with each new week the fellow’s guilt only increased. Finally, it got to be too much for him and he broke. He went and confessed all to the employer and offered to pay for the nails. And how did the employer respond to the confession and offer? He said, “George, I always did think you were just a hypocrite, but now I begin to feel there’s something to this Christianity after all. Any religion that would make a dishonest workman come back and confess that he had been stealing copper nails and offer to settle for them must be worth having.”

And now, Christian, I’ve got just one question for you: Have you got any “copper nails” in your life that call for some confession and restitution on your part? If you do, you’d be well advised to confront the issue head on. Until you do, any sense of inner peace you have will be a false one. Remember, you can’t be wrong with men and right with God.

Filed under Backsliding, Character, Confession, Influence, Inner Peace, Personal Holiness, Repentance, Sin Tagged with , , , , ,

A Contest No One Can Win

January 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

Imagine a contest where the stated goal is: “Jump up and touch the moon.” Contestant #1 is an eighty-year-old woman with a walker. She steps up to the line and gives it all she’s got, but her jump doesn’t even register as measurable. Contestant #2 is Russell Mckinney. He steps up to the line and has a go, but his jump peaks out at about two inches. (I could have done a little better back in the day.) Contestant #3 is a bench-warmer on his high-school team. He takes his turn at the line and gets off what is easily the most impressive jump so far, which puts him in the lead. Finally, contestant #4 is NBA all-star Lebron James. His liftoff is breathtaking to watch. The muscles in his powerful legs ripple as he soars straight up into the air. Higher and higher he goes, putting so much distance between his jump and the high-schooler’s that second place isn’t even worth mentioning. When James finally comes back down he is unquestionably declared the obvious winner.

Of course, there’s one thing that shouldn’t be forgotten: the actual goal of the contest. The contest wasn’t held to see who could jump the highest. It was held to see if anyone could jump up and touch the moon. Lebron got the closest to meeting the goal, but even he failed miserably at it.

The Bible teaches that earning your way into heaven by way of “good works” is like that contest. The goal is an impossibility right from the start. Oh, sure, some may produce more “good works” than others. But, in the end, it’s laughable to think that anyone could get even remotely close to pulling of the goal. It can’t happen, and here’s why:

-Every human being is a born sinner (Romans 3:10; Romans 3:23; Ecclesiastes 7:20).

-Our inborn sin nature comes from Adam, the father of our race (Genesis 3:1-24; 1 Timothy 2:13-14; Romans 5:12).

-Our nature of sin compels us to commit acts of sin (Isaiah 53:6; Romans 3:11-18).

-To break just one of God’s laws is to stand guilty of breaking them all; it’s an all-or-nothing type of deal (James 2:10).

You see, once you understand the set-up going in, you’ll realize that salvation, and by implication entrance into heaven, can NEVER come by way of “good works” (Titus 3:4-7; Ephesians 2:8-9). It is instead a gift that God gives to the sinner, a gift He extends in grace (unearned favor) to the one who places his or her faith in Jesus Christ as Savior (Ephesians 2:8).

I challenge you right now to take your Bible, look up and read all the references that I have listed in this post, and let the truth of them wash over you. When you do you’ll see that the whole idea of someone earning their way into heaven by way of “good works” is patently absurd. Salvation is a gift, and like any gift it must be accepted to be owned. Since this gift is all wrapped up in a person, Jesus Christ, the only way to accept it is to accept Him. Call it putting your faith in Jesus. Call it believing in Him. Call it opening the door of your heart to Him. Call it receiving Him. These terminologies are all just different ways of describing the acceptance of the gift. But whatever you do, ACCEPT THE GIFT!!! If you don’t, you might as well be trying to jump and touch the moon.

Filed under Belief, Bible Study, faith, Heaven, salvation, Sin, The Depravity of Man Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Secret Sin

January 20, 2012 Leave a Comment

It’s been said that your character is what you are when no one is looking. However, it’s also been said that you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool God any time. In other words, God is always looking. And so what kind of character does He see on display from you when no one is looking?

When I was a kid I got a snazzy new tape-recorder one Christmas. In the days that followed I had a blast with that thing. One of my favorite past-times was covertly recording the conversations between my mom and dad. You just never knew when you’d catch some juicy bit of gossip, some unguarded moment of candor, or some piece of incriminating discussion that they’d rather not have laid down on cassette tape for anyone to hear. I thought it was all funny, but they weren’t always amused when they heard my playback.

I was reminded of this the other day when my youngest, Royce, tried to secretly record me on the Nintendo 3DS he got for Christmas. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? Fortunately for me, I caught him before I could utter any blackmail-worthy remarks. Unfortunately for me, God’s tape-recorder is always running. Actually, He has more than a tape-recorder; He has a videotape-machine.

It’s with this in mind that I’ll ask you if you’ve been committing some supposedly “secret” sin lately? If you have, just know that “secret” sin on earth is open scandal in heaven. You might be fooling some of the people all of the time or even all of the people some of the time, but you aren’t fooling God any time. Furthermore, the Bible still says, “…be sure that your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). And if you don’t believe that, the only person you are fooling is yourself.

Filed under adultery, Character, God's Omnipresence, God's Omniscience, Honesty, Hypocrisy, Personal, Personal Holiness, Sin Tagged with , , , ,

Making Perception Align With Reality

January 16, 2012 1 Comment

The owner of a candy store noticed that one of his salesgirls would have customers lined up waiting for her even as his other girls stood by doing nothing. Perplexed by this, he went to the girl and asked for her secret. She answered, “The other girls scoop up more than the requested amount of candy and then start taking away. I scoop up less and then add to it.”

It’s all about perception, isn’t it? Those customers were perceiving themselves to be getting more candy from that salesgirl, even though they really weren’t. Of course, that’s the problem with perception: it usually bears little semblance to the truth.

We Christians must admit that the perception lost people have of us usually isn’t all that glowing. They perceive us to be hypocritical, judgmental, bigoted, closed-minded, ignorant, irrational, and angry. Admittedly, some Christians can rightly be classified under each of those adjectives. There are many Christians, however, who can’t, and these are the ones who can’t be so easily explained away by lost people.

A world traveler visited the land of what had once been a savage race of cannibals. Actually, the only reason the man could even visit the land was because Christian missionaries had previously blazed the trail, learned the language, and won many of those cannibals to Christ. As the traveler struck up a conversation with one of the natives, he couldn’t resist sharing his views on Christianity with the native. He said, “I myself have no use for the religion. I don’t believe the Bible to be anything other than a man-made book. I don’t believe that Jesus was God in the flesh. And I don’t believe that I will somehow be changed if I believe in Him as my Savior.” To that the native answered, “My friend, if Jesus does not change lives, you would be in a pot by now.”

Is that story real? I doubt it. But could it be? Absolutely! As 2 Corinthians 5:17 says:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.

The test that we Christians must pass daily is that of making the reality of this change align with the world’s perception of us. Putting it another way, we’ve got to act “new.” If we continue to commit our same old sins and hold to our same old wrong attitudes, that will create a false perception of us. Lost people will look at us and think, “I guess that Jesus thing didn’t work out so well.” On the other hand, if we exhibit a genuine change from cannibalistic to cordial (to go back to my illustration), from hypocritical to holy, from angry to affable, from judgmental to just, etc., then they won’t be able to dismiss us so quickly. And that is why it is so important that we walk the walk in addition to talking the talk.

Filed under Change, Discipleship, Doing Good, Dress and Appearance, faithfulness, Personal Holiness, Righteousness, salvation, Sin, Truth Tagged with , , , , ,

When A Strength Becomes A Weakness

December 26, 2011 Leave a Comment

It is paradoxical, as well as sad, that God’s servant will often fail in the very area in which he or she is normally strong. The Bible offers us several case studies of this strange fact. Let me share three of those examples with you.

I’ll start with Abraham. He was a man who exhibited enough faith to pack up his belongings, leave his hometown of Ur, and begin an epic journey to an unknown land which God promised to show him (Genesis 12:1-5). But what happened when he arrived in the promised land of Canaan? He was greeted there by a famine. So what did he do? He lost faith that God could provide for him during that famine and he went down to Egypt. There he showed his lack of faith in God’s protection by instructing his beautiful wife Sarai to lie and say that she was his sister (Genesis 12:10-20). And would you believe that he even repeated this exact same sin many years later when he was in Gerar and dealing with Abimelech, the king of Gerar (Genesis 20:1-18)? What happened to your great faith, Abraham?

Next, I’ll mention Moses. He was a very mild-mannered man who certainly didn’t have a problem with ego or bravado. As a matter of fact, we can read Exodus chapters 3 and 4 and see that it was all that God could do to get him to return to Egypt and lead Israel. Moses was quick to say, “Lord, who am I to be such a leader? I am not an eloquent man. Please, send whomever else you will.” Numbers 12:3 even says that Moses was more humble (meek, gentle, kind) than all men who were on the face of the earth. That’s an amazing statement! But how did Moses ultimately get himself into trouble and miss out on entering into the promised land of Canaan himself? In a fit of anger and rage he rebuked the people and struck the rock twice when God had commanded him to merely speak to it. He also spoke as if he and Aaron, rather than God, caused the water to gush from the rock (Numbers 20:1-13). What happened to your great humility, Moses?

Lastly, I’ll mention Elijah. He showed astounding courage in going to Ahab, the king of Israel, and proclaiming, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word” (1 Kings 17:1). He showed just as much courage, if not more, in taking on and defeating Ahab’s prophets of Baal in a great showdown atop Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:20-40). But what did he do right on the heels of that landmark victory? He heard that Ahab’s queen, Jezebel, had put a death sentence on his head and he fled. Then, when he reached a certain place out there in the wilderness, he prayed and asked God to take his life (1 Kings 19:1-4). What happened to your great courage, Elijah?

If it sounds like I’m picking on Abraham, Moses, and Elijah, I’m not. The fact is, these are just three of a lengthy list of Bible characters who failed in the very areas in which they were normally strong. This should teach us that we ourselves aren’t immune to this particular problem. So, do you have an area in which you are especially strong in your walk with the Lord? If you do, be sure to keep yourself vigilant in that area. Don’t let yourself get overconfident to the point where you drop your guard. Remember, if it happened to the likes of Abraham, Moses, and Elijah, it can happen to you.

Filed under Backsliding, Courage, faith, Humility, Personal Holiness, Sin Tagged with , , , , ,

The Shipwrecked Christian

December 13, 2011 Leave a Comment

Maybe you’ve heard the old line, “The world has become so churchy and the church has become so worldly that you can’t tell the difference between the two.” Unfortunately there is a great deal of truth to this. Backslidden Christians create such a major hindrance to what God wants to accomplish in the world. Even more than that, they do untold harm to their own lives.

One of the best descriptions I’ve ever read concerning the worldly, carnal, backslidden Christian comes from Charles Spurgeon. In the October 14 evening devotion from his book Morning & Evening, he compares such a Christian’s entrance into heaven to a shipwrecked sailor having to climb up the steep rocks of his homeland just to get home. There is no peaceful sail into the safe harbor. There is no confident expectation of praise for a job well done. There is no triumphant entrance. There is only the exhausted, worn out, frazzled Christian scratching and clawing his way to a place of safety.

My guess is that Spurgeon had 1 Timothy 1:18-20 in mind when he used that illustration. In those verses, the apostle Paul explains to the young preacher Timothy that some Christians have rejected faith and a good conscience and “concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck.” Paul then gives the specific names (Hymenaeus and Alexander) of two such Christians and says that he delivered them to Satan so they would learn not to blaspheme. According to 1 Corinthians 5:1-7, the term “delivered them to Satan” means what we call “church discipline” (excommunication, “churching” someone). This should show us just how serious backsliding is.

Spurgeon closes out his devotion with the following words:

It is dangerous for an heir of heaven to be a great friend with the heirs of hell. Even small inconsistencies are dangerous. Little thorns make great blisters, little moths destroy fine garments, and a little frivolity and mischief will rob faith of a thousand joys. O believer, you do not realize what you lose by your conformity to the world. It cuts the tendons of your strength and makes you crawl where you ought to run. For your own comfort’s sake and for the sake of your growth in grace, if you are a Christian, then be a marked and distinct Christian.

To these words I can only add the question: “Christian, do other people think of you as a marked and distinct Christian? I once heard a preacher say, “Some Christians don’t do enough for the Lord to attract a used demon!” Is that you, Christian? Are you, as not only Spurgeon but also Paul described, living a shipwrecked walk with Christ? If you are, my prayer is that you will do the necessary confessing and repenting today. Remember that 1 John 1:9 is still in the Bible and it still works:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Filed under Backsliding, Change, Church Discipline, Confession, Demons, Heaven, Personal Holiness, Repentance, salvation, Sin Tagged with , , , , , ,

So Far, So Good

November 18, 2011 3 Comments

A man jumped off the Empire State building. As he went plunging down past the 50th floor, an onlooker spoke to him from an open window and said, “Well, how does it feel?” The jumper answered, “So far, so good.”

Just as that jumper didn’t grasp that the end of the story hadn’t been written yet, many people don’t understand that we shouldn’t judge God’s opinion of a situation based solely upon the current outlook. Take the great flood for instance. Genesis 6:3 tells us that God instituted nothing less than a 120-year countdown for that judgment:

And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

(By the way, some have wrongly taught that this statement was God limiting the individual lifespan to 120 years. Long after the flood, however, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Ishmael, and Jacob each lived more than 120 years. So, clearly, the 120 years refers to how long it would be before the flood struck.)

Now imagine that you were a citizen of earth during those 120 years. Couldn’t you have said, “So far, so good”? Jesus spoke of the footloose and carefree attitude that people had during those years. He said:

“For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark and did not know until the flood came and took them all away…” (Matthew 24:38-39)

Right here I could really run with the fact that Bible prophecy teaches that this world has some dark days slated for its future. It’s hard to read Revelation chapters 6 through 19 and miss that. But I feel led to present the application in a different way. Rather than focus upon the coming judgment laid out in Bible prophecy, I want to ask you to examine your own life. Have you been engaging in some sin for which you haven’t paid the price yet? If the answer is yes, consider this post to be your wake-up call. God is longsuffering, but He isn’t foreversuffering. Just because you have gotten by with your sin so far, you shouldn’t take that to mean that you are untouchable. The truth is, you’re already on God’s countdown and a flood is headed your way. So why not repent of your sin today, confess it to Jesus, and lay hold of the forgiveness that comes with believing in Him as your personal Savior? If you don’t, all I can say is enjoy the free-fall while it lasts because you won’t like how it ends.

Filed under Backsliding, Coming Judgment, Forgiveness, God's Wrath, God's judgment, Personal Holiness, Repentance, Sin, Sowing and Reaping Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Physical Beauty

November 9, 2011 Leave a Comment

I walked past Tonya the other day as she was watching the Miss World beauty pageant. It didn’t take me long to notice that the host looked like a Keebler elf compared to those Amazons. I mean, really, if the girls all have to be in the 5’11-6’0 range, the show is going to have to hire a basketball player as the host. But I digress.

When I think of physical beauty, I think of the Bible’s Esther. She won a national beauty contest and became the Queen of Medo-Persia, the most powerful empire of that day (Esther 2:1-18). Working from that position she became the vessel through which God kept Haman (an Old Testament Adolf Hitler) from wiping out the entire Jewish race. Do you know what that tells me? It tells me that God can use physical beauty to accomplish His work.

Of course, there’s no doubt that Satan can use it to accomplish his too, is there? Every smut magazine, pornographic film, scantily clad model, and “sex object” starlet is evidence of that. Take beauty pageants for example. The only way they will ever have my respect is if they take out the swimsuit competition. Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen.

In Proverbs 31:30, the Bible says that “beauty is passing.” Likewise, Psalm 49:14 says that it shall be “consumed in the grave.” So the real issue is: How will a woman use her beauty during those years in which she has it? Will she be an Esther who uses it for God’s glory? Or will she use it to tempt, entice, allure, and manipulate men to accomplish the devil’s purposes? I’ll leave you with Proverbs 11:22, a verse that I think a lot of women need to heed these days. It says simply:

As a ring of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a lovely woman who lacks discretion.

Filed under Aging, Character, Dress and Appearance, God's Work, Personal Holiness, Sex, Sin, Temptation Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

What the Bible Teaches About Drinking Alcohol (9)

November 1, 2011 6 Comments

With this post, we’ll finish up this series. I didn’t plan for the series to run quite this long anyway, but as we’ve seen this is a complex subject that brings in quite a bit of scripture. People really do it a disservice when they try to simplify it and make it a one-size-fits-all, black-or-white kind of thing. And, unfortunately, the material that I’ll offer in this last post is going to complicate things a bit more. In the previous post, I explained the term “Christian liberty.” I won’t rehash all that information here, but I do need to say a few more things on that whole subject. Think of this as me now giving you the flip side of the “Christian liberty” coin.

It’s certainly true that the Bible teaches that a Christian has a sizable amount of God-granted liberty when it comes to, shall we say, “debatable” matters. However, the same Bible also lays down three rules for the use of this liberty. Let’s take them one at a time.

Rule #1: A troubled conscience always cancels out Christian liberty. The interesting thing about your conscience is that it can’t tell the difference between a rule that can be supported by scripture and one that can’t. Really, your conscience is only as good as the information sent to it by your brain. So the problem is simple: a faulty understanding creates a misfiring conscience. Well, let’s say that a Christian is raised in a home, city, and culture in which everyone considers the drinking of even one beer a mortal sin. As we’ve seen in this series, that rule can’t be supported by scripture, but until that Christian learns this he or she is left to believe that drinking a beer is a sin. And what does that set-up do? It allows that Christian’s conscience to send out all kinds of warning bells if that Christian even looks at a beer. Yes, they will be misinformed bells, alarms sounded from faulty information, but they will be warning bells nonetheless. And so at that point the Christian’s conscience will keep him from being able to evoke Christian liberty to enjoy a beer. We can describe this as sinning against one’s conscience. 1 Corinthians 8:7 talks about this kind of thing in regard to the ancient Christians eating meat that had been offered to idols. It says:

However, there is not in everyone that knowledge; for some, with consciousness of the idol, until now eat it as a thing offered to an idol; and their conscience, being weak (we might say misinformed), is defiled.

Romans 14:23 applies here as well. It goes so far as to teach that even if an act isn’t a sin, it actually becomes a sin for you if you can’t do it with a completely clear conscience:

But he who doubts (doubts the scriptural legality of the act) is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.

Rule #2: The Christian commits sin if he exercises his liberty in a way that causes someone else to sin. Let’s say that a friend and I go out to eat at a restaurant that serves delicious ribs that just drip with sweet barbecue sauce. So we each order a plate of ribs. Then my friend listens in astonishment as I order a beer. Well, he was raised to believe that drinking a beer is a sin, but he thinks to himself, “Russell is a preacher, and so if he says that’s it alright to drink a beer, it must be.” So my friend then says to the waitress, “I’ll have a beer too.” But the problem is that as soon as those words fall from his lips his misinformed conscience starts gnawing at him. And by the time the beers come and he and I each take a sip, he is in full-blown sin. Now what happened there? I wrongly used my Christian liberty to lead my friend into sin. Listen to the words of 1 Corinthians 8:9,12:

But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak (misinformed)…But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

And then there is also Romans 14:15-16, 20-21:

Yet if your brother is grieved because of your food (or for our topic, drink) you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy with your food (drink) the one for whom Christ died. Therefore do not let your good (the fact that your conscience is operating off correct information) be spoken of as evil…Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food (drink). All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for the man (your friend with the misinformed conscience) who eats (drinks) with offense. It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak.

Rule #3: Even though some acts might be allowable under Christian liberty, the Christian shouldn’t engage in them if they are not helpful to him. It’s hard to see how a Christian who is a recovering alcoholic or who has at least had several bouts of drunkenness in the past is going to be helped by drinking one beer, one glass of wine, or one shot of liquor. If a dog has bitten you in the past and sent you to the emergency room, why keep trying to pet it? If your track record shows beyond a doubt that you have a natural bent toward becoming addicted to a certain thing, why go out of your way to place yourself in the path of temptation? This third rule isn’t about categorizing an act as “sin” or “not sin.” The act in question is clearly “not sin.” But the point is that the act simply isn’t helpful (spiritually constructive, edifying, and empowering) for that specific Christian. Particularly, this rule applies to acts that have the potential to lead to addiction, a list which can certainly include the drinking of alcoholic beverages. In 1 Corinthians 6:12, the apostle Paul puts it this way:

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

Now, in closing, let me say that by abiding by these three rules the Christian can keep himself within the banks of using his Biblical liberty to engage in a “debatable” act such as drinking alcohol. Christian liberty must never be used as a license to sin, but when it is rightly understood and lived out it will be a wonderful source of blessing for the Christian. After all, “liberty” is a good word, right? It’s not something to shy away from or fear; it’s something to embrace and enjoy. Just be careful, Christian, that you don’t forget these three rules. God wants you to enjoy life, but He doesn’t want you to do it like a half crazed wild-man who has no scriptural moorings. Remember that liberty walks hand in hand with responsibility. You’re not a child. So don’t act like one.

Filed under Addiction, alcohol, balance, Choices, Christian Liberty, Influence, Personal Holiness, Sin, Temptation, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

What Does the Bible Teach About Drinking Alcohol? (4)

October 14, 2011 4 Comments

I used yesterday’s post to condemn the sin of drunkenness. Now I want to share a few thoughts on addiction to alcohol. All drunkenness is sin, but there’s a difference between getting drunk once at a party and being a full-blown alcoholic.

I take no joy or pride in admitting that alcoholism runs on both sides of my family. So, trust me, I could write an encyclopedia on the subject. Isn’t it amazing how easily one glass of wine or one can of beer can turn into decades of hard drinking? The old saying is so true: “First the man takes a drink. Then the drink takes a drink. Then the drink takes the man.”

I think this explains why I haven’t been getting much feedback on these posts. The viewing numbers are down, and no one is hitting the “like” button. Why? It’s because many of us know all too well the incredible damage that alcohol can do to a life. That’s why we shy away from the subject. We fear that if we give ground on having even one glass of wine with a plate of lasagna at Olive Garden, one bottle of beer at a July picnic, or one shot of liquor on a cold night, that we will fan the flames of the already raging bonfire of alcohol addiction in this country. That’s why so many of us want to either ignore the subject altogether or try to cling to our fortress retreat in the high, unsoiled mountains of total abstinence. Our problem, however, is that neither approach lines up with the totality of what the Bible teaches.

Is alcoholism a very real problem? Of course it is. But does everyone who drinks become addicted? Believe it or not, no they don’t. Maybe your uncle Joe did. Maybe your cousin Sue did. Maybe your child did. Maybe you did. But that doesn’t mean that everyone does. You see, in one way alcohol is like food. When used appropriately it can be viewed as a blessing from God. It makes this difficult life a little more enjoyable. It brings pleasure to the taste buds. It can even help settle the stomach. But when it is used to sinful excess, the good turns to harm. Just as overeating creates the sin of gluttony and causes all kinds of physical, emotional, and psychological problems, drinking too much creates the sin of drunkenness and causes the same kinds of problems. Is it any wonder then that the Bible so frequently links the sins of gluttony and drunkenness together? (Deuteronomy 21:20; Proverbs 23:21; Ecclesiastes 10:16-19; Isaiah 22:12-13; Amos 6:3-7; Luke 12:19; 1 Peter 4:3)

And so how should we deal with addiction to alcohol, or any addiction for that matter (food, drugs, pornography, sex, etc.)? Well, it sounds like a cliche but the cure for every addiction is Jesus. I can think of two passages that say it all. First, there is John 8:34,36:

Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin…Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”

And then second, there is Luke 4:17-18:

And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

And so we see that Jesus is the liberator for anyone is enslaved by or held captive by addiction. He is the Moses who can lead that person out of that Egypt. He is the David who can slay that person’s giant. He is the Solomon who can erect a shining new temple of holiness in that person’s life. Addiction doesn’t intimidate Him in the least. He has released scores of captives from its grip already and stands ready and willing to do it one more time.

Filed under Addiction, alcohol, balance, Choices, Christian Liberty, Drugs, Gluttony, Personal Holiness, Sin, Temptation Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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