Breaking Free

The following is a summary of Mark Driscoll’s presentation, “Death by Love. Addiction and Atonement.” Mark is the preaching and speaking pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, ranked “the second most prolific church planting church in America” by Outreach magazine. Seattle magazine named Mark one of the twenty-five most powerful people in Seattle, ironically one of the least-churched cities in America. Mark is also the co-founder and president of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network, and the founder of Resurgence, providing theological training for pastors, church planters, and other Christian leaders.

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Individuals are often aware of how addictions negatively impact their own lives and many times how they negatively impact the lives of people close to them, but have difficulty seeing how their addiction impacts their relationship with God. How God and the power of the Gospel can offer hope and healing is what Pastor Mark Driscoll focused on in this talk.

Mark offered a humorous, frank, and honest look at the first century church in Corinth. When we consider all the problems of sexuality immorality, greed, gluttony, drunkenness, incest, cross-dressing and general immaturity of the Corinthians church, this 2000-year-old example is actually very contemporary in its multitude of hard issues and addictions.

As people helpers one of our primary objectives is to offer hope. Hope, not in self, or in another person, but in God. Power rests in Christ, not in who you are as a helper. Our hope needs to be anchored in the cross - the work of Jesus and his faithfulness. Paul writes, “[Christ] will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:8-9)

We can’t help anyone till we explain the cross of Jesus. There are rich jewels of the faith contained in the Word of God that need to be identified and explained to those struggling with addiction to help them obtain freedom.

1) Substitutionary atonement

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Christ died for our sins, both sins of omission and commission. Martin Luther called this the “great exchange.” Christ took our sins upon himself on the cross and suffered and died for us. At the same time Christ’s righteousness was given to me. What this means is that we no longer need to make excuses for our sin, blame, deny, diminish or manage our sin. We need to put it death and live through the righteousness of Christ (Romans 6:12).

2) Justification

“Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” (Galations 2:16)

We see a yearning, even in the godless, to be justified and righteousness. This can be seen in the pagan world through doing good humanitarian works, taking care of the environment, and in various other ways. For those in the church we see individuals who try to work for their salvation through volunteering time to the church or giving large financial gifts in order to justify themselves. But the gospel says that we can do nothing to merit our salvation and that anything we attempt to do is rubbish to the Lord. We can not atone for our sin, Jesus is the only one who can.

3) Christus Victor

In Colossians 2, Paul writes, “And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

It is important to understand that the enemy is out to condemn and destroy us. As helpers we need to assist individuals in recognizing these lies and combat them with scripture. Christ has defeated the powers of darkness and disarmed the enemies claim on us. We have no obligation to sin or Satan. Christ convicts us of our sin in order to bring us to repentance, but never condemns us.

4) Redemption

“They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption. For a man is slave to whatever has mastered him.” (2 Peter 2:19)

It is important to remember that Christ came to set us free from the bondage of slavery. The slavery is not one imposed upon us, but one that is self imposed. When an addiction is present it is something that has mastered us and is something we have given ourselves in slavery to. We need to help individuals dethrone the false gods, so they can be free to worship the true God. Share your own story of redemption and the ways that Christ is continuing to redeem your soul.

5) Expiation

We have been made unclean, dirty, and defiled by sin. God alone can remove the guilt. The cross is how people are cleansed not only from their guilt, but also from their uncleanness while living among fallen people who sin against them.

Driscoll was emphatic about this: the doctrine of expiation is the missing jewel in our preaching on the cross. In a world where so many are hurt and broken by how they have been sinned against, the cross offers a hope unlike any other: the promise of cleansing.

It is imperative that there is a deep understanding of the Word of God and the power of the Cross and Christ crucified in giving hope and guiding people towards true freedom from the bondage of sin and addiction.

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To learn more about his new book, “Death By Love,” watch the following video or visit the website.