The 40 Day Challenge Part 2: Run To

Addiction is an ugly thing. When that familiar craving comes, it seems to wash over us like a wave of compulsion. The heart begins to race, the blood pressure rises, and the mind is consumed with one nagging thought: “Just one more time.”

And the million-dollar question every addict has is this: How do I make it stop?

The Apostle Paul answers this question in Romans 6.

How Porn Slavery Works

One of the controlling themes of Romans 6 is sin as a slave master. In Paul’s mind, everyone’s sinful condition is a kind of slavery. It is not merely the so-called sickos and the junkies who experience enslaving compulsions. It is everyone. There is an addict in us all.

As Paul explains in Romans 6, when our master is sin, we “obey its passions” (Rom. 6:12). The word “passions” here means more than a desire or a drive; it means over-desire or overdrive. The word is not so much about desires for evil things as it is an inordinate desire for good things.

As Tim Keller says, this is the essence of “idolatry” in the Bible: when we turn good things into ultimate things, and in doing so they become our masters.

How Christ Sets Us Free from Porn

The reason our idols rule us is because of the power we’ve given them to define us. Our idols make us feel good about ourselves, make us feel secure, and we get hooked on the affirmation, the power, and the comfort.

We can only be set free when we receive a profound new identity, a new definition of ourselves. Only the risen Christ can do this.

Remember the Meaning of the Resurrection

For Paul, the resurrection of Christ was a watershed moment in the universe.

The resurrection is more than just proof that Christianity is the true religion. For Paul, Jesus’ resurrection is a prototype of where all creation is heading. From the sin-scarred ashes of this world, some day God will resurrect a new creation. Christ is the firstfruits of those who will be raised from the dead on the Day of the Lord (1 Cor. 15:20-23). Some day, all of creation will follow and be free from corruption, decay, and death (Rom. 8:18-23).

Paul says when Christ died and rose from death, “he died to sin, once for all” (Rom. 6:10). This fact is at the heart of Paul’s argument in Romans 6, so we can’t miss it.

Jesus was born into this realm of sin and experienced all the temptations we face, all the limitations of living in a body subject to weakness and death. He then experienced the ultimate price of sin by dying for our sins on the cross. He experienced all of this without succumbing to sin Himself.

But Jesus has now “died to sin” and experiences resurrection life. The devil cannot touch Him. The world cannot subject Him. His body is no longer perishable or weak. He now experiences what all Christians will someday experience: complete freedom from this sinful realm. Christ, in his humanness, is a foretaste of what all Christians will become.

Remember Your Union with Christ

Between the resurrection and return of Christ, God does not leave us hanging. We have been “united with Him” (Rom. 6:5), Paul says. “the Spirit of Christ dwells in us” (8:9).

Paul here is speaking to the baptized, the converted, those who have committed themselves to Christ (6:3). He says we have been “united” to Christ. We are united to the one who has died to sin, the one who now experiences resurrection life. The Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is in us, giving life to our mortal bodies (8:11).

Our relationship to our old master, Sin, is profoundly severed because the Spirit of the living Christ is in us.

We can now say to pornography, “No, you are not an inevitability. I am united to the living Christ. It is my destiny to be like Him.” We must consider and reconsider and reconsider again—every single day—that we are new creatures (2 Cor. 5:17).

Our new identity is as real as Christ’s risen flesh and bone.

Make Each Part of Your Body a Weapon for Holiness

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 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”

Romans 6:12-13

How do we do this? We do this through the daily choice—the moment-by-moment choice—to become an instrument in God’s hands.

• Rather than give our hands to pixels on the screen, we give our hands to God to do useful work (Eph. 4:28) and to lift them to God in prayer (1 Tim. 2:8).
• Rather than give our feet to sin to walk over to our laptop for comfort, we present our feet to God to carry the good news to others (Rom. 10:15).
• Rather than giving our eyes to one more online seduction, we open our eyes to really see the needs around us so we can give generously to others (Matt. 6:22-23).

Changed By Love

“The more we come to understand the love Christ has for us, the more our old master loses his grip on us. It is by more fully grasping the immeasurable greatness of Christ’s love—seen through his death for us—that we are filled with the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18-19; 5:25)

Porn no longer needs to enslave us because our old ruling desires no longer define us. We have been given a profoundly new identity in Christ. And as Augustine once told a former mistress after he became a Christian, when lust comes knocking on our door and says, “It is I!” we can reply, “I know, but it is not I.”