I’ve had just about every vice that is on the menu at one time or another. One thing they all had in common was that they were easy to acquire and devilishly difficult to get rid of.
That is reflected in the following verse from Titus 3:3:
“For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.”
But as I came to learn the hard way, our vices are not a cause, but a symptom of a deadly underlying spiritual condition …
Spiritually, there is no such thing as being totally free.
We are born fallen creatures as Romans 3:23 reminds us, “… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and we are therefore born enslaved to sin, like it or not.
But that’s just the start.
We then go on demonstrating our hereditary enslavement to sin by accumulating various vices throughout our lives, which have a habit of becoming our “masters” if we let them — reinforcing their authority every time we yield to their promptings.
As anyone in a drug or alcohol recovery program will attest, once one vice is removed, it a mistake to believe that everything else is OK.
You need to look deeper. That pesky underlying condition of sin remains unless remedied by a new birth in Christ, as written in 1 Corinthians 15:22: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”
This is a difficult pill to swallow, particularly for people who pride themselves in their religious devotion.
In John 8:31-47, in a particularly testy exchange between Jesus and the religious leaders in Jerusalem, this truth “hit the fan” more than once:
“They (Pharisees) answered Him (Jesus), ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin … So if the Son sets you free, you really will be free … The one who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God.’”
“The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave … the slave of as many masters as he has vices.”
Saint Augustine
Jesus’ words cut deep. The next thing we see them doing is accusing Jesus of having a demon and picking up stones to put Him to death.
Two Choices
The Apostle Paul at one time took great pride in his religious credentials. But after one face-to-face “interview” with the risen Savior on the road to Damascus, he came away profoundly, irreversibly changed into a much wiser man.
Later He wrote in Romans 6:16-17:
“Do you not know that the one to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of that same one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were entrusted …”
Bob Dylan once wrote a song entitled, “You Got to Serve Somebody.” True. As I’ve written before, “Spiritually, there is no such thing as being totally free.”
There are only two choices, either you serve the Devil or God; either you are enslaved to sin or to God.
Again, Paul wrote in Romans 6:21-23:
“Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Talking Life and Death
Getting out from under the spiritual legacy of our birthparent, Adam, is critical to securing our heaven-bound position in Christ (our last Adam). As foretold in Revelation 20, if you don’t get free from Adam No. 1, then you will go down with/in him, “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
How About You?
Still treating those “little” vices as playthings? They are not your friends, they are your masters, and they point to an underlying cause that needs to be addressed while there is still time.
4-1-1
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