Many people deal with habits or addictions that they can’t seem to shake. This is often a source of frustration for Christians who know that they should be living at a different level. For those who find themselves there, the Bible does offer a strategy, but that strategy begins with a particular set of commands. Unfortunately, a lot of believers are not aware of these commands, and if we are, we’re not sure what to do with them.
A Division of Tasks
As I look at the Bible, I notice that there is a clear distinction made between what God says He will do and what we are told to do. I have learned that He will not do what He has told me to do, and that I dare not try to do what He Himself says He will do. There is a sharp dividing line between the two. I have heard people say, “You don’t need to do anything; God has already done everything for you.” My response to that statement is: If that is true, why are there so many imperatives in the New Testament? There are clearly things that God has told us to do, and He will not do them for us.
The set of commands I refer to above involves something God has clearly told us to do—He will not do it for us. There is an additional step we are told to take after salvation, but it does not really involve an “experience,” aside from that of simple obedience. Both the Old and New Testaments refer to additional steps that occur after salvation as “sanctification,” which means that God is making us holy. This is God’s will for us after salvation (see 1 Thessalonians 4:3). But we play an essential role in that process. This is what can be called “responsible discipleship.” It involves steps that God has given us to walk in.
A Specific Type of Command
The commands I mention here mostly appear in terms of putting off certain vices, called “garments,” and putting on virtues, also called garments. For example, Ephesians 4:31 says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you with all malice.” Similarly, Hebrews 12:1 tells us, “Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us.” These are commands, but here is the significant thing about them: The Greek construction of these commands is such that they refer to a task that is executed as needed, not on a regular basis, plus the command carries a sense of intensity.
Here are some of the “putting on” commands: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Romans 13:14). “Put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Ephesians 4:24). “Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12b). “Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11). Again, these refer to a significant event, in which these actions are undertaken on a specific occasion as needed.
Our Present Condition
When we look honestly at the data, the modern church is staggering under the weight of habitual, unmortified sin. Barna Research reveals that over half of practicing Christians admit to viewing pornography, with more than one in five consuming it on a weekly or daily basis.
But the compromise extends far beyond our screens. We are just as entangled in the betrayal of our covenants, with over a third of married Christian men admitting to extra-marital affairs, and nearly half of churchgoers adopting the secular view that marriage vows can be discarded simply for falling out of love.
Add to this our unchecked appetite for consumerism and material goods—a quiet idolatry that two-thirds of evangelical leaders now cite as a primary threat to the faith—and a grim picture emerges of a body that routinely makes provision for the flesh. We are bowing to digital lust, fracturing our families, and worshiping our comfort. And these are just three areas!
Many of us have clearly not “put off” and “put on.” We are not standing firm against the schemes of the devil because we are not leveraging the biblical strategy we have been given. We have not done what God has told us to do. This is a step in our sanctification that many of us have simply not yet taken.
Fleshing This Command Out
So, how do we do this? What does this look like? Ephesians 4:22-24 instructs us to “put off your old self” and to “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” So, I would suggest going through an exercise in which you say something like, “In the name of Jesus, I put off all the works of the flesh. I consider myself dead to them. I put them to death. I am done with them.”
You may want to get specific with some of these works of the flesh, as Paul does. Name them. Then move on to something like, “In the name of Jesus, I put on the Lord Jesus Christ. I put on the new self. I put on a heart of compassion/self-control/self-denial.” Notice that, with the virtues we are again being specific as to what exactly we are putting on, and that we are especially referring to virtues that are the exact opposite to the vices we had been been entrapped by. While these are not “magic words,” they play a central role in what can be a powerful exercise. Again, this is a significant event that occurs on a specific occasion that Paul commands believers to walk through after salvation.
Handling Setbacks
This leaves us with a question: What do you do if you have a slip-up later? Was all of this for nothing? Do you need to do this again? Let’s press in further. There is another crucial step to this strategy that we cannot miss.
Paul issues a very different kind of command in Romans 6:11. There he says, “Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In this verse, the original language uses a word for “consider” that is actually an accounting term. Accountants like to put things in columns, with assets in one column, debts in another, etc. For believers, sin goes in the “dead” column. Here is the biggest revelation of all: Unlike the previous instructions, the original phrasing here does not refer to a task executed just once as needed. This command is an ongoing, continual command. So if we have an “oops moment” and it looks like we are relapsing, we remind ourselves: “I am already dead to that. I have already put that to death. That is no longer who I am. That is not me anymore.” This what it looks like to consider ourselves dead. We remind ourselves of what we have done, of what is true. Instead of telling ourselves, “Oh, I need to die to that again,” we say to ourselves regularly, “I have already died to that. I have already put that off; I have already laid it aside!”
Why do we do this regularly? Because God knows, and we certainly know, that we are tempted regularly, and we need to have a strategy that we can leverage to counteract these incidents of temptation. Because they happen regularly, we employ the biblical strategy over and over.
We can sum up all we have said in this one statement:
We will never experience consistent victory in our areas of habitual sin until we, on a significant occasion, as an act of our will, put to death the deeds of the flesh and set them aside and put on Christ, and then, when we are being tempted, remind ourselves of what we have done.
In a word, the strategy equates to:
Rehearsing out identity leads to victory.
The church today is suffering from an identity crisis, and realizing exactly who we are and rehearsing exactly what we have done in obedience to God’s commands is key to conquering this crisis.
As confirmation, look at Colossians 3:17, which talks about an entirely different area of our lives: “Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside/stripped off the old self with its evil practices.” Do you see the same pattern here? Once we have laid aside the old self, as part of a significant event, we have done what we need to do; we are then free to live differently, and we simply need to remind ourselves of this truth over and over.
Comprehensive Victory
One more truth needs to be emphasized: All of the vices Paul mentions come under the larger umbrella of “the old self” or “the flesh” (see Romans 8). What you will likely find is that, when you deal thoroughly with the flesh and put its works to death in a significant event, your life will begin to align in several seemingly unrelated areas. Your anger problems and your lying problems and your anxiety issues and your bitterness about events long past will all begin to melt away because they are all symptomatic of the flesh; they all derive from the same source. When the root is cut off, all the branches wither and die away. You will be surprised at how comprehensive victory over sin can be.
Better still, you haven’t just put off sin. You have put on Christ. In place of old habits, new ones will form. You will find a new reservoir of patience, of kindness, and of resiliency when you are slighted. Your love for others will begin to flow naturally and you will be in a much better position to witness for Christ, because you are not only speaking your faith, you are living it!
Reaching Out
If after all this, you still find complete victory elusive, and you may, tell a fellow believer about it and ask them to pray with you. But don’t just say, “Pray for me.” Ask them to pray specifically that you will stand firm in the victory that is yours— and it is rightfully yours because of your prior obedience in putting off and putting on. As Paul says in Ephesians 6:13: “Take up the full armor of God (an as-needed, significant event), so that you (plural!) will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand.” That is victory—in the end, instead of continually falling to temptation, you are standing! Paul presents our victory another way in Romans 6:22: “But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification . . . .” There it is again. That is God’s ultimate goal for us—to make us holy.
The Consequences
There is no limit to the good that can come from employing this strategy. I am not suggesting that this is the only strategy that we can employ, but it is the only one the Bible puts forward, so it is at the very least the primary strategy we should be looking to. Counseling can help. Meds (yes, meds) can help. Online resources are available and should not be summarily ignored. But we cannot continue to rely only on these other strategies and ignore the one strategy God has given us in His revealed Word. Who knows how many counseling appointments could be canceled, how many self-help groups we would realize we don’t need to attend anymore, how many meds we would not have to pay for, how many psychiatrists we could thank and graciously walk away from if we only leveraged the biblical strategy? If we begin to learn to walk in obedience to these biblical commands, this kind of result is not only possible, but likely.
A Final Exhortation
Because much of this information is probably new to you, you will get much more benefit from it if you read it again, say, three more times in one week. New information needs to be repeated in order to be fully integrated, so I urge you to review this particular article several times.
The consequences will be profound. Others will notice. If we do what He has assigned us to do, He will do what only He can do. In the end, we will align our lives with God’s intention and He will be glorified.
And that is priceless.