Addiction

Addiction is not an abstract concept for me. I’ve advised a lot of people in my department who have been besieged by addiction. The most expensive encounter I had with this problem was with my mother, who was addicted to alcohol. I have very few memories of my sober mother before the age of thirteen. I grew up surrounded by addiction and reacted to its consequences, this question is deeply personal to me.

In the English language, addiction comes from a Latin term meaning surrender or surrender. In fact, addictions are things we get involved in. Addicts are abandoned out of obedience to something. The word dependence is not what we see in the scriptures, but the concept to which it refers is eminently biblical, the deepest reality used by the Bible to describe this problem is slavery.

• In Romans 6.
• 15-23.
• The Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of slavery to describe the dominion of sin over every human being that exists outside Of Christ.
• He said.
• “Do ye not know that of him whom ye offer yourselves as servants of obedience?.
• Even to whom do you obey.
• Are you servants?” (Rom.
• 6.
• 16).
• Sin enslaves us.
• Calls us to obedience.
• And we abandon ourselves obediently.
• Giving ourselves to their whims.
• That’s exactly how addictions work.
• Drug addicts are courted for the object of their slavery and surrender by obedience to the orders of their master.
• But addictions are cruel amos.
• When we follow the precepts of our addictions.
• We end up suffering the kind of pain that accompanies the dictates of an evil ruler.
• In Romans 6.
• The Apostle Paul exposes at least three consequences that flood the lives of people who are trapped in the kind of slavery represented by addictions.

First, the kind of slavery we see in addiction is a sin and leads to more sins. Paul addresses Christians by saying, “Have you offered your members for the bondage of impurity and evil in evil?”(Romans 6. 19). Addictions are bad because it is a sin to give oneself to something other than God Himself. Paul says that although Christians are free to enjoy all the good gifts of God (1 Corinthians 6:12), believers should not be dominated by anything but Christ. Slavery in vice is a sin in itself and leads to more sin.

My mother’s alcohol addiction has led him to many other sins, he drank because he wanted to forget all the darkness of his life that caused her so much, depended on this alcoholic forgetfulness, despite all the other evils she had to endure in My mother’s slavery to alcohol led her to laziness, anger, theft , child abuse, lying, promiscuity and manipulation, all in a way intrinsically linked to their continued call to obey their owner, vodka. All drug addicts, their sinful slavery to addiction leads to more and more sins.

Second, the slavery of addiction leads to shame. In Romans 6. 21, Paul asks, “At that moment, what results did you get?Just the things you’re ashamed of now?Shame is the painful remorse we feel when, in our sobriety. In our minds, we reflect on the miserable things we have done in our foolish obedience to the severe control of our addictions. The ridiculous and self-destructive behavior of dependents in their slavery to the objects of their devotion is evident to all but the dependents themselves. When a clear thought illuminates his madness, it leads to the kind of shame Paul refers to.

Years after I stopped drinking, I sat down with my mother as I reflected on the sinful madness that was causing her violence in alcohol, thinking about the years of violence that had inflicted on my brother and me, the dozens of men with whom she had shared her body, and the once precious relationships that had been destroyed , could hardly convince herself to speak. The pain of these consequences brought her to the ground in a puddle of tears and shame.

Finally, the kind of slavery manifested in addictions leads to death. After asking his question about shame, Paul immediately adds, “Why is death his end?(Rom. 6. 21). Slavery in addiction leads to more sin, shame. “In the Bible, of course, death is an expression of physical experience that indicates a deeper spiritual experience. The death of our physical bodies indicates the spiritual separation of God that makes us dead in crimes and sins (Ephesians 2. 1). of these biblical meanings of death is evident in the experience of addiction.

When I was eleven, a judge finally gave my brother and I full custody of my father, when he came with a cop to pick us up, my mother’s last look was that she passed out in her own vomit. for two years and I later learned that she was almost dead that day. Her attachment to alcohol brought her to the point of death. But he had much worse problems than that.

His sinful dependence on alcohol was only a manifestation of a sinful heart that refused to express its dependence on the risen Christ. She did things that led to her death because she was the object of wrath and death was her destiny. Wasn’t it my mother’s? The biggest problem that her physical body was dying was that it was already dead in her mind. Addictions lead to physical death because they are manifestations of spiritual death. Death is the wages you receive for your slavery to sin as a person who died in faults and sins (Romans 6:23).

This truth is true in Romans 6 about addiction, which is perhaps more profound than Paul’s honesty about the consequences of addictions. In addressing the bondage of sin, Romans 6 does not highlight addiction. The metaphor of slavery includes, but is not limited to, addiction. Slavery is not just a powerful illustration for those with an obvious addiction. Each of us knows what it is to be enslaved. This means that in one way or another we are all addicts.

You don’t have to fight with obvious addictions to sex, gambling, drugs or alcohol to be a slave. The metaphor of slavery shows that we are all prone to sinful rule over non-Christal things. We’re all addicted to something. It may be heroin, but it’s more likely to be praise, television, new clothes, Facebook, Ben ice cream

My mother was addicted to alcohol. Her sinful slavery led her to bold sins, a heartbreaking shame, and the obvious death that came to the headlines of her life. I don’t fight his addiction. The Lord, who will probably follow, looks more like an ice cream cone than a bottle of drink, but can my sinful heart hold on to this?With a lack of confidence in God as deep as my mother manifests every time I drank. My slavery of sinners does not appear in the headlines, but in the fine print of my life, adding additional sins that are more subtle and socially acceptable consequences than my mother’s drunkenness. My slavery will kill me more slowly than my mother’s sin killed her. But my ability to sin more delicately than my mother does not separate me from her. For all purposes, we are all dependent because we are all slaves. And we are all, in our own way, suffering the consequences of a life in slavery.

But that is where the good news comes in: Romans 6 emphasizes that believers are no longer slaves to sin, we are no longer subject to the sinful vices that dominate us.

But thank God that once slaves of sin, however, you have come to obey in all heart the form of doctrine to which you have been given; and once freed from sin, they have become servants of justice (Rom 6:17,18).

The Bible promises that anyone who follows Jesus will have a new Lord and will finally know the deliverance of every lord from sin.

This is good news for drug addicts. My mother eventually became ill with the consequences of her alcohol addiction and seriously considered staying sober. Thanks to the work of very dedicated people, she was able to get rid of her drinking habit, but she was still hooked. She smoked all the time, collapsed because of the compulsion to shop and slept. It was only when I met Jesus that my mother really changed. Your new Lord, Christ, ended up destroying your bondage for all your sins, not just by drinking. .

The way Jesus collapses slowly and over time his dependence on us is the subject of another much broader article, but the point of Romans 6. 15-23 is that drug addicts are slaves who will suffer the bitter consequences of this slavery and, more gloriously, the fact is that God has arranged for dependent slaves to follow a better Lord to free them from slavery , making us disciples of Him. This is good news for all addicts: my mother, me and even you.