A human being, without the mind of Christ, has the heart of a slave, and unless he knows what freedom looks like; unless it is spelled out for him; unless he knows his privileges as a son, a slave, though freed, wanders around in the open country of the new heart, not knowing where to turn, and forever casting fearful side-glances at the shadows of his former self.
God has broken into the world with His Victorious Kingdom of Grace, reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19) and setting the prisoner free (Isa. 61:1) by disarming the cosmic powers and making a public spectacle of them at the Cross, leading them as captives in His triumphal procession (Col. 2:15 REB).
But it is hard to realize all this because for the present we live between two worlds: the eternal one to come which we have received in pledge, and the temporary, decayed one that we are tied to now and that can so easily lead us to forget our real Kingdom. God knows that living between two worlds is not easy. Our plight “moves him to pity” because we are like “sheep without a shepherd, harassed and helpless” (Matt. 9:36 REB). So He helps us to keep the realities of the unseen Kingdom before our minds by reminding us of its freedoms, otherwise the false claims of this disintegrating world, so attached as we are to it, will scream so loud into our brains that they will deafen the strains of the new liberties that are ours in Christ.
For, though we are saved, there is a “not yet” to our salvation. “For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it” (Rom. 8:24, 25 NASB). It is not that we “have already obtained” the prize, but we “press on in order that…[we] may lay hold of” it (Phil. 3:12 NASB). In the meantime we have the Holy Spirit as the “first fruits” (Rom. 8:23) of what is to come. He is “a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession” (Eph. 1:14 NASB) while we “groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23).
And so God sent a man “set apart from birth” (Gal. 1:15) to keep before our minds the freedom for which Christ set us free (Gal. 5:1) while we live between the two worlds. In Paul, perhaps more than in any other apostle, the freedoms of the Kingdom for the believing heart, bound as it is to this troublesome world, were revealed. Through Paul, the core problem of, and the core solution to sexual addictions is revealed, a fact you would never discover in secular and even Christian books on sexual addiction across our dubiously enlightened continent of America.
The secret that Paul is so energized by the Spirit to reveal is that Christ has set us free from Wrath, Sin, the Law, and Death (cf. Rom. 5, 6, 7 and 8). To be free from these is to be in the Kingdom of God. To be free from these is to be freed from the powers of addiction and bondage. How, then, does this work? And what’s happening when it doesn’t?
The first thing to note is that each of the four powers that Paul says have been vanquished by Christ is written about in a peculiar way. He refers not to our being sinners, but of our being under Sin (Rom. 3:9; 7:14); he speaks not of our being lawbreakers, but of our being under Law (Rom. 3:19; 6:15; Gal. 3:23). To Paul, Sin has dominion (Rom. 6:14), Death reigns (Rom. 5:14, 17) and people are children of Wrath (Eph. 2:3).
All this tells us that Paul is speaking of these four powers not as mere principles, but as principalities. It is kingdoms that have subjects (“children”) over which they have “dominion” and “reign”. And more accurately, these powers are not many kingdoms but four faces of the same kingdom. The great Protestant reformer of the sixteenth century, Martin Luther, vividly put it that these are the masks of Satan, the four Masks behind which he operates against God’s Kingdom.
Thus, Paul declares that the Kingdom of Satan, expressed through the reign of Wrath, Sin, Law and Death, has been defeated by the Kingdom of Christ. God is not interested in mere principles. Like a bear robbed of her cubs (Hos. 13:8), He is interested in smashing to the wall the Tyrant that attempts to come between us and His passionate love.
“Why have you forgotten the LORD your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth? Why are you in constant fear all the day long? Why dread the fury of the oppressors bent on your destruction? WHERE IS THE OPPRESSORS’ FURY?” (Isa. 51:13 REB, Capitalization supplied).
So, where once we were children of Wrath, now in Christ we are reconciled to the Father (Rom. 5:9, 10). Where once we were under the bondage of Sin, in Christ we are now freed for righteousness (Rom. 6:6, 11, 18). Where once we were under the condemnation of the Law, in Christ we are now the righteousness of God (Rom. 5:18; 7:4–6, 8:1–4; 2 Cor. 5:21). Where once we were surrounded by the force of Death inwardly and outwardly, in Christ we are now resurrected and sharing in eternal life though His Spirit (Rom. 5:17; 8:2, 11). In a word, Our Victory is already won.
When faith accepts the truth of this galvanizing reality amazing things begin to happen to our addictions, for neither Paul nor the rest of Scripture recognizes an unbridgeable divide between the spirit and the emotions. Going to church for matters of eternity and going to a psychologist for matters of the heart would have been unthinkable to Paul, “for from…[God] and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36).
But that is exactly the second thing to note: that belief or lack of belief in Christ’s Victory for us over the powers Wrath, Sin, Law and Death has a profound psychological impact on the mind which calls forth a response from the emotions. Put another way, spiritual realities have a psychological impact, which causes the emotions to respond in certain ways. To believe what God has said about the overthrow of Wrath, Sin, Law and Death is to come to know healing from our addictions. But when doubt dominates, these forces bluff their way into our consciousness and create a snowball effect, first on our spirit, then on our mind and next on our emotions. The effect? The amassing of a slow, silent, chilling mound of addictive sin.
But why even consider the impact of these powers upon the spirit, mind and emotions if they are already defeated and the victory is already won? How can these Four Forces, if already overthrown, continue to affect us so critically as to hold us in bondage to addictions? Because the issue is now no longer whether these forces still have power but whether we exercise the faith that they are indeed overthrown. To put it another way: the issue is not the power of sin, but the power of doubt. At the Cross, Jesus triumphed over the principalities and powers (Col. 2:15). Neither Death and Sin, nor any of the other powers, reign over Christ now (Rom. 6:9, 10) or any subjects of his Kingdom (v. 11). Nevertheless, God, in His wisdom, continues to allow Satan to exist and to utter the lie that his kingdom still stands. God’s purpose in this is the building of our faith (1 Pet. 1:7) as our doubts are confronted by Satan’s bluff. Faith, after all, in what Christ has done for us, is the one ticket to the Kingdom of God. If faith is lost, the delusion that Wrath, Sin, Law and Death still rule over us becomes a power itself. “Christian”, on the road to the Kingdom, in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, is afraid to proceed along the road to the Kingdom because he hears the lions roar ahead on either side. But he is urged on by his guide with the assurance that the lions are chained.
It is remarkable that millions of Christians still believe that Satan’s Kingdom stands unassailed and fight him as if it were. A classic example of this falsehood is the assumption so many make that Satan was telling the truth when he told Jesus, “all this [world] dominion will I give to you…and the glory that goes with it; for it has been put in my hands and I can give it to anyone I choose. You have only to do homage to me and it will all be yours” (Luke 4:6, 7 REB). Here stands the Big Lie, for the Sovereign Lord of all had already said, “The Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind, and bestows it on whom he wishes” (Dan. 4:17 NASB). Obviously, Satan hoped that Jesus, in his human weakness would be clouded enough to surrender to his Lie.
Nothing more telling, furthermore, to the fact that the Kingdom of Satan is subjugated under the power of Christ is revealed in the Gospels than this: that in all instances, the demons immediately obey Christ’s orders…(Men do not).
So, then, when faith does not take hold of the fact that we are freed from the Tyrannies of Wrath, Sin, Law and Death, what kind of mind does it produce?
This leads to the third thing to note about these four forces: To doubt Christ’s Victory over the principalities and powers of Wrath, Sin, Law and Death is to create a mind dominated by a sense of Abandonment, Helplessness, Condemnation and Despair, the very state of mind that drives pell-mell for the addictive “fix”.
Spiritual realities, as we said earlier, have a psychological impact. When Wrath dominates the doubtful mind suspended between the two worlds, the impact is a sense of abandonment, since to be under God’s wrath is to be handed over to the powers of sin (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). A doubting Christian, fearing he is abandoned by God is haunted by feelings that at the core of his being, there is no-one who loves him.
When the power of Sin overwhelms the Christian’s faith, and his mind is more aware of this illusory world than his true Kingdom, he is dogged with a frightening sense of helplessness, and his heart cries out, I am stuck; I cannot get out of this.
When the judgment of the Law is allowed the authority to intimidate a morally struggling Christian, his mind, having forgotten its justification, becomes paralyzed by condemnation and his heart moans within him, I don’t measure up; I’m not good enough.
When the power of Death stares from all corners of this rotting world and convinces the doubting Christian that everything he attempts turns into the nihilistic ashes of Nothingness, his mind slinks off into Despair, and his heart cries (but there is no-one there to listen), What’s the point?
Thus doubt in the Atoning Victory of Christ for us, Who, by it, defeats Satan and reveals the loving heart of the Father towards us; doubt that the powers ranged against us are overthrown and we are free in the love of God because Christ is our New Humanness, creates a mind ripe for addiction, a mind so filled with the pain of Abandonment, Helplessness, Condemnation and Despair that sin, as the only available comfort left, becomes an absolute and permanent necessity…
…Unless and until faith is renewed and discovers again the heavy, scintillating Glory of Redeeming Love.
When faith is in the heart a man can face his isolation from God and even from himself and look up and assure himself in God and say, But, Father, I am not abandoned under your Wrath, for you sent Christ who took my abandonment for me so that I am now held dear to Your heart.
When faith is alive in the soul a man can stare deep into his sins and failures and look up and assure himself in God and say, But, Father, I am not helpless under the power of Sin, for your Son atoned for my sins and now each failure teaches me how to live more closely in You.
When faith lives in spite of doubt, a man can speak into the burdensome voices of self-ridicule and condemnation and look up and assure himself in God and say, But, Father, I am not under the condemnation of the Law, for Christ is my new Righteousness and I am a Prince in your Kingdom.
When life has brought you nothing but disappointment and frustration, faith can look up and assure itself in God and say, But, Father, my deaths are but the occasions for Christ’s resurrection in me. Therefore, I thank You for Death’s limits, for then Your Life rises boundless in me.
This is the mind where Wrath, Sin, Law and Death no longer reign and hence where Addiction’s cold breath is sure to expire.