Christians face temptations at every turn, and the veritable ocean of images, messaging, and advertisements can simply feel overwhelming to us. Believers with a specific besetting sin sometimes feel trapped in sin’s fierce grip, and wonder if they’ll ever be able to stop.
What’s really going in the daily temptation-battles Christians face? In battles against besetting sin, we actually need the “Google Earth” view. We need to back out and see the continents before we zoom in on the particular “street view” sins that we see as a “problem” in our life.
Christians trapped in a repeating “sin-cycle” are sometimes myopically focused on stopping the sin itself, that they don’t address the deeper motivations of why sin besets us, and what the sin has to do with the idolatry of our hearts.
They might think, I need to stop because this is not pleasing God. I need to stop because this is hurting my family. I need to stop because this is hurting my assurance of salvation.
While those reasons might be good and true reasons to stop a behavior, this type of surface-level thinking generally leads to stopping occasions to sin. Undoubtedly, there is some wisdom in that. Taking away the occasion to sin is an important first step in dealing with particularly potent besetting sin. But it’s only a first step. There are more important considerations that bear on the heart of the matter.
A Christian should be able to see beer in a fridge without drinking the entire six-pack.
A Christian should be able to be alone without getting online and gambling away their entire paycheck.
A Christian should be able to use his/her phone without falling into pornography usage.
Thus, a more important step in digging in to the reality of besetting sin is the deeper problem of devotion, and what that devotion indicates about our worship. And worship will always bring up the subject of heart idols.
For example, let’s consider a man who is addicted to gambling on the internet. A strategy to get the man to stop gambling would be to put some sort of filter on his internet so that he cannot access those sites. That might be a wise first step in the “triage” process (to stop the bleeding), but the fact is that heart motivations have to be the prime, core, central, key, main, principle, foremost (have I made my point?) reality in dealing with a besetting sin.
We have to think about our heart motivations, and the more reticence there is to deal with the heart and its idols, the easier we will fall back into the sinful patterns we wonder if we’ll ever kick. Perhaps we wonder because we aren’t actually diagnosing the problem where it needs to be diagnosed. The battleground isn’t so much an act so much as it is our hearts.
Sin is misplaced worship and service.
Imagine a young Christian man continually falling into pornography usage. This is a grievous sin against God, and he knows it. But if the young man wakes up in the morning and his goal is simply not to look at pornography that day—and he makes that his only prayer, he has already lost the battle—because he has not attacked the heart of why pornography would be attractive to him in the first place and why he decides to engage in the actions attendant with it.
The reality is, when he engages with this sin, he is actually worshipping. He is living to serve and gratify himself. He is serving his own lusts. He has placed his own sexual gratification at the core of his desire and worshipped and served the creature (i.e. himself!), rather than the creator.
There has been a truth transfer in his own heart in the moment he gave himself over to the lust. But note the language I just used (he gave himself over to it), because it’s the language of worship. A man who falls into a persistent pornography pattern is “giving himself” not just to a sinful behavior, but to a false god!
He may come to church on Sunday and worship God too, but so long as the pattern persists in his life, he proves that he is in fact straddling the fence between two masters, both vying for worship, service, and devotion.
Our lives are not ultimately about getting the upper-hand over particular temptations.
Do we recognize that? After all, even unbelievers have shown ability to do that (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous). Treatment of actions can stand aloof from the worship wars taking place in the soil of our own hearts. When we become Christians, however, we turn from the service of idolatry to the living and true God and we wait for his Son from heaven (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10). Our lives are about serving God with our hearts, time, money, bodies, talents, everything.
So, in relation to besetting sins, we need to ask deeper questions about what we worship. Who or what claims our heart’s allegiance?
The man who gambles away his paycheck should stop gambling. But why does he gamble in the first place?
Perhaps he gambles because he wants to be rich. But then, what does that indicate about the idolatry at work in his heart? Connecting behavior to idolatry is paramount.
Perhaps he gambles because he is exhilarated by the opportunity he has to make money from doing nothing. But then, what does that indicate about the idolatry at work in his heart, and the sense of entitlement he feels?
Perhaps he gambles because he is completely dissatisfied with other areas of his life, and he finds gambling a “fun reprieve.” But then, what does that indicate about the idolatry of his heart? Answer—a lot!
Ultimately, what the gambling man has to see is that his problem is connected intimately to worship. He has a worship problem, not just a gambling problem. His gambling is an act of sinful worship, not just a sinful behavior he has to nip in the bud. Sinful patterns are indications of sinful idols, and it is incumbent on the man who gambles to search these things out and to draw from the well of his own heart and mind the precise reasons for the actions—and to make those reasons the target of his prayers as he asks the Lord for his forgiveness for breaking the very specific commandment to have no other gods besides God.
Stopping a behavior is one thing, but behaviors have no oxygen to the thrive when the soil of our hearts retain no nutrients for the idols we love. But in order to exterminate the real idol, we have to target the heart of the matter. The behavior is the symptom, the heart is the real problem. It's a worship war!
So the question becomes, not, “How will I stop this behavior today?" But, “Is Christ truly the love of my life, or my pet sins? Am I devoted to God above all—to his service and worship—or to my wicked and evil desires? What is really my g/God?"
“Will I walk by the Spirit, surrendering myself to his will and power within me, or will I go my own way and bow down to the sinful idol—and live in service and devotion to it?”
We need to correlate besetting sin with questions about worship. Only then are we targeting the root of the problem.
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