Bought with a Price

I decided it was time to shake off that dark theme I was using for something a little cleaner: black on white pages, just like reading a book. More posts are coming; I’m reaching a point where I’m not too busy to blog here. What do you think of the new theme? Leave a comment.

What motivates us to change our behavior? Let’s say that you have a problem with pornography, and that you wake up enough to decide to do something about it. What is really going to motivate you to start living a new way? There seem to be levels of motivation here:

Level 1 – you don’t want to change at all, you’re enjoying your sin.
Level 2 – you realize you should change, but you’re not really ready to do anything about it.
Level 3 – you realize you should change, and you’re ready to take steps to do so.

At level 1, you’re not going anywhere at all. You’ve been deceived by sin to the point where you revel in it, as Peter says, “having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. (2 Peter 1:9)”

Getting to level 2 usually involves some kind of wakeup call: you get caught looking at pornography by your spouse or roommates, or you lose a job because you came in late after another night of sexual excess, etc. At this point, you’re not really motivated to change; you’re just feeling bad about the consequences of your actions, and you know that you should do something about it, much in the same way you know you should fix that leaky faucet on the kitchen sink. However, the lure of sin is still too strong. It may take continued failure and loss before you come to the end of yourself, and reach out to God for his help.

Getting to level 3 is involves a conscious decision to make a break with your sin. You repent before God, and probably others, and decide to live a new way. This is the stage I am most interested in here. What motivation will get you moving forward, and keep you moving?

I have been reading John Owen’s work, The Mortification of Sin, and one thing he said really struck me:

“A man who only opposes the sin in his heart for fear of shame among men or eternal punishment from God would practice the sin if there were no punishment attending it.”

Owen’s understanding of our sinful hearts is dead on! For years I labored under this misunderstanding of grace. I tried to stop using pornography because I wanted to avoid the negative effects of this sin, but my motivation was ultimately legalistic, and those efforts met with failure. If I could sin all I wanted without any consequences, then I would gladly embrace sin. My heart hadn’t been set free by grace.

“Such a person has cast off, in this respect, renewing grace, and is kept from ruin only because of restraining grace. He has fallen a great way from grace and returned under the power of the law. Must this not be a great provocation to Christ, that men should cast off his gentle yoke and rule, to cast themselves back under the iron yoke of the law, merely because of their lusts?”

So what should your motivation be? “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. (2 Corinthians 5:9)” Living a life that is pleasing to God doesn’t come from our iron will to abstain from sin because of our fear of consequences, but rather emanates from practicing faith in Christ because we love him. “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)”

Only a motivation that is based on renewing grace will suffice. Having been accepted by God through the work of Christ, we determine to deal with sin because we are forgiven.

I would appreciate your thoughts and comments.

I admit it – I may be the world’s most neglectful blogger. I would like to think that the reason for this is that I don’t want to commit every stray thought to a blog, as if anything I can conjure up is worth reading. I write carefully because my stray thoughts are like stray cats: you never really know where they’re going to go next. The primary reason that this blog has been neglected is that I’ve been busy, colossally busy.

For the last two years I have been preparing a book for publication, called Porn Free: Finding Renewal through Truth and Community, based on the curriculum I developed for the Sexual Integrity for Men course here at Xenos Christian Fellowship. The manuscript is done now, and I’m working with an editor friend of mine to turn it into something readable. A book proposal will be going out soon to publishers, and if all goes well and it gets published, you’ll be seeing it this year. I’ll keep you posted here.

In the meantime, it’s high time I started paying attention to this space.

If you came here from Luke Gilkerson’s excellent Breaking Free blog, hosted by Covenant Eyes, then you might feel like you are caught in an infinite loop. I got the privilege of being a guest blogger there today, with a piece inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. Check it out here.

Now for the news for those of you who came here from there, or were looking for something different.

I had announced earlier this year that I was working on a book, called Bought with a Price. I have re-titled the book and am calling it Porn Free: Finding Renewal through Truth and Community. I’m in the editing and design process before publishing, and will have a sample chapter or two available in the next few weeks on a new web site – pornfreebook.com.

Stay tuned here for more information as it becomes available.