Addicted to Jesus

Saturday, February 19, 2011, 5:58 a.m. – I woke this morning with the song, Spirit of the Living God, going through my mind. I sat down to have my quiet time with the Lord. Then, I prayed, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” And, I read Romans 12:1-2:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

My Understanding: The phrase, Addicted to Jesus, was brought to my attention this past week in reference to describing someone’s relationship with Jesus Christ. Then, this morning, when I awoke with the above song going through my mind, the phrase, Addicted to Jesus, was also going through my mind.

I sat down to have my quiet time with the Lord in prayer and in his word. And, that is when I read Romans 12:1-2. I sensed the Lord wanted me to stop there and to examine these two verses in relation to the idea of being addicted to Jesus, in particular because the word “addiction” generally has a negative context. So, I began by looking up the word “addiction” in Encarta’s dictionary and MS Word’s Thesaurus.

Addiction –

“great interest in a particular thing to which a lot of time is devoted” – “dedicated, given, offered, apportioned; habit – practice – follow, do, live out, pattern, design, shape; compulsion – urge – longing, yearning; impulse, desire; dependence – need, requirement, reliance upon, trust, confidence, belief, hope, faith; need; obsession – passion; abandoned – yield, relinquish, surrender, submit” (Encarta & MS Word Thesaurus).

As I read through these dictionary and thesaurus definitions of the word “addiction”, I could not help but notice many key Biblical words that are spoken throughout the teachings of scripture with regard to our faith in Jesus Christ – words such as devote, dedicate, offer, practice, follow, design, shape, longing, yearning, desire, dependence, need, require, rely, trust, confidence, belief, hope, faith, passion, yield, surrender, slave and submit. So, I began to see that there truly were many parallels between the concept of addiction (slavery to something) and the Biblical requirements with regard to our faith in Jesus Christ.

Romans 6:15-18 says this:

“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”

This passage of scripture in Romans 6, in describing the word “slavery”, is also giving a definition of the word “addiction” when it states “when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves.” And, the passage of scripture continues by letting us know that we can be slaves to sin (the kind of addiction that is sinful and negative) or we can be slaves to righteousness (the kind of addiction that is good and positive). What stood out to me from this passage of scripture, in relation to Romans 12:1-2, is this concept of offering ourselves to someone to obey him as slaves. This lead me, thus, to examine the passage in Romans 12 against this idea of addiction and against this idea of slavery, i.e. the offering of ourselves to someone to obey him, whether as slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness.

This passage in Romans 12 begins with the word “therefore.” I had always been taught that when a sentence began with that word, that meant you were to look back at what was said prior to that so that you could see what the following words were “there for”. So, I went back and read through Romans 11 again so that I could understand the context of chapter 12. Romans 11 is mainly talking about how the nation of Israel had rejected Jesus Christ as Messiah, Lord and Savior and how their rejection of Jesus meant the salvation of the Gentiles (non-Jews), but how God, in his mercy is going to graft Israel back into his vine one day when they, too, believe in Jesus Christ. So, chapter 11 is about our (Jews and Gentiles) disobedience and it is about God’s mercy in saving us. So, that is why chapter 12 begins with the word, “therefore,” because it is saying that in view of what we learned about God’s mercy in the previous chapter (and chapters), that the following should be true.

So, in view of what we have learned about God’s mercy Paul said that he “urged” believers in Jesus Christ to do the following. To “urge” means to plead or to implore someone to do something. So, it is obvious that what he said next is imperative that we do because of God’s mercy to us in saving us. The first thing Paul urged his readers to do is to “offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” That sounds a whole lot like offering yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, which sounds like addiction. The word offer means to devote, dedicate, submit, give, donate, etc. And, it says that we are to offer our bodies. In the context of both verses, I believe the word “bodies” encompasses our entire being – mind, soul, heart and physical body. So, we are to offer ourselves (our entire being) to God as living sacrifices.

Some people have the notion that salvation means that they pray a prayer and then one day they get to go to heaven when they die and that pretty much sums up their Christian experience, other than possibly going to church, getting involved in ministry, living a decent life, etc. Those are not living sacrifices. Those are dead sacrifices, because their idea of offering themselves to God as sacrifices happens once they are physically dead. That is not what this is talking about. Living means “alive, breathing, existing, active…” I think that last word, “active” is very significant here in understanding the kind of sacrifices that God desires. Active means “lively, vigorous, energetic, full of life, effective, practicing, involved, committed” etc. The concept of this is not of it being casual or occasional or of it being something we do when we are not doing something else, or of a union with God when we get to heaven one day. This means laying our lives on the altar as an offering to God, fully committed, fully involved, and then letting him decide what happens next.

We are to be living sacrifices. The meaning of the word “sacrifice” is “expense, cost, loss, martyr, forgo, forfeit, surrender, give up and/or to let go. It will cost us to lay our lives on the altar of God as living sacrifices. It might cost us relationships, jobs, reputations, time, energy, etc. It also involves loss in that we are supposed to die to our old way of life of sin and we are to have new lives in Jesus Christ. It means we say “no” to ourselves, our selfish desires, our selfish wills, etc. and we say “yes” to Jesus Christ for whatever he has for our lives, even if it means that we are hated, rejected, made fun of, criticized, etc. It means being completely abandoned (yielded) to Jesus Christ in absolute surrender of our lives.

As well, we are to offer ourselves as holy and pleasing to God. Holy basically means “set apart” to God. To be “set apart” means both to be set apart from something as well as to something, so if we are to be set apart to God, then we need to be set apart from sin and the things that are considered worldly (sinful; selfish). To be pleasing to God means to do what his word says. It pleases God that we obey him in all things his word teaches us.

This passage says that to offer ourselves as living sacrifices (slaves), holy and pleasing to God, is our spiritual act of worship. Oh, how wrong we often are in our concept of the meaning of the word “worship.” Many people think that worship of God is something you do in a “worship service” in which you sing songs that are called “worship songs.” Or, they think of worship as a set of rituals that you go through in a religious service, or it is an emotional experience during such times of collective worship with the body of Christ. Though certainly singing songs to God is part of our worship, and may involve much emotion, and perhaps even certain rituals might be involved in actual heart worship of God, what God is looking for is for us to have our lives on the altar as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to him. To him, this is our spiritual act (action) of worship. I believe we cannot truly worship God in song, praise, ritual, etc. until we have first given ourselves to him on the altar as living sacrifices (slaves) to obey him and to do his will for our lives. If we are not truly worshiping God via this kind of “addiction” to Jesus, then we are not truly worshiping him, because it is impossible to please him if our lives are off that altar.

In direct opposition to this kind of “addiction to Jesus” - in which we offer ourselves to God to obey him as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, as our spiritual act of worship - is our being conformed to the pattern of this world. We cannot be slaves to righteousness and slaves to sin at the same time. We will love one and hate the other the Bible tells us. So, if we want to be slaves to righteousness, living sacrifices to God, and addicted to Jesus Christ, we need to not be conformed to the pattern of the world. To be conformed means to imitate, follow, obey, adapt, fit in, follow the crowd, coincide, agree to, be in harmony with, and unified with the world’s pattern. A pattern is the shape, design, form, example, blueprint, mold, and model that the world offers us. “World,” in this context, is speaking of worldly influences, not nature. Such worldly influences are greed, sexual sin (adultery, viewing pornography, sexual perversion, etc.), lying, stealing, cheating, killing, hating, gossiping, gluttony, etc. These can be found everywhere, but are prevalent in TV shows, movies, music, games, relationships, etc. We are not to follow this model for how to live our lives, and in fact we are to turn from it in the opposite direction by following God’s mold, pattern, design, and shape for our lives, which is to offer ourselves to him to obey him.

This not being conformed to the world’s pattern is, thus, done through the transforming of ourselves (which is why I believe “bodies” includes more than just our physical bodies). Transform means to alter, convert, renovate, change, make over, renew, recondition, repair, restore, remodel, rebuild, and overhaul. And, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. Renew means to reintroduce, restart, renovate, replenish, recondition – put back into working order. So, if we are going to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, we need to give our minds a complete makeover from top to bottom. And, it begins, I believe, by examining what we take into our minds. We have heard the saying, “Garbage in; garbage out,” so it stands to reason if we want to clean up what is in our minds by cleaning out the old to make room for the new, we should begin by evaluating everything that goes into our minds. I believe a good guide is to check everything against Philippians 4:8-9:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

“Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom 12:2b).

Spirit of the Living God / Daniel Iverson

Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me.
Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me
Spirit of the Living God, fall fresh on me.

Sources: Spirit of the Living God - http://gospelyrics.blogspot.com/2007/09/spirit-of-living-god.html
Romans 12 - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2012&version=NIV1984
Dictionary - http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?lextype=3&search=addiction