Proverbs 23:22-35
“They struck me,” you will say, “but I was not hurt;
they beat me, but I did not feel it.
When shall I awake?
I must have another drink.”
Proverbs 23:35
What a tragic scene! One that has played out countless times down through the ages — the grip of addiction. It is clear from this passage that the author understood something of the nature of addiction/alcoholism. The author recognizes the alluring nature of addiction (and temptation in general), how deceptively pleasant it appears at the beginning, but that the end result is not so pretty. (Pr. 23:31-32) The author also recognizes that the addict — once hooked — is powerless to deliver himself. Though it is clear that his life is a mess, the alcoholic’s only interest is to have another drink.
And so it is for all of us. We are all born already addicted — to sin. And we are utterly powerless to deliver ourselves from its grip. That doesn’t mean we don’t try. There are books galore offering self-help advice, seminars promising a better life if you just do X, and whole systems of religion to help us “ascend”. But the truth is that there is no deliverance apart from Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, most Christians (myself included) live as if the deliverance we have in Jesus is simply one of deliverance from the consequences of sin, rather than from sin itself. And so we accept a certain level of ever-present sin as normal or even inevitable and end up being somewhat nonchalant in the battle against sin, just looking forward to the point of death when we will finally really begin to experience freedom. But I am sure that is not the Gospel. That would be like telling the alcoholic to go ahead and have another drink because it is unavoidable anyway.
Christ calls us to something better, to true deliverance. We should not be content with an undercurrent of ongoing sin. We must put to death our old self and put on the new, living by the Spirit of Christ. (See Eph. 4:17-24, Col. 2:20-3:17, and Romans 8.)
So, what will it be? True deliverance in Jesus? Or I must have another drink?