Addictive Sin

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:19-25)

If you’ve ever been to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, you’ve seen that before anyone speaks he (or she) will say, “My name is ___, and I am an alcoholic.” When I was leading 12-step Bible studies, I would sometimes open up with, “My name is Tony and I am a sinner.”

Poet W.H. Auden once wrote –-

“All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.”

At its root, addiction is sin. And, sin is addictive. Addicts don’t have a choice to be a non-addict any more than we can choose to not be sinners. You can either be practicing or recovering. We can be practicing sinners – running away from God toward destruction. Or, we can be recovering sinners with help from the Spirit of Christ, who leads us to eternal life.