FREEDOM – THE SOLUTION
Sin produces the attitudes, emotions, addictions, and behaviour patterns that medical science loves to diagnose as “disorders”. As long as the consequences of our sin can be given a label, we don’t have to take responsibility for what we are or do. We become victims of our own sinfulness rather than authors of our own bondage.
There is no such thing as self-help that can change us from sinful to righteous.
No one can “counsel” us out of our sin and its consequences. That’s why secular psychologists and psychiatrists are a waste of time and money because they can only offer temporary solutions to a permanent problem. People spend millions on worthless and useless trust in counsellors who only make them poorer but not wiser.
Mental heath institutions are full of sinners held captive by their sin, inextricably bound in unbelief, guilt, shame, and fear and, worst of all, self-pity that drags them into a state of mental and emotional paralysis. Of course, Satan capitalises in these conditions and gleefully holds them in bondage to his terrible deception.
Our old, sinful nature can never be patched up or repaired. No amount of counsel or medication can change our sinful hearts. These ‘solutions’ can only temporarily dull the pain that sin, ours or others, has done to us.
Our old nature must be put to death, killed, so that its power over us can be broken. We need a “heart transplant”, a new heart and a new nature to replace the old. However, we can’t kill our old nature. Someone else must do it for us. How is this possible?
Therefore, our first step in the direction of freedom is to accept the diagnosis they we are hopeless and helpless sinners, to own what we are, and to admit our need for outside help.
This is the place where only God can step in.
God promised His people in the Old Covenant that He would do the heart transplant for them.
“And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.”
Ezekiel 36:26-27 NLT
That’s exactly what He has done! Through Jesus, God killed our old nature by forgiving our sin, removing our guilt, raising our dead spirits to new life, and filling our new hearts with His own precious Holy Spirit.
“So, now, there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.”
Romans 8:1-4 NLT
“But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.”
Ephesians 2:4-6 NLT