Addictions: The Local Church is God’s Support Group
This Viewpoint blog is a companion to Season 3, Episode 9 of BJU Seminary’s Theologically Speaking podcast featuring host Stuart Scott with Dr. Ben Marshall, Executive Director of Freedom That Lasts®, an international ministry helping equip churches desiring to reach those who are suffering and stuck in an addictive lifestyle.
Takeaways:
- A less intimidating, more biblically accurate way to think of addictions is as “life-enslaving (or life-dominating) sins,” which captures the full breadth of such behaviors and allows pastors to better grasp their central role, and that of their churches, in helping address them.
- Freedom from life-enslaving sins starts with knowing what a person wants to change and the proper motivation for doing so—to become more like Jesus. Repentance is critical in particular and depends on the principle of knowing and being known. Equally important: the I Corinthians 6:11 understanding that the description of “addict” is something the repentant believer—and the church—can and should put behind her or him.
- The place for healing ministry should be the local church—as opposed to support groups meeting in the church—which has the authority to engage in ordinances and practices vital to a person coming out of life-enslaving sin.
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It’s easy for pastors and churches to get intimidated by the prospect of helping free suffering people from addictions. The tendency is to attribute the term “addiction” to drugs and alcohol alone, when in reality, addiction should refer to any type of action or behavior that dominates one’s thoughts. Due to the fact that most pastors apply the term addiction primarily to drugs and alcohol, a common practice by pastors is to replace the church with clinically trained specialists and support groups.
A Lifeway Research study last September found fewer churches providing even prayer and spiritual support for addiction than six years previous. In a world where hundreds of billions of dollars are poured into drug rehab and pornography, effective addiction ministry is absolutely needed.
A preferable term to addiction is “life-enslaving sins” or as Freedom that Lasts® calls them, life-dominating sins.
That term is, first, more biblically accurate. The starting point for a biblical approach to addiction is the recognition that life-dominating sin begins not with a disease but when the spiritual heart chooses to turn to something in the creation—such as a substance, behavior or another person—instead of God as a way to respond to life’s difficulties.
Moreover, “life-enslaving sin” encompasses a full range of sinful behaviors that pastors—as true biblical counselors—recognize they are qualified to address: from pornography to gaming to social media to all sorts of relationships.
The Proper Motivation for Addressing Sin: To Become More Like Jesus
Once the problem is understood to be a life-enslaving sin, two primary principles come to the forefront. The first problem is understanding what change(s) needs to occur, whether it’s being freed from drugs or from social media comparisons surrounding looks, lifestyle or bragging rights. The second is the proper motivation: very simply, becoming more like Jesus, the process we refer to as sanctification.
What is becoming more like Jesus about? At the heart is repentance—an intentional turning away from sin to what John refers to as walking or living in the light (1 John 1:5). But that kind of repentance, or living in the light, is not going to happen if no one knows us or what’s in our heart. It requires knowing and being known. As Freedom that Lasts® expresses it, “’being known’ is so much more than just knowing someone’s name and a few facts about them. Being known is giving someone permission to find out who you are, what your life has looked like.”
Giving someone permission to know you involves relationships of trust—vertically to God, and horizontally to a fellow believer who can in fact be trusted to be told about our planned change and why it’s needed.
Repentance also requires belief that real change in Christ is possible. The disease model practiced by many counselors and support groups emphasizes the concept of the continuously “recovering addict,” as it’s also put, “once an addict, always an addict.” But 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, in reference to those who practice “sexually immoral,” “adulterers,” and “drunkards,” states clearly that “such were”—past tense—”some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
The Proper Place: The Local Church
The place where these trust relationships can truly be built, and a biblical approach to change pursued, is God’s support group—the local church. And the local church is not about a building, where external support groups often enjoy free space to pursue secular disease models. The church is about the people who make up the Body of Christ.
God gave the church, and pastors, authority to engage in practices and ordinances vital to recovery:
- – preaching, delivering messages on wisdom that isn’t man-centered
- – baptism, symbolizing death to sin and rising to newness of life
- – communion, emphasizing forgiveness in the blood of Christ and mutual edification in the Body;
- – and even church discipline representing accountability in love.
The church is a place where fellow believers can hear from external voices and be reminded that our past is indeed in the past, and that our washing, justification, and sanctification are true. We are not defined by our past sin; rather, we are defined by the Word of God…we are adopted children of God and no longer slaves to sin. We are truly free!
Healing change can happen. And it can and should happen in the local church.
Resources:
- For help and support in starting a church-based addiction ministry, contact Dr. Marshall via freedomthatlasts.com. There you will also find a full range of church and pastoral resources as well as helps for those escaping life-enslaving sin.
- Jim Berg, Changed into His Image and Help! I’m Addicted
- Stuart and Zondra Scott, Killing Sin Habits: Conquering Sin with Radical Faith
- One Eighty Ministries, Counseling Books by Topic
- Mark Shaw, The Heart of Addiction: A Biblical Perspective
- Ed Welch, Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave.
