Postscript
You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; Hebrews 12:4 NASB
Resisted– Are you resisting sin? Are you striving to follow the Way? Is it working? Ah, maybe not as well as you would like. The problem isn’t lack of understanding. The problem is intensity in motivation. And that doesn’t improve by thinking more about it.
The Greek verb here is antikathistēmi. You can see that it is the combination of anti (“instead” or “because of” as a contrast) and kathistēmi, which is also a combined word from kata (“in relation to”) and histēmi (“abide, appoint, bring, continue, covenant, establish, hold up”[1]). So we have a word that means taking a stand against or abiding against. This is not a one-time event, and it isn’t mental. It’s an emotional, volitional covenant to continue.
We were taught that knowledge is power, but this is a manifest lie when it comes to the dealing with the yetzer ha’ra in us. Knowledge is powerless to defeat the yetzer ha’ra because our knowing is already co-opted by our internal agent of resistance. In Hebrew, knowing does not exist without doing. If I assert that I know something but my life does not reflect the change in behavior implied by what I know, then in Hebrew I did not know it! Arnold Bennett tells us why this is the case:
“There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.”[2]
The old heart has been pumping those desires into your bloodstream for a long time. Self-help regimens, external restraints, venue changes and protective mantras are ineffective. You cannot resist effectively until you feel recovery! That means that actions come before words and deeds come before thoughts. I don’t control my mind by thinking about it. The “fight-fire-with-fire” mentality only burns everyone. How can I change this pattern?
The answer: Not quickly! That’s the rub. The yetzer ha’ra acts immediately, anesthetizing our shame, guilt and fear virtually instantaneously. As soon as I desire to resist sin, I feel better, at least temporarily. But real victory doesn’t work this way. It is a long, slow process. It hurts. It causes anxiety. It confuses our emotional state of mind. We want immediate gains, but recovery says we must forego the immediate for the sake of long-term sanity. And that means we will have to deal with the emotional trauma of unsatisfied need. Of course, it really isn’t unsatisfied need, is it? It is really desire. We could live without the addictive fix, but life would immediately be harder, now. Resisting “to blood” means hurting now to celebrate later, and hurting now is about emotional disturbance. This is why I can know what I should do and find myself not doing it. The emotional need is stronger than the rational choice.
If we are going to resist to the point of shedding blood, we will have to be prepared to deal with our emotional dysfunctions. We will have to talk to ourselves over and over, reminding ourselves that, yes, right now it hurts, but it is supposed to hurt because it is healing. Right now we need to feel what it might be like to not go through this the next time, and then make this time the next time.
There is one more crucial bit to this postscript. If we successfully manage to confront the emotional trauma of this moment and not engage the immediate numbing of the concession, the yetzer ha’ra is more than likely to use this as ammunition against us. “You see,” he says, “you can overcome. You just did it. Don’t you feel better? You successfully resisted. You’re on the right track. Now you know you can recover. So, why not reward yourself for your victory?”
Ah, he is so clever.
Here’s a hint. Stay with the pain. It is real. The rest is seduction. Eventually the pain will turn into real healing. Eventually—or maybe sooner.
Topical Index: resist, antikathistēmi, emotion, recovery, Hebrews 12:4
[1]Strong, J. (2009). Vol. 1: A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament and The Hebrew Bible(38). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
[2]Arnold Bennett, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/arnoldbenn132277.html
I am a recovering addict. Jeshua completely healed me on Good Friday 1986. I volunteer at my church and mentor men in recovery. All this to say “Great ‘Today’s Word'”. One of the very common outlooks is the old Flip Wilson tag line of “The devil made me do it.” Before I had ever heard of yetser ha’ra and yetser tov I knew that the enemy of our souls has a powerful ally in his goal of our destruction and it is our heart. The heart is deceitful above all else and desperately corrupt. We don’t need satan to get us to sin, our default bent is in that direction.
This Today’s Word helps explain part of a very complex issue – addiction. Returning to our vomit. Except as you wrote if we don’t act on our knowledge is it really knowledge?
Obedience and submission are the means and the end. Can I say I abide in the Kingdom of Heaven if I rebel against the King? If I am striving to be obedient and submissive I say yes. If I am living life on my own terms, I think not. Sanctification is fighting the good fight. Struggling to submit and obey. After all, if we live life on our terms here on earth, why would we think Heaven would be a place we want to be?
I understand it as being…. A new heart, after the old Stony heart is taken away. It is by faith, which requires action. The things hoped for but not yet seen, as though they are already here, there is Victory… now, not a spiritual plateau of something in the future. But right now… I can be an overcomer, with God’s strength which is available. It has been said that we are attics of our life we love what we used to do, and we are hung up on it. I am learning to hang those things on the cross and leave them be behind me. And walk into the destiny that God has for me. Every day. And share in my struggles that everyone has.
About 30 years ago I met a young lady who provided her testimony of being immediately healed of substance abuse (alcohol and drugs). Her story went beyond that, as she was arrested for something related (don’t recall what), and was concerned about her court date. She’s convinced her prayer and ‘conversion’ is what led to her charges being dropped.
Postscript: It was years later for my own ‘conversion’. I sought her out—it took a while—to let her know. After that, I’d see her on a few occasions. In one discussion she asserted that the ‘Bible teaches abstinence from alcohol’. I knew that wasn’t true (drunkenness is the issue), and I nearly blurted out a correction; however, before I had a chance to state something the Spirit prodded me to say nothing. Her sobriety was much more important than the truth of this matter.
Perhaps it does teach abstinence. Perhaps Yeshua only drank unfermented grape juice. I know some Christian cultures believe, and teach, that to be the case.
I’m aware of that line of thought. However, a close reading of John 2:1-11 (see esp. v. 10 “after the guests have become drunk/drunk freely”) appears to prove otherwise. Even if Yeshua didn’t drink, the evidence points to Him making ‘choice wine’ for the guests. Surely this was not grape juice. The verb here is methyskō, while its noun form methē is found in Galatians 5:21, where it most certainly means “drunkenness”. The text is silent on whether Jesus drinks or not; but, the point here is that He made the ‘choice wine’/”best wine” for others to drink. Now, I’m not saying the guests at this particular wedding got drunk, as the text is silent on that matter as well. But if Jesus promoted strict abstinence, then He would not have made the ‘choice wine’ with which He would have induced others to sin by merely drinking any of it.
You are making the assumption that “choice wine” was the wine that had been around the longest (because that is our value system) but what if it was the stuff that had just been pressed? Perhaps “choice wine” was “new wine”? The same word was used for what we would call alcoholic as well as for non-alcoholic grape juice, wasn’t it?
I think “new wine” could well be the deeper theological meaning, a precursor to the coming Spirit, but the plain meaning is that Yeshua turned water into ‘choice wine’ because the host ran out. In other words, when searching out deeper theological meanings, one should must be careful not to dismiss the plain meaning of the narrative.
ADDED: I didn’t address your last sentence. The word oinos is simply “wine” and can mean either/or. But, the point here is the use of the verb methyskō. It would seem odd to state that someone drank too much grape juice.
Alcohol is what you can’t drink a lot of. Juice? As much as you want.
Yes, you can’t drink too much grape juice, but the context specifically says “drank too much”, which must refer to drunkenness (using the verb form of the noun methē, which means “drunkenness”).
We were made to love and be loved. Addiction is where we have been deceived into thinking that we can find love in all the wrong places. Love is the motivation we were created to run on. To the extent that I am believing lies about love I can be ‘sold’, or convinced, that other motivations are actually love. If I experience any kind of relief from the incessant torment of not sharing love with another FOR ANY REASON, I will go back to that place and look for that relief again. Without love, the only ‘relief’ we get is from some way to step out of our skins: altered states. All addictions are about these altered states. All sin is an altered state, too, because an altered state is anywhere I am not who I was created to be: I am not myself. Sin hands me a false identity based on motivations not of God; and, because I am desperate for relief from torment (looking for love in a place I don’t already have it), I bite the apple again. The experience of sin is a setup for more sin. This is the basis of all addiction: the experience leaves you with an even bigger deficit that you have to try harder to fill next time, but you are being driven by even more desperation to try. Twelve step programs call this the “merry-go-round” because you get nowhere. The Bible calls it “dead in trespasses and sins”.
I think sin is simply being wrongly motivated to seek love in the wrong places and ways for the wrong reasons, for we all are created for love, and that design is still there in all of us. Addicts are all looking for love, as are all sinners, but we are set up by those addictions and sins to continue to look for more relief – however temporary – where we experienced it last time. I do it, too. It’s automatic! When Skip says we have to allow the torment – admit the truth that we are already in the torment and rage that a lack of love produces – I think he is saying that we have to suspend that automatic withdrawal from our bank accounts – that propendency to what we experienced last time.
To feel the torment is to come briefly awake from our walking, talking death in sin – from the automatic zombie state addictions, including the addiction to sin, keeps us in. I think we all naturally hate life because all of us have experienced it as this hurt! I think sin sets us up, through experience, to hate our initial experience of life because our first breath of life hurts. The truth of how bad off we are also hurts. So now we hate the truth, too! Truth is, we are badly off track because, to the extent that we have fallen for lies about love, the navigation system (the spiritual motivations that govern our choices) is not love: and because it is not love (which plugs us back into reality) we keep landing in our ditches again. We really are insane in these places! Love is like the grapes we all want that hang just out of reach, and, because it is out of reach to the extent that we lack obedience to the will of God (which is the right way, or, motivation, to go about life), we hate those (sour, of course) grapes, too! So back we dogs (heathen) and hogs (unclean motivations) go to what we ate yesterday (vomit) and to what made us dirty (unrighteous) yesterday, too. Sinners hate the way, truth and life because they think (believe lies) that they are the ‘source’ of all the torment! Me too! I must be insane!
To get off the merry-go-round of our addiction to sin, then, we need a new power source – a new set of motivations. We need to find the real love gas to fill our tanks with. Only obedience lines up our aircraft with that refueler, however. The first command we must obey: “be still”. Death is the chaos sin drives us to to avoid life. Life is about peace: about plugging back into reality and staying there! The first lie about love I fell for is the one that reality – that love I need so desperately – is ‘up to me’. Chaos! Being still is about letting God do all the loving instead. I have to choose His love, but I am not going to be motivated to choose it unless I hate (repent for) what is currently motivating me. Lies about love have to be replaced. The first, foundational lie is that I am “all alone: it is all up to me”. Well, I’m not ever alone because God never left (I did) and the wrong motivation of pride must be replaced with the humility of love where I trust that my life can be in Someone Else’s hands. May I stay there today!
Thank you for this.
This is a road map to freedom. The best way we can honor those who gave their lives fighting for this country would be to embrace what you have written here. Thank you Skip.
Excellent, excellent word. Faced with truth, what do we do with it ?!? Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. There is a certain degree of excitement that comes with knowledge, it really can give energy to the yetzer ha ra.
Knowing and knowing. Jesus said, “depart from me, I don’t know you”. It basically comes down to the destruction of the flesh, which everything within us seems to resist!
I really benefit and enjoy you’re teaching in this area, Skip. Thank you. Probably the most helpful of any teaching out there in this regard. Blessings.
Until “that day”, we will probably always have limited vision(now we know in part, seeing through a glass darkly) but it’s what we do with that limited vision that makes all the difference. Maybe when we inhabit that limited vision we will get more ?!?
I really needed this! Thank you, Skip, and brothers and sisters for the comments.