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When it comes to bondage and sin, what we’re discussing is the notion that sin is your master. Sin is believing that “our way” is better than “God’s way.” It is a violation of God’s commands:
Sin is any want of conformity either of the moral state of the soul, or of the actions of a man to the law of God…The meaning of both the Hebrew and Greek words for sin is to miss, to fail, not to hit the mark, then to err from a rule or law…sin has its root in the perverted dispositions, desires, and affections which constitute the depraved state of the will; this darkens the mind and controls the actions. If the will, as to moral states, is conformed to the law of God, then the man will be without sin.[1]
The moral offense Hodge refers to can be summed up in the word rebellion. At its core, sin is rebellion against God and is compared to the sin of divination (1 Samuel 15.23). Your belief that your way is better than God’s way is rebellion. And this rebellion—always coupled with some form of arrogance— can own you. You may be able to be rebellious with manners,[2] but it is rebellion, nevertheless. You can be in bondage to rebellion and arrogance without understanding that you’re in bondage.
When people hear the phrase bondage to sin, many swiftly move to a medical model of addictions to have a way to think about bondage and to help a person find freedom. However, the modern concept of addiction has largely divorced the addictive behavior from any concept of sin.
To my way of thinking, sin is a moral concept, which is out of step with modern beliefs. Hans Madueme writes in the AMA Journal of Ethics:
Many complain that our culture is too beholden to biological psychiatry and genetic reductionism. Much of the discussion on addiction forms part of this cultural background. Thus, we inherit, or even construct, different ways of thinking about ourselves, about health and disease, about weal and woe. But not every popular assumption is sober truth. The concern of many Christians, myself included, is the tendency to “medicalize” behavior, such that sin and vice become addiction and disease. This need not be unduly conspiratorial or atavistic. The point is that an older generation was far more likely, on balance, to understand itself and its social world in terms of sin and virtue, vice and godliness. Lack of self-control and weakness of will, for instance, were moral failings to be avoided (with divine help). That sort of language has fallen on hard times.[3]
In addition, the concept of addiction is too narrow for what I’m talking about when I refer to bondage. Whereas addiction is commonly thought of in terms of unwanted, repetitive actions or thoughts, and/or compulsions at a grassroots level,[4] I’m describing bondage in terms of persistent sin that can be attitudinal as well as actional. One can be in bondage to sins of omission as well as sins of commission. Such sin may be both wanted and under my control. One may even like and enjoy one’s sin.
Hence, while bondage encapsulates addiction and addiction is always bondage, bondage is a broader and more pervasive concept that I present in this chapter. Examples of bondage include (but are not limited to):
- Constantly working to the point of exhaustion.
- Use the Lord’s name in vain or using coarse language to express strong emotions.
- Enjoying a sport to the point of neglecting time with your loved ones
- Eating to the point where you’re overweight or obese;[5] inability to say “no” to certain foods.
- Having to wear the latest fashions.
- Holding onto material things when you clearly do not need them and you know others do.
- Having a strong need to be right even when being right doesn’t matter and pushes people away.
- Measuring your self-worth based on material gain, prestige, winning, education, and so forth.
- Embellishing the truth with exaggerations and lies.
- Trusting and believing in yourself more than you trust and believe in God.
- Stealing from God by not being as fully generous as possible with your money.
- Rationalizing that you don’t have to give money to God because you’re not earning enough or because you work a lot at church, so your time is your tithe.
- Being so adamant about your political ideas that your allegiance to a political party or your country overshadows your allegiance to God.
- Overspending on indulgences, such as sports tickets.
- Being lazy about spending time with God, reading His word, or praying.
- Seeing a need and knowing you can meet that need, but not acting to do so.
The point of bondage is that your persistent sin owns you. It hinders you from living in righteousness before God.
[1] Hodge, A. A. (1863). Outlines of Theology, pp. 233–234. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers
[2] “Sin with manners” means you know how to sin in a nice, polite, and socially acceptable way. Your sin won’t offend those around you even though it will offend God.
[3] “Addiction and Sin: Recovery and Redemption,” AMA Journal of Ethics. Han Madueme, January 2008
[4] Without getting too far into the weeds, when one looks up the word “addiction” in the index of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association, one is referred to the “Substance Related and Addictive Disorders” section of the manual (starting on page 481). There, the overriding thought is about brain activity; actions or chemicals that give the individual an “intense activation of the reward system” that results in normal activities being suspended are thought to be at the core of addictions. I think most lay people who don’t read the DSM-5 think of addictions using a more common vernacular of a lack of control, “I can’t stop” mentality”, and so forth.
[5] Forty-two percent of Americans are obese. See the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Adult Obesity Facts
