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Jeremiah 17:9 – Will-Control
Sin needs a remedy, but so does temptation. How easy is it to give in to Satan’s inducements? While the following anecdote is not serious, there is a serious point. Does the following example seem “too real” to you?
A lady on a diet was determined to make it through a full week without cheating. She dropped into a cafeteria one day for a cup of coffee. A man with two doughnuts and a cup of coffee sat down on the other side of the table. The pastries smelled truly delicious – but the woman remained firm in her decision not to indulge. After a while the man got up, leaving behind one whole doughnut. It sat there staring at the lady with its one eye. Yes, donuts can stare! An internal struggle ensued and temptation triumphed. Giving in, the woman reached across the table, picked up the doughnut and started to eat it.
Pause for just a second as you imagine both her glee and guilt. Pause long enough yet short enough because it was just a pause before the man came back with a second cup of coffee. Busted! Because this woman thought she was alone she gave in, but the mirror of temptation is always before us.
There are two ways that temptation needs a remedy. First, we need strengthening from being tempted. And second, we need power when being tempted. Let’s look at the first – a remedy to keep us from being tempted.
But before getting into details, I have a confession to make. There is no remedy – at least no permanent and total cure to temptation. When Jesus stood face to face with Satan and won, the Tempter only temporarily left until he found an “opportune time” (Lk.4.13 NASB). As we mature, the Tempter’s machinations of manipulation also mature. What Satan does is change the temptations to our ever changing selves.
What tempts a young man in the teenage years will not tempt a man in the last days of old age. And what tempts that old man is no temptation to the teen. No better example is that of David. Even though already a man of too many wives, David also lusted after Bathsheba, committing sexual sin when he was a man young enough to be full of vigor. When age deprived him, such temptations departed:
1 Kings 1:1-4 HCSB Now King David was old and getting on in years. Although they covered him with bedclothes, he could not get warm. (2) So his servants said to him: “Let us search for a young virgin for my lord the king. She is to attend the king and be his caregiver. She is to lie by your side so that my lord the king will get warm.” (3) They searched for a beautiful girl throughout the territory of Israel; they found Abishag the Shunammite and brought her to the king. (4) The girl was of unsurpassed beauty, and she became the king’s caregiver. She served him, but he was not intimate with her.
I find this story strangely ironic. The heat of passion brought down a great man in lusting after a married woman. And in the end he is just an old man who can’t stay warm and has to lie next to a virgin…doing anything.
So here we are. There is no remedy but a remedy is needed. Without trying to sound flippant, the remedy is a lot like staving off getting sick. There is always “something going around.” Eventually everyone will get sick. But can we help prevent getting sick every time? Is there anything we can do to strengthen our immune system? Sometimes staying well is as simple as staying away from those who are sick. While we are to “flee temptation,” we are not to flee the world. Sometimes staying well involves staying active, exercising, eating well, and such. Personally I have found that a lot harder than simply staying away from those who are sick. Of course the positive actions are more about lifestyle changes, than anything else.
And so, we need remedies against spiritual sickness. And that remedy is not a onetime inoculation, but an ever evolving inner changing. We can’t just die to sin once, we have to stay dead, or maybe just keep dying again and again. It is about lifestyle changes.
If temptation is real, and reveals our true selves, then maybe the solution is found right where the problem is. The remedy to temptation is not will-power; it is “will-control” which in the Bible is called self-control (Acts 24.25; 1Cor.7.5, 7; 7.9; 9.25; Gal.5.23; 2 Tim.3.3; 2 Pet.1.6). There is a difference and the difference is not just sophistry. Will-power suggests that I, myself, simply need to exert myself, my will. Self-control is about stopping me, my will, from exerting control. It would be so easy if only will-power were the remedy. “Just say no.” Isn’t that what they say? But some people have no will-power; they don’t even have “won’t-power.” That is because our will power is deformed by our own sins (Jer.17.9). Our will is not God’s will. That is why Jesus had to say, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” And with Jesus, His will was not deformed by sin, and yet ours is.
Jeremiah 17:9 HCSB The heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick–who can understand it?
We are all like Mark Twain who famously and facetiously said, “I can resist everything except temptation.”
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