I like the message of the song The Core of My Addiction by Fireflight so much that I decided to write another devotional about it. May the force be with you also to be greatly moved by the biblical message of this song. I am speaking of the force and the attraction of the love of the cross of Jesus moving us to sacrifice our very lives to living for Jesus.

Paul writes, “For the love of Christ controls us” (II Corinthians 5:14). Most likely Paul is speaking not only of his love for Jesus but especially the love of Jesus on the cross capturing his heart. You might even say Paul was addicted to Jesus.

Addiction can be defined as a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects…the state of being compulsively committed to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma…an obsession that controls one’s behavior. The difference for Christians is that the addiction, attraction, and obsession is to love and live for Jesus because He is so amazingly awesome in His agape love for us.

Why would a Christian group write a song about addiction? Here’s the answer: before we become Christians we live for the flesh – you might say we were selfishly addicted to living life for ourselves. In Titus 3:3 the apostle Paul writes, “For we also once were disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures…”. There it is – ENSLAVED = addicted = out of control living for the flesh. No wonder I wanted to write another devotional about this song.

Read Romans 6:1-23. Then listen to The Core of My Addiction by Fireflight. Then be set free from the addiction of this life and be a freewill slave of Jesus Christ.

Romans 6

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Far from it! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for the one who has died is freed from sin.

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all time; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore sin is not to reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your body’s parts as instruments of righteousness for God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace.

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under the Law but under grace? Far from it! Do you not know that the one to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of that same one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and after being freed from sin, you became slaves to righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented the parts of your body as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your body’s parts as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in relation to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.