The Tyranny of Bad Habits

Scripture: Philippians 2.12-13; Romans 7.14-17;


Today is Pentecost Sunday. This is the celebration of the Gift of the Holy Spirit in fullness and power to all followers of Jesus. As such, Pentecost is truly the birth of the Church. When we think of this event and we read Acts 2, we associate, I think, the Holy Spirit with dramatic, religious scenes – strange tongues and healings and the like.

But the Spirit of God is not so much into drama as into being present in the stuff of daily living. The Holy Spirit can meet you doing dishes as well as going to church.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of God’s continual and very near presence. This was hard to believe for the first disciples of Jesus. In our Gospel reading we hear Philip saying to Jesus,

“You talk about the Father all the time; just show us the Father and that will satisfy us.”

Jesus responds by saying, “Haven’t you understood who I am? When you see me you see the Father.” The problem that the disciples were having was believing that God could be as good as Jesus was – that patient, that merciful, that wise. Incredibly, God is that good. God is good at life. Jesus shows us that. He is Maestro. The birds sing for him, or they “hush their singing” as the hymn says, when Jesus walks in the Garden. When Jesus comes to town prostitutes are forgiven and start new lives, sick people are given back their health; demons tremble.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit is the power of Jesus to change our lives at our most fundamental need, character, and lifestyle. This morning I want to talk about those fundamental need areas where the Holy Spirit would like to work change in us.

In Romans chapter 7 the apostle Paul says, “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do (the good) I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . .So then it is no longer I that do it, but the sin which dwells in me.”

Paul points out this quality of sin and sinful habits that became second nature to us. We fallen creatures, who live in a fallen world, acquire ways of thinking and acting that in time, fit us like our own skin. We become so used to our “sin skin” that we don’t even think about it much anymore. “I do not understand my own actions,” Paul says.

It is rare that what we do wrong is the result of careful deliberation. Habits are what “our body know to do” without thinking. Speaking, doing the dishes, riding a bike no longer require much thought. Unfortunately this remains true when what our body knows to do is wrong.

How many times have you said to a child, “Why did you throw that candy wrapper on the ground ?” or “Why did you leave your dirty socks lie there?” Their answer – “I don’t know.” And in a sense, they are telling the truth – their bad habits have become so natural they don’t think about what they are doing – they don’t know.

This is true not just of children but adults as well. Our attitudes and behaviors have become automatic in us. We react predictably to certain cues and certain situations with anger, lust, depression, and so on. Our bodies have learned how to sin like a piano player’s fingers learn the keys.

We were in New York City last weekend. By the way, you’ve heard about all the dangers of the city, the crime, the subways the gangs. It can be scary. I had such a moment standing in line for the ferris wheel at Toys R Us. I looked behind me and there were three ladies with red hats and purple outfits on. I got scared. They’re everywhere! They’ve followed me to New York!

Anyway, I wanted to take the boys to the Museum of Natural History, which is on Central Park West. Our hotel was on the Upper East Side. I figured we could walk across Central Park to the Museum. I knew it would be a long walk, but doable. We walked the five or six blocks to the park and entered around the Museum of Modern Art. We aimed for the turtle pond on the map because I had never been there. We found the pond and then headed west, or so I thought. We exited Central Park near this big museum-looking building. Aha, we’re here I thought. But the boys, who were tired and whiny by this time, said “Dad, we were here already.”

“No we weren’t.”

“Yes we were.”

“No, we weren’t!”

“Yes, we were.”

“Okay, boys, I’m the grownup, just be quiet.” But as we walked closer to the entrance to this Museum, I saw the sign for fine art work and I realized we have been here before. We had done a big circle in the park and were no closer to our destination than when we began. I tell you this story because our behaviors were so predictable. It was predictable that when my flawless sense of direction and general rightness was questioned I would respond with irritableness and anger. It was also predictable that the boys would become whiny when they got tired. How did that walk to the Museum end? If you predicted we got a cab, you would be right.

Sin is predictable. Sin is trivial.

When the Nazi’s were being brought to trial at Nuremberg for their crimes, Adolph Eichmann was one of the biggest fish to fry. He was the head of the S.S. extermination squads and death camps. But most of the world didn’t know much about him, didn’t even know what he looked like, until the trial. And when the world saw him and learned about him, the world was shocked by how ordinary he was. He looked like the chicken farmer that he used to be before the madness of the Third Reich. People expected, people wanted, to see a monster. They saw a little man in glasses. Sin is ordinary. Even great evil is banal rather than awe-inspiring.

Likewise in our ordinary lives we must embrace the truth that our bodily habits are the primary form in which human evil exists in practical life. Patterns of anger, scorn, and lust illustrate the basic triviality of the drive to wrongdoing. Anyone who bothers to reflect on his or her experience will be able to identify their patterns and the things that cue them.

These sins in us are powerful, but they’re not laws. It’s not like the law of gravity. Falling out of a tree is not like a bad habit. Cultivating anger, lust, and greed are. Those who say they “cannot help it” are either not well informed about life or have not decided to do without “it.” Usually the latter.

Jesus call to repentance is a call to think about how we have been thinking. To challenge the tyranny that these bad patterns and habits have over us. Habits can be changed.

But they’re not changed just by talking about what “we ought to do.” You don’t learn to ride a bike by just talking about it. You do it, with whatever help you need.

If we would change and become truly what God intends for us, a whole and holy person, we must allow the patterns of these automatic bad behaviors to be interrupted and eventually, by training, be broken and replaced with good habits.

This training and work will not be done for us – it is a joint effort that we make with the Holy Spirit of God.

Dallas Willard says there is a threefold dynamic to spiritual growth, a golden triangle if you will.


In Philippians Paul exhorts us to “work out the salvation” we already have. The sense here is that of developing and bringing to fullness of what in its nature it is meant to be. But this isn’t simply our project. It is God also is at work in us. We do what we do – and it will not be done for us – “with fear and trembling” because we know who else is involved.

Next week we are going to elaborate on this threefold dynamic and “how to” become a disciple of Jesus.








Planned Discipline to
Put on a New Heart
Colossians 3.12-17
2 Peter 1.5-10
Ordinary Events of Life
“Temptations”
James 1.2-4
Romans 5.1-5

The Action of the Holy Spirit
Romans 8.10-13; Galatians 5.22-26
Centered in the Mind of Christ

Philippians 2.12-15