Will the Holy Spirit Take Away My Sin or Addiction—and What Must I Do to Receive It?

Will the Holy Spirit take away my sin or addiction?

There is a way out of sin and addiction. God can help us to overcome with the strength of His Holy Spirit. But it will first require determination to quit and stay clean.

God wants all addicts to be free from their addictions and all sinners to be freed from their sins. He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).

If you are struggling with an addiction or other sinful behavior you know is damaging, you need help. We become slaves to our sins (Romans 6:16). An addiction keeps you trapped in its clutches, but you can be freed from this form of slavery.

Once addiction or sinful behavior becomes ingrained, it’s difficult to change. It requires a change in the way you think. Your mind, having been corrupted, needs a transformation.

This is where God’s Spirit can help you see that your behavior is wrong and give you the strength to stop. The Spirit will not take away your addiction and sin unless you are willing to cease and start doing the right thing. The strength of God’s Spirit can help you resist wrong urges.

It will be a struggle, and at times you may feel like you’ll never be able to overcome. Even the apostle Paul struggled with thoughts and behavior contrary to his desire to think and do right. He wrote, “In me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find” (Romans 7:18). Yet God’s Holy Spirit helped Paul resist the temptation to sin (see Romans 8:2, 4).

Likewise, you can stop an addiction’s control over your life with the help of God’s Spirit. He gives that Spirit to those who obey Him (Acts 5:32). For instance, when people heard Peter’s sermon on Pentecost in Acts 2 and realized their complicity in the death of Jesus, they were cut to the heart and asked what to do (verse 37). Peter answered, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (verse 38).

To overcome an addiction, to stop sinning, requires you to likewise repent. The sinner must admit the problem is deep-seated in his mind. Then, with the help of God’s Spirit, he can change his corrupted thinking and overcome.

King David once cried out to God in acknowledging his sin, asking God to renew him within and not take away His Holy Spirit (Psalm 51:10-11). God answered his prayer for restoration, continuing to grant vital help through the Holy Spirit.

Slavery to addiction and sin can be broken by first determining to stop sinning. Then God’s Spirit can help to renew your mind. Counseling can also be of benefit in retraining our thinking. Feel free to contact us with specific questions. The truth is, only God can totally take away an addiction, but you must first be willing to stop sinning and obey Him. With God’s Spirit, you can overcome your sin or addiction. You can do as He commands in Galatians 5:16: “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”

After a person repents of sin, accepts Jesus Christ as Savior in faith and is baptized, what else is needed to receive the Holy Spirit?

 Beyond these is the need for what Scripture refers to as the laying on of hands by a minister of Jesus Christ. Acts 2:38 gives the requirement of repentance and baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Other passages, such as Hebrews 11:6, note the necessity of faith in approaching God.

But that’s not all. Following baptism we see this next step. The pattern is spelled out in the basic doctrines or teachings laid out in Hebrews 6:1-2. It starts with “the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands . . .” This is clearly a fundamental practice.

Laying on of hands was used in the Old Testament period as a means of conferring a blessing, of ordination to office, of transferring responsibility and setting things apart for holy use. It continued in the New Testament as a means of Christ and His servants blessing and healing others. It was used for ordaining people to special service (Acts 6:6).

We see it employed for those newly baptized in Acts 8. After the deacon Philip baptized many people in Samaria, the apostles sent Peter and John to lay hands on these with prayer for the receiving of the Holy Spirit (verses 12-19). Though authorized to baptize, Philip was not authorized to lay on hands for the conferring of the Holy Spirit. This authority was invested in the eldership of the Church (compare 1 Timothy 4:14).

Under normal circumstances, an ordained elder of the Church will do both the baptism and the laying on of hands immediately following, as we see in Acts 19:1-6. Here the apostle Paul encountered people who had been baptized as followers of John the Baptist but without full understanding of the Christian commitment and the Holy Spirit. After counseling them, he baptized them into Christ and laid hands on them for the Holy Spirit.

Of course, it is God who gives His Spirit, not the minister. But this practice shows that God works through a human ministry and expects us to cooperate with the Church’s structure and process He has laid out.

Some use the example of the household of Cornelius in Acts 10, where God gave His Spirit prior to any laying on of hands or even baptism, to argue that these steps are unnecessary. But this was a special case to show to Peter and the other apostles that God was accepting gentile believers into the Church. He still told them they needed to go through the baptismal process (verse 48). That did not negate the regular pattern.