Watch this. Three minutes. Then three questions below it.
Stu after his diagnosis does not ask why. He eventually asks what for. The shift from why to what for is the turn toward redemption.
The enemy wants your addiction to stay in the dark. The moment you bring it into the light, name it to God, name it to one man, you have done the thing that breaks the isolation the addiction needs.
God is not keeping score of the relapses. His mercies are new every morning, including the morning after the worst night.
Father Stu is the film at the center of this study. The scene is chosen because it captures something true about the specific challenge this study addresses. The filmmakers may not have intended a theological reading, but the truth they captured is there regardless of intention.
John 8:36 sits inside a larger argument Paul or one of the other biblical authors is making about how the renewed life looks in practice. The verse is not a standalone principle. It is part of a sustained argument about what it looks like when a man actually believes what he says he believes on Sunday morning.
The connection between this film and this Scripture is the same one that runs through every study in this series: what a man sees in the mirror when he watches that clip is exactly the gap this Scripture addresses. The film names the problem. The Scripture names the source and the solution.