Why is the Christian life about a change of appetites rather than just giving up things you love?
Discipline is real, but self-effort cannot make someone release what they deeply love. The Spirit replaces old affections, so former loves become hated and former hatreds become loved. That inward transformation of appetite, not external surrender, explains the Christian life.
Les explains that the Christian life does involve discipline, but it is not simply giving up things you just love to do. He says the things you once loved you begin to hate, and vice versa, so it is a matter of having a change of appetites. In Romans 8, believers are debtors not to the flesh; living after the flesh brings death, but through the Spirit putting to death the deeds of the body brings life. Earlier, Les compares old Adam to a whiskey still that produces sins, while Christ has quickened us—made us alive together with Christ—by grace, not works.