John E. Cosper
John E. Cosper is a Christian writer, teacher, and the author of the forthcoming book The Beast Is Not Your Master: My Story of Addiction, Arrest, Redemption, and a Life Rebuilt by God’s Grace.
For much of his early life, John wanted little to do with Christianity. At the same time, a hidden struggle with sexual addiction was steadily damaging his life, his relationships, and the people around him.
In November 2003, that hidden life collapsed with his arrest.
While being held in protective custody in the DeSoto County Jail in Hernando, Mississippi, John reached a point where his own efforts, explanations, and attempts to control his life had run out. On November 26, 2003, he knelt beside his bunk and asked Jesus Christ to save him.
John describes that moment simply:
“I gave up fighting God.”
Becoming a Christian did not make the consequences of his previous choices disappear. In June 2004, John was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, with seven years suspended and eight years to serve.
Those eight years became an unexpected period of spiritual growth and preparation.
While incarcerated, John participated extensively in Bible education and ministry, earned a Master of Biblical Studies degree, and preached hundreds of sermons. In 2009, he wrote his master’s thesis, Taming the Beast Within, examining sexual addiction and Christian recovery from both biblical and personal perspectives.
That thesis eventually became the foundation for The Beast Is Not Your Master.
John was released from prison in 2012. In the years since, he has continued living out the recovery about which he writes while rebuilding relationships, family life, work, and the ordinary routines that once seemed impossibly far away.
His perspective on recovery has also continued to mature.
John does not believe Christian freedom means temptation disappears, nor does he believe calling destructive sexual behavior an addiction removes personal responsibility. His writing emphasizes both grace and responsibility, along with honesty, accountability, counseling, recovery community, appropriate boundaries, and continued vigilance.
Above all, he believes those things are tools rather than the source of freedom.
Jesus Christ is the source.
That conviction is at the heart of New Creature Ministries and The Beast Is Not Your Master.
John often summarizes what more than twenty years of recovery has taught him this way:
I remain vulnerable. I remain responsible. I remain vigilant. But vulnerability is not identity, and vigilance is not fear.
Today, John continues to write and develop resources intended to help people struggling with sexual addiction and habitual sexual sin, as well as families, pastors, ministry leaders, and others walking alongside them.
He lives in the Mid-South with his wife.
About the Name
The name New Creature Ministries comes from 2 Corinthians 5:17:
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
For John, those words are more than the name of a ministry. They express one of the central truths of his story.
A Christian may still experience temptation. The past may still have consequences. Recovery may require vigilance, accountability, and the help of other people.
But the past no longer has the authority to define who that person is.
The beast is not your master. Jesus Christ is.