"Batter my heart, three-personed God"- paradox

"Batter my heart, three-personed God"
by John Donne

This poem is full of paradoxes.
The speaker is a constant sinner, and wants God to make him new, free, and pure.  The irony/paradox is that to make him new, the speaker wants God to "break, blow, burn [him]" (Donne, 840).  The speaker says that he is "betrothed to you enemy" (Donne, 840).  The basically means that the speaker is married to Satan.  Yet, the speaker loves God.
The speaker wants to stop sinning, but cannot unless God imprisons and cleanses him.  "Except you enthrall me, never shall I be free" (Donne, 840).  This paradox is assisted by the double meaning of the word "enthrall."  On one hand, enthrall means to enslave.  The speaker is saying, 'Unless you enslave me, I will not be free.'  On the other hand, enthrall can also mean to capture someone's attention.  The speaker wants God to capture his attention.  God must make an effort to keep the speaker away from sin, as opposed to the traditional method of the sinner making an effort to come back to God.  The truth revealed in the paradox is that God must imprison the speaker and take his attention in order for the speaker to be free from sin.

These drastic paradoxes show the intensity of the emotion felt by the speaker.  The author clearly gets the point across that drastic measure must be taken for the speaker to be pure.