When I was a teenager, I remember someone telling me that who you are behind closed doors is who you really are and that stuck with me. It hurt me so deeply to think that this pattern of brokenness was really just “who I was” and who I would always be, that I’d never be free of it, that I had no control and that I would be forever isolated and condemned because of it. There’s a lot of things I could imagine God forgiving me for but this one, this empty cycle of existence, I didn’t believe there was mercy enough for that. There was no grace that was sufficient for this version of me.
Of course, I was wrong.
In part 1 of this series, we talked about true freedom and what it is, and how the only way to find true freedom is through the grace of God. So now, I want to expand on that and help you discover anew the grace that is available to you because that knowledge changed my life.
By the time I made it to my first semester in college, my addiction to pornography was a deeply engrained habitual sin. I was pretending that it wasn’t, hoping that everything else I was doing right in my life would make me feel better about this one thing I was doing wrong but of course, that plan failed miserably. I just ended up feeling like a fraud with a huge secret that would crush everything positive I was trying to build.
So I sought help: I went to the Bible, I looked up information online, I did everything I could possibly do (except tell anyone, of course) and it worked for a little bit but it didn’t last long because I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was just a fact that I was going to fall again, a fact I couldn’t escape, a fact I could only deny for so long. And that had been the cycle for years, until God finally sat me down and taught me a lesson about grace and freedom that I had never understood or heard before.
You see, the reality is, you can do an addiction recovery program, accountability group, you can tell the whole world about your issues with pornography or any other habitual sin you struggle with. You can even smash your computer and devices to pieces (and that might help you a little bit) but you can’t avoid your problems and you can’t fix them yourself. Eventually, no matter how much you try to run from it, you will come face to face with temptation again. And I'm just going to be totally upfront with you, you're probably going to lose the fight against that temptation in this instance because, if you've never really dealt with your sin in the first place, all you are really doing is running from it while it chases after you until eventually, it catches up to you. You see,
Avoidance isn’t purity.
Purity is a pursuit, it’s a lifestyle you actively choose and a state of mind and heart you must cultivate.
The accountability group and blocking stuff from your devices can be great add-ons to your pursuit of purity but they can’t be the only thing you’re doing.
The only thing that can really change your heart and rescue you from a habitual sin that is as deep-seated as pornography, is the grace and love of God.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ve heard that before and even though it sounds really nice, it doesn’t seem as powerful as you need it to be or as applicable as a 12 step program. If you don’t understand God’s grace and His love for you, then that statement doesn’t really hold the freedom you want it to, it’s just the “nice-Christian” thing to say.
Truthfully, it took me a really really long time to understand God’s grace for me in the midst of my issues and my darkness because in the back of my mind there was always this fear that Christianity is synonymous with perfection and that my imperfection meant I didn’t have true faith. So how could I count on a grace or allow myself to accept a grace, that I never really had to begin with? But grace isn’t anything like I thought it would be.
For some reason, I always thought that when I sinned I couldn’t just immediately ask for forgiveness and be shown mercy. I thought that I needed to wait a few days until I was properly ashamed before I could crawl back to God and beg for scraps. No one ever really taught me that, it’s just something I felt I had to do and I never understood how other believers could walk tall with such confidence. I never understood how they could be so sure and so secure in their relationship with God if they sinned half as much as I did. So, I assumed they rarely ever sinned and that was why they could be so confident because they had every right to be. I, on the other hand, sinned all the time which meant I was constantly insecure and unsure of my footing and forever struggling to find peace in my relationship with God. I felt like being confident in my relationship with God after failing Him was doing God a disservice. Like I was ignoring His anger, like I wasn’t listening to His pain or acknowledging His disappointment in me. Like I was dismissing His feelings and diminishing His heartbreak by getting up from the floor too early. I felt that it was my job to become completely broken by my sin before I could approach Him for forgiveness and that’s where God met me. In my ignorance and lack of understanding, He shined down with all the warmth and love and grace I had been withholding from myself in my effort to make amends, in my effort to fulfill a law that was already fulfilled.
Because the work of grace in your life and mine was already accomplished on the cross and yes, it produces righteous conviction but it doesn’t have a qualification of fear or shame or sorrow. That’s not how grace works. When you’re covered in the blood of Jesus, when you’re covered in grace, YOU ARE COVERED. There’s not a single inch of you left out in the cold, not a single solitary sin that is unaccounted for. From the beginning of your life to the end, His grace is sufficient for you. That’s why, in Galatians 5, Paul felt the need to mention that this freedom you have is not the freedom to sin more and live however you want but the freedom to live for the God who has afforded you complete grace and wholeness in Him. I always thought I understood what that passage of scripture meant but I didn’t, not until recently.
Now I know that when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, when I accepted His sacrifice and He said that my sins were forgiven, He wasn’t just speaking about my past but my present and my future. Because to the God who exists out of time, it’s all the same. My sins, for all of time, are forgiven. That’s the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, that’s the grace that covers us and makes us righteous in the eyes of God. That’s the redemptive power of the blood, that we are not just redeemed until we fall again and then we have to be redeemed again but rather, we’ve been redeemed from the curse of the law once and for all. We don’t have to sacrifice and crucify ourselves for our sins anymore because there was a perfect sacrificial lamb that was laid on the altar for us. Again, that's not permission, by any means, like Paul admonishes. It's freedom to live in reverence of God and get back up again if we do fall.
The kind of grace that I’m describing here is life altering and radical because it doesn’t make sense that someone would be willing to show us that kind of grace in the life cycle of our habitual sin. It doesn’t make sense that God would want us, even then. But He does. He loves you and wants you just as much on your bad days, as your good days. His love remains unchanged when you fall short of His glory, when you sin, when you think the wrong things or do the wrong things. He is immovable and unshakeable because you are no longer attached to your sin, you’re attached to His son. So when you sink into the abyss that is your pornography addiction, God is still there, loving you even then. The Bible says (in Romans 5:8) that God’s love was demonstrated for us in that while we were STILL SINNERS Christ died for us. That part, “still sinners”, is important because it shows you the state of your soul when the state of God’s grace and love were complete.
Let’s bring it to the context of your present life, shall we? Remembering that God is omnipresent (meaning everywhere at the same time) and omniscient (meaning all knowing).
“Still sinners” indicates an active lifestyle, it means that sin is not your past but your present reality, that you are the darkest you at this point in time when Jesus died for you. So think about that sin, the dirtiest ugliest darkest bit of your existence on this earth. Think about THAT sin. Think about your pornography addiction and you sitting at your computer or hunched over your tablet. Think about that affair you had outside of your marriage, that bed you laid in that wasn’t your own with that person who didn’t belong with you. Think about your hands carrying the blood of another human being on them or your feet carelessly stepping over other people so you can have what you want out of life. Look back at THAT you, the worst you, in your worst moment and imagine Jesus dying right there, for you, in that moment. Imagine Jesus hanging from a cross right by your bedside where someone other than your spouse is laying, see the pain and suffering, smell the copper and the dirt and the wood. Hear him screaming as nails are driven into His hands and His feet by invisible hammers while you are sitting in front of your computer watching lewd acts playing out on the screen. See Jesus off to the side, watching you cheating and hurting other people in your climb to the top and saying, “Forgive them for they know not what they do!”. He's bleeding out for every second of that video playing on your tablet. Thorns driving into his skull, His eyes swollen shut and burning from the blood and sweat mixture seeping in, while you take pleasure in your sin. Imagine Jesus barely able to stand at the edge of your bed, clothes ripped and torn, trying to hold Himself up as invisible whips tear into His back for every word of erotica you’re reading and every page you turn.
Can you see Him?
Can you see Him standing between you and your spouse as you spit at each other in anger. Your foul language and spiteful words, spat into His face instead. As He hangs there, lifeless, dying, suffocating for both of you. Can you see Him being kicked and punched and beaten within an inch of His life by invisible hands as you stand haughtily in your pride taking credit for the gifts and talents He lovingly gave you. Can you see Him practically naked, blood pouring from His mouth and ears, while you’re clawing selfishly for the next level of material success, basking in the glow of your many accomplishments bought with years of missed recitals and sports competitions, decades of missed moments with your children and family. Can you see Him there bleeding and breathing heavily from the pain? Walking beside you, trying to keep up with your pace while He’s carrying that huge wooden beam across His back? Hunched over and scarred with those gaping red welts being scraped open further by the scratch of the wood on His back. Can you see Him walking beside you as you grudgingly go about your business, holding onto every little thing that has been said or done to you, walking around with that bitterness and unforgiveness in your heart, that anger and mistrust that you project onto other people?
Can you feel the gasp and shudder He gave when that spear was thrust into His side as you were choosing sin over Him, over love? The shaking that wracked His chest and the tremors that quaked through His whole body when that person was hurting you…(cause He died for them too)? He cried out in anguish while you were sitting on your bathroom floor getting high. A pool of His blood spilling to the floor at your feet, soaking into the edges of your clothes while you were numbing yourself.
Do you see Him loving you through all of that?
Seeing you in your weakest most embarrassing and most vulnerable state and loving you enough to die for you even then?
Because that’s what this phrase “still sinners” means. It means that God loved you and He died for you when you were still sinning, when you were twisted and dark and everything He wasn’t. When you deserved that cross, He took it for you.
When you were finding pleasure and satisfaction in your brokenness, unrepentant and unwilling to even acknowledge Him or see the wrong you were doing. He was dying for you, right there. Loving you right there, in your own personal hell. His blood a puddle at your feet, right there.
That moment on the cross wasn’t just a moment that happened 2000 years ago but a moment that stretched across the lifetime of the human condition and it didn’t just happen on Calvary’s hill, it happened in your house, in your bedroom, in your car and everywhere you’ve ever sinned and will ever sin, ALL AT ONCE! That cross transcended time and space so that at the precise moment when you fell asleep in that bed that wasn’t yours with that person you weren’t supposed to be with, when you turned your computer off finally satisfied but still feeling empty, when you slammed the door in your loved ones face feeling every bit of justified , when you chose to hurt someone with your words or your actions, when you took a life with your bare hands, when you escaped your reality floating on a high that you knew would only end in the most devastating low, He gave up His last shaky labored breath and with love in His eyes squeezed out the words “It is finished.”. And that is the moment you were given grace you don’t deserve, that was the moment when God’s love was demonstrated to you in that while you were still in the middle of your sinfulness, Christ died for you and He became the righteous requirement of the law you and I could never be. He loved you in THAT moment. He gave His life for yours in THAT moment, a radical and unequal exchange.
Galatians 3:27 says “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ like a garment.” That grace afforded to us by the love and work of Jesus is a garment we wear that marks us as righteous. When we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior we accepted His robes, we obtained His inheritance, we were marked as His and when we come to the Father we don’t just come with knowledge of who Jesus is, we come wrapped in Christ-likeness (the smell of Him, the feel of Him). We are not judged according to the law and the rules that we have broken anymore, we are judged according to the sacrifice Jesus made which was perfect and pure and just.
Understanding this grace and this love is the only thing that produces true freedom in your life. I didn’t mumble a bunch of magic words during that prayer were I felt released (mentioned in part 1 of this series), I didn’t cry precisely the right amount of tears to earn deliverance, I didn’t suddenly become perfect, I just started believing what God said about me. I started praying from the view of the grace and love that God bestowed upon me. I began confessing my freedom with confidence in my savior and my salvation instead of begging for forgiveness that’s already mine and that’s when I felt like the chains really snapped. That’s when my perspective shifted from what I could and couldn’t do in my own power, to what God has done. I finally recognized the truth of grace and that’s when I found true freedom. Because grace isn’t just the forgiveness of your sins, it’s not just sufficient insurance coverage, it’s one of the most powerful weapons you have in your arsenal. Grace is power! It’s not just there to alleviate your shame. It’s a tool that you have to engage and use in the battle against sin and the struggle against temptation. It’s the voice of God roaring in the darkness and shouting your inescapable freedom and beauty and value and worth raging against the voice of sin which shouts your inadequacy, your shame, your bondage, your inescapable failure and your weakness.
Grace is the difference between true freedom and manufactured freedom. It focuses on your potential, points to your future and speaks to you in your present about who you are in Christ outside of your sin with this unconditional love (Romans 8:38-39) that will still embrace you EVEN IF.
The voice of sin says “you will fail” but Grace says “even if you fail” (2 Corinthians 9:8; Romans 6:14)
The voice of shame says “you don’t deserve it” but Grace says “even when you don’t deserve it” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
The voice of fear says “you can’t” but Grace says “with me, you can do all things” (Matthew 19:26)
The voice of temptation says “you’re nothing without me” but Grace says “there’s nothing you can’t do or be when you have me” (1 John 4:4; Luke 10:19-20)
The voice of the devil says “I’ve got my grip on you” but God says “nothing can pluck you from my hand” (John 10:28-29)
The voice of the devil says “you’ll never be free” but God says “you already are” (John 8:36)
Manufactured freedom speaks hopelessness but true freedom speaks more than you could ever hope to deserve.
"The Space Between Us" by: Shawn McDonald
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