“If I can’t actually live free from sexual sin, what’s the point of being a Christian,” asked myself as I sped down the 10-freeway headed toward Malibu.
As a thirteen-year-old, I had gotten into pornography. Years before that, I had stumbled across some clothing magazines in my parent’s closet and found women in underwear. Lust had taken a deep hold in my life and fantasizing while masturbating had become a regular occurrence.
I knew it was wrong.
I knew it only brought guilt into my life.
And as a thirteen-year-old, I soon discovered I did not want this to be a part of my life. However, I could not get rid of it.
Over the next six years, I prayed bondage breaking prayers. I went to men’s conferences that specifically addressed sexual sin and addiction. I did everything they say to do, yet I could not get free.
One time, I wrote everything I had done, every website I had clicked on and fantasies I had entertained, onto a piece of paper and tacked it to a wooden cross. It symbolized giving my sin over to Jesus. I felt good doing it. I felt powerful, as if I was “throwing off my sin.”
Yet, within a few weeks—maybe a few days—I was right back into the stuff I had gotten into before.
My Dad was a pastor. I grew up in the church. I knew what God thought about sin, and I knew that living in lust and acting on it was sin. Why could I not get free?
Did I not have God’s Spirit inside of me?
Was I not repentant enough?
Did I not have enough faith when I prayed and asked God to cleanse me deep within?
All I knew is I lived with this heavy cloud of guilt. I could barely look people in the eyes—especially girls. I had seen women naked, and that made me feel like scum.
I didn’t feel I had anything to offer anyone. And now, here I was twenty years old having just returned from a mission’s training school where I felt alive and “on fire for God” getting into all the old habits again.
Was it all a façade?
I felt desperate, and I wasn’t sure what would happen on the other side. But late one night when everyone else was heading to bed I got in my car and drove to Malibu.
Malibu is a beautiful little town along the coast—you can see the stars and the moon more easily there than in the middle of the big city. Plus, I got to spend twenty minutes on the freeway with practically no one on it as I drove there. That’s reason enough to get in your car and drive to Malibu at eleven-thirty at night!
I parked in a beachside parking lot and crawled onto the hood of my car and stared up at the stars.
God, where are you? What am I doing with my life? Why doesn’t anything work? Why do I keep getting back into this stuff?
All kinds of thoughts raced through my head, but I didn’t really say anything out-loud. I had spent the whole ride out yelling at God, expressing my frustration. There wasn’t really anything else to say. If I was going to be free something huge had to happen inside of me.
Only, I didn’t know what that something was or how to make it happen.
After maybe thirty minutes of silence staring at the stars, I crawled off the hood, got back in my car, and started driving home.
It was about the time I entered the 10-freeway again from highway 1 when I heard something very distinctly inside of me.
“I forgive you.”
“What do you mean you forgive me,” I asked God. “I haven’t even apologized. Didn’t feel there was any point if it was only going to happen again.”
“You don’t have to. I still forgive you.”
I began to quiver as the reality of what I had just heard God tell me settled in.
“I love you,” he said. “I have always loved you and I forgave you long before you ever got into this mess.”
I had never heard something like this before, and certainly not from God. Sure, I knew in my head I was saved by grace. But deep inside, from the place I actually live my life, I felt that God was waiting for me to get my act together before he officially decided if he forgave me or not.
Hearing him forgive me, before I had made any new moves toward repentance, completely broke the bondage I was in and set me free for life.
That sounds really cliché. And in a way it paints a picture different than reality.
The struggle wasn’t over. I still failed different times since that night. But as I look back on that Malibu drive, I see a clear trajectory toward deeper freedom and fuller healing since then.
There’s no way I can replicate that experience for you. No matter how often I tell you about God speaking to me and forgiving me, it’s not necessarily going to help you hear God’s forgiveness of you and your sins.
What I can do is point you to his Word where he says that he in fact does forgive us—before we even turn to him.
He has forgiven us because he loves us and wants us to walk in freedom and relationship with him.
Jesus, himself, tells us in John 8:32, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The whole message of John is that truth has become flesh. Jesus is the truth, and when we know Jesus in an intimately experiential way, he sets us free.
So, let me show you Jesus.
In the book of Jeremiah, God told Judah of their exile to come. For so long they had ignored God’s voice and done the exact opposite of what he called them to do that, by the time of Jeremiah, even if they repented, they would still have to go through the exile.
“Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people and live,” God said to Zedekiah (Jer. 27:12).
You see, all the way back in Exodus God tells Moses that he “will by o means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity o the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation” (Ex. 34:7).
However, Israel was guilty of violating their covenantal agreements with God. Because of their guilt, God visits their iniquity through famines and wars with other nations and ultimately exile in Babylon.
However, in Jeremiah God introduces something entirely new. After the seventy years of exile, he says in Jeremiah 31,
I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. . . I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “know Yahweh,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares Yahweh. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. -Jeremiah 31: 13, 33-34
The concept of forgiveness is nothing new at this juncture in the story. From the very beginning, God has been a forgiving God. But while forgiving Israel of their sin, they still have to go through the exile because he remembers their sin and visits it to the third and fourth generations.
But now, he’s not even going to remember their sin. Now, when people repent, they are free, completely at peace in their relationship with God.
How is this possible? How can we be given peace with God even though you and I are most certainly guilty of committing acts of hatred toward him?
Because, as Jeremiah said, God “raised up a Righteous Branch of David who reigns with wisdom and administers justice and righteousness in the land” (Jer. 23:5, 33:15).
This Branch is Jesus.
Jesus came and advocates on our behalf. He also prepares us with the proper attire, as it were, to enter into the presence of the most Holy God.
When you and I believe Jesus is enough, as we’re cringing in fear bracing for a stern punishment, we discover a smile on the Father’s face and open arms waiting to receive us into his lap.
Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved.
We have redemption in Him through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding…
We have also received an inheritance in Him, predestined according to the purpose of the One who works out everything in agreement with the decision of His will, so that we who had already put our hope in the Messiah might bring praise to His glory.
When you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed in Him, you were also sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. He is the down payment of our inheritance, for the redemption of the possession, to the praise of His glory. -Ephesians 1:3-7, 11-14
We too all previously lived among [the disobedient] in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! Together with Christ Jesus He also raised us up and seated us in the heavens… For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift — not from works, so that no one can boast. -Ephesians 2:3-6, 8
It will be credited to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have also obtained access through Him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. -Romans 4:24-5:2
Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus, because the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be accomplished in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. -Romans 8:1-4
We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified.
What then are we to say about these things?
If God is for us, who is against us?
He did not even spare His own Son
but offered Him up for us all;
how will He not also with Him grant us everything?
Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect?
God is the One who justifies.
Who is the one who condemns?
Christ Jesus is the One who died,
but even more, has been raised;
He also is at the right hand of God
and intercedes for us.
Who can separate us from the love of Christ?
Can affliction or anguish or persecution
or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
As it is written:
Because of You
we are being put to death all day long;
we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.
No, in all these things we are more than victorious
through Him who loved us.
For I am persuaded that not even death or life,
angels or rulers,
things present or things to come, hostile powers,
height or depth, or any other created thing
will have the power to separate us
from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord! -Romans 8:28-39
Question: Do you believe God forgives you, right now, regardless of where you’re at in your journey? What impacts you about the verses above? Share in the comments below.
Are you someone who wants to be able to look people in the eyes without having anything to hide and to be able to fight for others? Yet, maybe you’re looking at porn or habitually masturbating. You feel guilt and as if you’re less of a man, but aren’t sure how to gain victory.If that’s you, I invite you to check out my brand new book, Live Free: Making Sense of Male Sexuality.
