Dear heart,
I’m so sorry. I know how you’ve suffered and I know how you haven’t let yourself suffer because you feel you brought it on yourself. I know you’re miserable and ashamed. I know you feel that you’re a lost cause. I know because I’ve been there. But I need you to know that there is hope. There is mercy and grace pouring out from the cross. There is new life in Christ.
My brother, my sister, he wants you back. Whatever you did, he’s still there, waiting for you, running after you, standing before you even as you mock him and spit on him. And the tears running down his face aren’t tears of pain or disappointment. He weeps because he longs for you. He weeps not because you’ve hurt him but because you’ve hurt yourself. He wants to heal you. Not just to forgive you but to help you forgive yourself.
And this, I think, is what’s hardest. It’s not enough to repent. It’s not enough to fall on your knees before the throne of mercy and to stay there. You have to let him raise you up. You have to look in his eyes and see that his judgment has been wiped away by his mercy. You have been made new,1 my friend, and Christ sees in you not what you were but what you are: a child of God, washed clean by grace.
You are not an adulterer, an addict, or an apostate. You are not a gossip or a blasphemer. You are not a murderer or a temptress or a drunk or a bully. You are a new creation. The old has passed away.2 Whatever the world may tell you about your sin, it’s not yours anymore. It’s been nailed to the cross and you bear it no more. Praise the Lord!3
And it’s not just that he loves you despite your sin. I think he loves you the more, somehow, because of your sin. Jesus has always been particularly fond of sinners. He cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene and then loved her so deeply that he appeared to her first. Before John or even his mother. By the well he sought out a woman, a Samaritan and an outcast entrenched in her sin.4 He didn’t go to the well-respected leaders of the town; he found a sinner. Jesus chose tax collectors and zealots and fools. He looked with love at the worldly5 and the weary6 while the wise were left to fend for themselves. Don’t think he won’t take you back. There’s nothing he wants more.
He is the father running to the son who first ran from him.7 He is the shepherd desperate for his lost sheep. He is the king calling heaven and earth to celebrate the return of one sinner. “For the sake of the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross.”8 You are the joy that lay before him. He suffered for you, desperate for you, willing to go to hell and back—literally—in the hopes that you would let him love you.
He has written your name on his pierced hands.9 Nothing you do can change that. His love will never leave you.10 He will come for you.11 Again and again he will come for you until finally you look up from the mess you’ve made of your life and see his compassionate eyes saying “Come to me and I will give you rest.12 Your sins are forgiven.”13
Dear heart, you are forgiven. You are loved. You are made new. Please come home.
Yours in hope,
A fellow sinner and sister in Christ