Freedom is eternal - there is no longer a cell

I know there are issues that seem to stand between us, thoughts that act as invisible barriers without seeming to do so. I also know these are from me. My heart says there is nothing that interferes, yet somehow I think there is. Most, if not all, have to do with my behavior – things I say, things I do. I view them as unacceptable, things You would turn away from, and therefore turn away from me. So instead, I turn away from You first.

It’s a judgment I don’t want to make yet do anyway. It’s a hurdle. Because then I will need to convince myself that what I’m thinking, and feeling, is not true. That seems to take some time for me – as if I need to do some self-examination to uncover the truth again of something I already know.

It seems to come down to worthiness: am I good enough, acceptable, to be wanted. I don’t know Paul’s issue when asking You to remove it from his life, but I can feel the same lack of joy for having to deal with it repeatedly.

And so you have judged yourself: witnessed the crime, examined the details, found guilt, sentenced. What should that be? Separation? I would never want that. And I have made provision that it is never to be. But men remain with expectations, for themselves and for Me.

It is as if I need to behave in the fashion of declaring the same guilt, yet saying I see none, extending forgiveness, and we move on again. It is a mistake for the creation to judge the behavior of the Creator. Yet I understand. You sense you have done wrong and somehow need My forgiveness through some kind of act that would ease your suffering of guilt. Yet - and you know this - I have already done so.

I know the difficulties you face, the worthiness issues you face. You do this in the same manner with others: do their behaviors meet with your approval? Do you assess their repeated ‘wrong’ behaviors for you to accept them? It is the often-quoted teaching: forgive seventy times seven. You have been forgiven by Me eternally, and not after the action, but before. Before any action we both know you will do. It is a difficult belief, yet so.

Embrace knowing that nothing can come between us. There is no distance, no circumstance, no belief, that would keep us apart. Forgiveness is given before, judgment served before, that never again would anything separate us. You see this, know this, yet find it difficult to believe. And that is the issue, not the action.

Freedom has opened the cell. Do not choose to go back into it based on your judgment. For mine is permanent, eternal - there is no longer a cell. And that is your expression: there is no longer a cell. What you have felt is the only judgment there has been.

None has come from Me.

1/

Each of us has been in this place, this room, so many times before. We know the feel of it, the weight of it, and the silence of it before the sentence.

And we know the verdict, too.

Because we wrote it.

And we’ll be back again.

There is a trial we continually convene without Him.

2/

The verdict is always the same: rejection. And our response is always the same too. Nobody taught us. We just learned it from being in the same place so many times.

So we make the preemptive move: before anyone can leave, we leave. Before the door can close, we close it.

“I turn away from You first.”

Because rejection hurts less when we author it.

If we turn away first, then we are never the one left standing alone.

3/

Sometimes it seems there is a barrier between us, but I can’t seem to point to it. The heart wants to say nothing stands between us. The mind says something else.

When I look for it, it appears to be made of small things. What was said, what was done. The things I filed as unacceptable.

But the wall is invisible. Because it isn’t out there.

It was built entirely on my side.

4/

We want to build the wall with our own accusations about behavior. Yet, under each one there is a single hidden plea: “Am I good enough to be wanted again?”

He doesn’t seem to argue against the guilt. Nor does He reassure that we’re not so bad. He genuinely accepts that the feeling of having done something wrong is very real to us.

He moves the problem somewhere else.

It's not the behavior, but about the difficulty in believing we can receive what has already been given by Him.

In this moment forgiveness has turned the case.

5/

A trial is convened whenever we feel we have done wrong before God.

Look at how fast the trial runs:

We witness the crime.

We examine the details.

We find guilt.

We pass sentence.

We are prosecutor, witness, judge and jury. And the sentence on ourselves is always the harshest one we can find: separation.

Yet, no one asked us to impose it.

6/

In all of this we have made the quiet presumption that we will decide what He will do. We will rule on His reaction before He has one. Then we will act on our ruling: we will turn away from Him.

From someone who hasn’t moved.

We do this all the time. It’s understandable. It’s also a very strange thing for creation to pass judgment on the Creator.

And what were we guarding against?

A rejection that wasn’t made.

7/

After the trial has come to a conclusion and the sentence executed, only then do we allow Him to answer. His response will surprise us:

He will not defend us.

He will not argue with the degree of guilt.

He will not say, “You were not that bad.”

He will say the entire premise is mistaken.

He will say the verdict was never His.

He will say the separation we sentenced ourselves with never required His participation.

He will say the prison we’re in was never His construction.

He will say He was never the judge.

We cannot appeal to someone who never sat on the bench.

8/

He will say you have been forgiven.

Not now, but before.

Not after the failure.

Not after the apology.

But before any action, including the ones we both know are coming.

We tend to think forgiveness is an event that is triggered by our remorse: first the offense, then the guilt, the confession, followed by forgiveness. The Creator’s position flips time entirely. He presents forgiveness as preemptive – given before the action, not after.

Grace is eternal.

It is always.

It is not reactive.

It is offered ahead of the offense.

There is nothing left to earn, because nothing is owed.

9/

There is a subtle, almost humorous handling of our need for going through the motions of the same guilt-and-forgiveness ritual, “yet saying I see none.”

By insisting on our own unworthiness and separation, we end up overriding His judgment with our own. We act as though God should hold a grudge, or should demand restitution.

He knows the ritual isn’t required.

He patiently plays along.

Because He knows we are the ones who need to hear it done.

10/

Once again the ritual is complete.

We know the prayers counted.

We know the price was paid.

We know the permission to feel clean was given.

Yet, part of us still believes something should be owed. It’s a very human assessment.

There are traditions of men that assign

penance. It is meant only to be a response to forgiveness already received. And that it’s not to be the purchase of it.

Still, the experience feels a bit like a bill that needs to be paid.

And the bill is still a cell. Just by another name.

11/

Here is a test. How do we respond to someone we love after they repeat the same failing? Do we make them re-earn acceptance in our heart? Strike them off our list of loved ones?

No, seventy times seven was given as instruction for how we are to treat others [Matthew 18.21-22].

We would never hold another person to the standard we hold ourselves to.

We already know what grace looks like.

We extend it every day.

We do it without counting.

He extends it to us before we’ve even acted.

12/

“What you have experienced is judgment enough.”

This is easily misunderstood. It does not say that suffering has paid a debt. Nothing was ever owed.

It says that the only judgment is the one we issue.

It says the guilt we feel is real.

It explains why it hurts.

But it’s only the proof of our own trial.

It’s not a verdict from Him.

We’re not trying to get out of a cell after putting ourselves there again.

We’re trying to remember the door is open before we walk back in.

13/

Freedom is not a concept.

It’s a Someone.

And Freedom has opened the cell He did not construct.

Then we decide to walk back in.

Because we are re-trying a case He says no longer exists.

Because we are re-proving a verdict He never rendered.

It’s a pattern.

Patterns of belief change slowly. Especially when we’re under pressure. Because it’s there when the old reflex fires – the self-judgment. The moment we most need to believe we are accepted is the moment the evidence against us feels the strongest.

That isn’t weakness on our part. It’s just how deep the belief lives.

14/

Then there is a second trial. It’s different than the first.

“I’ve been here so many times. I should already know better.”

First we judged the behavior. Now we judge how long it will take us to believe we’re forgiven. Rediscovering acceptance is tiring. But also being annoyed for having to rediscover it adds even more weight to the process.

Much of our fatigue lives here.

Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” speaks to this [2Corinthians 12.7-9]. It anchors the feeling of ongoing exhaustion. We uncover the same basic truth, again, after the same self-examination. And we arrive at what we already knew.

It wears us down. We feel like we should be past it.

Being tired is honest.

But being tired is not failure.

15/

Seventy times seven was given as instruction for how we are to treat others [Matthew 18.21-22].

But it works in both directions.

If forgiveness doesn’t have a count when it is given to others, then learning doesn’t have a count when we are the ones learning. Some truths are just not absorbed once and stored. They are returned to repeatedly.

But coming back each time is not evidence the truth is not being seen.

This is the mind trying to hold something that large.

16/

God never says it the same way twice.

But as the dialogue moves further along, sometimes the same point returns in different words.

It’s not repetition.

It’s the same truth being offered from another angle – until one of them fits.

A teacher who says it differently each time isn’t frustrated that you’re not learning it.

He is still looking for the way in.

17/

Paul asked Him three times for the removal of a thorn. Perhaps it’s something more than a thing.

We are not told what the thorn was. The text is silent on purpose. The answer we are told amounts to: I’m not removing it. “My grace is sufficient for you.” [2Corinthians 12.9]

I can only speculate what Paul’s issue might be. But I know the weariness of meeting the same issue again and again, and the joylessness of the process.

So here is only a seed. It’s offered as my own and not as a claim about Paul:

perhaps a thorn is less a thing, and more a pattern.

Something that stays.

18/

The thorn Paul experienced might not be an attack on his body, or a particular behavior. It may be a recurring pattern that stays in place. Grace meets it.

“My grace is sufficient for you.” [2 Corinthians 12.9]

If so, the thing itself could be removed and the separation from Him still remain.

The pattern would remain.

The tiredness would remain.

The turning away may happen again tomorrow.

Grace meets it anyway.

It doesn’t wait for us to be done.

19/

So where is the distance between us and Him, really?

It’s not in what we say.

It’s not in what we do.

The only separation is the impulse to turn away first.

And He already knows it.

It’s already covered.

It never touches His presence.

It’s never held against us.

No circumstance, no belief, no behavior can keep us apart from Him. Only the turning.

And the turning is seen before we do it.

20/

There is no circumstance, no belief, no behavior that keeps us apart from Him. This is the truth to reach for first.

Not after the self-examination.

Or after the trial begins.

Or after the evidence of our guilt.

Or after the sentence.

Or after the cell.

First. Before all of it.

Reached at the end of a trial, this truth finds us exhausted. Reached at the beginning, it gives us rest.

We are not trying to get out of the cell.

We are remembering there is no cell to walk back into.

"For I am sure that neither death nor life,

nor angels nor rulers,

nor things present nor things to come,

nor powers, nor height, nor depth,

nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

— Romans 8.38-39