And so I’ll just go ahead and pray and we’ll jump right in.

So, Father God, thank you for an opportunity to study together today as Mars Hill Church, and Jesus, I pray that as we study today we would all learn something that we don’t yet know about you, that some illumination, some revelation, some insight would come from Scripture that would allow us to see you more clearly, to love you more fully, and to trust you more wholeheartedly. And, Jesus, as we study tonight we pray for a spirit of honesty about our own lives and our need, and pray that as always you would meet our needs, that you would serve us, that you would be so humble and gracious as to give yourself to us. And help us, because we need you. And so we give our time to you and we ask that the Holy Spirit would make things possible. In Jesus’ good name, I pray. Amen.

As we get into it tonight we’re gonna deal with a doctrine called expiation. Every week you get a big word, and then you can impress all your friends. This is essentially a large theology class, that’s what we’re doing here in this series. And expiation means cleansing or purifying from the stain of sin, that the human soul gets stained form sin, and that expiation is the means by which God cleanses the sin-stained soul. And oftentimes this goes undiagnosed because if we had an external, physical injury or wound it would be visible and dealt with, easy to treat and diagnose. But since our soul is invisible and internal it’s unseen. We are wounded and have brokenness and hurt. We have stain and shame, and it’s oftentimes undiagnosed and unseen and human beings live with the stain of sin on their soul. And expiation is the doctrine that teaches the means by which God cleanses our soul and he purifies our soul.

So to start with I will teach you briefly on this doctrine of sin. Sin happens in two ways: sins of omission where, through negligence, something good wasn’t done; and then sins of commission where, through bad actions, something that shouldn’t have been done was done. And these often work together. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say there are some parents that are negligent. They don’t really pay close attention to who their children are playing with. They let their children go to friends’ house or families they don’t really know, have overnight parties at friends’ house they don’t really know – that’s a sin of omission. They’re not really paying close attention. Well, that opens the door for a sin of commission where an uncle or a brother or a dad in that other family then violates or abuses one of these children.

Same thing can happen when a child gets older. There’s, let’s say, a young woman who’s in junior high or high school and her father is not really paying a lot of attention. And through a sin of omission he’s not really loving her and protecting her and making sure that she is safe. So then she meets a guy who’s dangerous – drugs, alcohol, violence, sexual abuse, what have you. And so she ends up getting entangled with this guy and he commits sins of commission where he does evil things to her. The father’s sin was omission. The boyfriend’s sin is commission. And these sins oftentimes work together, as a sin of omission provides an opportunity for a sin of commission.

In addition what happens is that we are all touched and stained by sin. It affects us all, and it does in two ways. One, we all sin – myself included – and so we’re sinners. We cause harm to others. We do evil and injustice and wrong to other people with our thoughts and our words and our deeds. In addition people sin against us, and that not only makes us sinners, that makes us victims – that wrong has been done, that evil or injustice has been done to us. And then we’re victimized and we’re hurt and we’re wounded. And it doesn’t matter if we commit the sin or the sin is committed against us, in either event what happens is that the soul is stained.

Well, then the question becomes, well, what does the cross and what does Jesus have to do with that? Well, in one part, when we sin – most of us who are Christian – we understand what to do with that. Jesus died on the cross to forgive my sins. I need to confess my sins to Jesus and he’ll forgive me. That we’re pretty clear on. Christians don’t really get too confused on that point. That’s sort of the centerpiece of all that we believe.

It gets a little more tricky, however, when we’re sinned against because then what do you do? Your soul is stained, it’s defiled, made dirty. What do you do then? You don’t go to Jesus and say, “Jesus, please forgive me for being raped or molested or beaten up or abandoned or having committed adultery on me by my spouse.” You don’t – you don’t go to Jesus to ask forgiveness for things that were done to you, only things that you’ve done.

And so many Christians understand what to do when they sin, but when they’re sinned against sometimes they’re just at a loss. And I will try to teach you tonight that objectively Jesus Christ on the cross forgives sin, and subjectively he cleanses us from the stain of sin on our soul. And Jesus is good both for the sinner and the victim, and he’s good for us all.

And so as we get into this I want to explain to you how the Bible typifies sin as a stain on the soul. It’s one of the metaphors that the Bible uses for sin. There are roughly a dozen words in the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament that speak of sin in terms of staining or dirtying or defiling. I’ll give you three examples. I could give you hundreds, but one is in Psalm 106:39. It says, “They defiled themselves by what they did.” The word there is defilement. By sinning, they caused defilement.

In addition, it says in Proverbs 30:11-12, it says, “There are those who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers; those who are pure in their own eyes and yet are not cleansed from their filth.” There it’s called filth.

And then lastly, Jesus said in Mark 7:20, “It’s not what goes into you but what comes out of your heart that makes you unclean.” So those are three examples of the different words that the Bible uses for the filth of sin and the staining of sin. One is filth, one is uncleanness, and the third that I spoke of is being defiled, being defiled.

And altogether you hear people articulating this is a non-theological way when they say things like, “It just makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel gross. I felt nasty. I just felt like I wanted to take a shower.” That’s saying, “I felt like I was made dirty and defiled and unclean and filthy. And this isn’t just a physical thing, it’s a spiritual thing. It’s our soul being stained. And some of you have felt this.

The question then becomes, “Well, what can cause defilement, this dirtying, this filth-making, this uncleanness?” There are many examples given in Scripture of causes of defilement. I’ll walk you through five quickly. The first is in Ezekiel 14:11. God speaks of a day when people will not defile themselves anymore with their sins – connects defilement and sin.

So at first I just need to tell you you don’t need to have something massive and catastrophic happen in your life to feel defiled. Now, certainly something massive and catastrophic would do the job, but sometimes it’s lesser sins, or what we could consider lesser sins. It could be just lying or being lied about, or gossiping or being gossiped about, or stealing or being stolen from. It could be a friend that rejects you, or you turn your back on someone for no apparent reason. Any kind of sin will work to stain the soul, ‘cause sin is, by its nature, dirty and defiling. And any sin can stain the soul, and in fact, does stain the soul. And so it’s not just the big sins that do the great damage. Any sin can do great damage, sins that we commit and sins that are committed against us.

The second category or cause is spiritual sin, that what we do spiritually is not just a mental or a physical act, it’s a spiritual act where our soul is connecting. It says in Leviticus 19:31, for example, “Do not turn to mediums” – séances, clairvoyance, astrology, those sorts of things – “or seek out spiritists” – people who consult with the dead or the spirit realm or have revelation that doesn’t come through Jesus – “for you will be defiled by them.” Defilement comes through wrong spiritual practices – syncretism, paganism, taking your Christian faith and then blending it with a little Buddhism, or a little bit of witchcraft, of a little bit of goddess worship, or a bit of Wicca, or a bit of involvement in spells, or white magic, or black magic – whatever it might be.

And this can happen both actively, where you take your Christianity and you compromise it, and it can also happen when you are sometimes in the presence of others who are forcing their religion on you. Perhaps you’re a child and you’re growing up in a home where your parents are praying certain spirits upon you and casting spells, or they’re involved in other religions or demonic activity. That’s defiling. It stains the soul. The soul is to be pure-hearted. It is to be clean. It is to be exclusively directed toward the love of God. And false religion and false religious practice and false spirits and false gods stain the soul.

Now, the third way is perhaps one of the most pernicious, and that is violence stains the soul. Lamentations 4:14 says that some people are defiled by blood, defilement in bloodshed or murder. We live in a country that is murderous, even of the unborn. We take life all the time. It’s just part of the social economy.

And I would take not only murder but overall violence as a stain toward the soul. If you grew up in a home where your dad beat the heck out of you, that’s a stain on the soul. If you were married or are married to a man and you are a woman and he is abusive and violent and mean and angry, he defies the commands of 1 Peter 3 not to be harsh with you. That kind of violence stains the soul. Likewise with a girlfriend who’s in a relationship with a guy who works through fear or intimidation or control or threat of violence. He’s scary and he’s dangerous. All of that stains the soul. The soul gets wounded, damaged, broken, defiled, made unclean, filthy. ‘Cause see, we were made in the image and likeness of God, for dignity and for value and for respect and for love and for worth. Now, when something like that happens it’s diminishing and it’s demoralizing and it’s degrading. And it becomes disgusting and it becomes defiling, and that’s what it does.

And perhaps the fourth category is the most pervasive in this room, and that is varying kinds of sexual sin. The reason we talk about sex a lot is because there is such a widespread epidemic of varying kinds of sexual sin. And sexual sin affects the soul. There’s this myth that what you do in your body doesn’t really affect your soul. It does. It absolutely does.

I’ll give you some examples. In Genesis 34:5 Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled. How was she defiled? She was raped. If you were here when we studied Genesis, we looked at the rape of Dinah in Genesis 34. And in that chapter it says that she was defiled. She was made dirty. She was a young virgin girl and a man violated her and defiled her. See, rape is a defiling act. It’s not just a physical act. It’s a soulish act. It’s an act of violence, not only against the body – it certainly is an act of violence against the body. But in addition it’s an act of violence against the soul. And what it ends up doing is defiling and polluting and staining the soul. Some of you have been raped. Women are more likely statistically to admit it. Men are raped as well and they are reticent to acknowledge that.

Another reason of soul-staining through sexual means is given in 1 Chronicles 5:1. “He” – that’s speaking of this man named Reuben – “defiled his father” – that’s Jacob – “his father’s marriage bed.” And there again, from Genesis, is this act of incest. Reuben slept with his stepmother. Sexual contact between a parent and a child, incest, it stains the soul. Anytime there is any sexual activity – visual, verbal, physical, any sort or kind – between an adult and a child, it’s improper and it stains the soul of the child. Absolutely. Absolutely. And here Reuben, even though he is an older, adult male, he’s not a small child, it still is defiling because it violates his relationship with his own stepmother. And I know statistically perhaps a third of you have been sexually abused. Someone has raped you. Someone has molested you. Someone has done certain things to you or had you to certain things to them that were degrading and disgusting and debasing and defiling, and they stain the soul.

Another example that Scripture gives is in Numbers 5:27. It speaks of the woman who defiled herself and has been unfaithful to her husband. Here, it’s adultery, that if you are married and you have any sort of sexual activity – visual, verbal, physical – outside of your marriage covenant, it’s adultery and it defiles. It defiles you and it defiles your marriage. It makes it dirty and filthy and gross. And this can even be for those of you who are not married. You say, “Well, I’m not married.” But if you’re having any sort of sexual relationship – physical, verbal, visual – with anyone that you’re not covenanted in marriage to, already married to, you’re defiling yourself. You’re defiling your marriage. You’re defiling your bed. That’s what you’re doing.

Some people say, “Well, it’s just my body. What does that matter? No. It is your body. That does matter. It is also your soul. I think one of the hard reasons that Christians have in arguing against sexual sin is they only argue on the level of the body. We also need to reclaim the truth that we also have a soul. And when the soul is stained and violated and made to be filthy and dirty, that affects a person from the inside out. And that matters. That matters greatly for people.

And then lastly it speaks of, in Leviticus 21:14, a woman defiled by prostitution. Let me give you a definition of prostitution because no one in this room, I’m assuming, would say, “Well, I’m a prostitute,” but many of us are. Prostitution is the exchange of sexual favor for compensation, that’s what it is. Well, does this include pornography? If you paid for it, yes. You paid for something sexual, and when you paid for it that’s prostitution. It’s an exchange. It’s a commercial relationship. It’s not a marriage. A strip club? Prostitution. You have to pay a cover charge. You have to pay for whatever else you want to get done. That is an exchange. That’s prostitution. What about taking out the one gal that you know if you buy her tickets to the game or to the show or you buy her dinner that she will put out because she feels like she’s obligated. You’ve made a financial contribution, she owes you a sexual favor. Yes, that is prostitution. That is prostitution because it’s the exchange of some sort of sexual favor for compensation. And it is defiling. It’s degrading. It’s debasing. It stains the soul.

And so you can have a stained soul through any kind of sin, but particularly sins of violence, sins of sexuality, and sins of a spiritual nature that are ungodly. They are mentioned in the Scripture because they are perhaps most staining. And I know at this point none of you want to talk about this. I’m lifting up all the rocks that no one wants to look under. I’m dealing with all the things that no one wants to talk about. Just give me an hour of your time. Hear me through.

And maybe this word will be one of the hardest for you, that one of the things that causes defilement is defilement. That we get defiled and then we use that as an excuse to continue to defile ourselves. That’s what it says in Hebrews 12:15. It speaks of a bitter root that grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See, when you and I are sinned against and we’re not forgiving, we get bitter. When we’re bitter it causes all kinds of trouble because bitterness causes us to turn away from God. We can even be bitter toward God. “God, why didn’t you protect me? Why didn’t you intervene? Why did you let that happen?” We could grow bitter toward parents and pastors and coaches and teachers who were supposed to protect us and failed through omission. We can get bitter at the perpetrator of the crime, the person who beat us or raped us or molested us or ripped us off or destroyed our reputation. And the victim at that point has an absolutely justifiable reason to be unhappy, to be frustrated, to be angry, to be disappointed – absolutely. They’ve been hurt. They’ve been sinned against and it’s real.

But if they don’t forgive they get bitter. And what happens is in addition to the stained soul, there becomes a layer of bitterness that comes like a shell to defend and protect the stained soul from getting hurt again. We become sort of hard and callous and distant. We emotionally keep our space from others. And we are reticent to trust, reticent to trust God, reticent to trust others, reticent to be intimate with God, reticent to be innocent with others. The result is, is that it grows up and it defiles many. It affects all of our relationships. If you ask someone who has been sinned against, “Why do you keep hurting yourself? Why do you keep hurting others? Why are you such a difficult person to get close to?” Well, you don’t understand. I was wounded. And I was hurt. And my soul is stained and now I’m bitter. Well, it just now is defiling more people, and more opportunities for you yourself to be defiled. And so sometimes victims are hurt and then they spend the rest of their life hurting themselves.

And as I was studying this in Scripture, it’s interesting that I actually found three different aspects of defilement. The first is the defilement of place, that certain places become defiled. I’ll give you two examples, Leviticus 18:24-30 and Numbers 35:34. There are others, but God speaks of land or of places being defiled, just made dirty, unclean, filthy, ruined. Okay, for some of you that’s why going to a relative’s house for the holidays is very hard, because the memories there aren’t good. That place is defiled. Sometimes memories will be triggered as you drive through the old neighborhood you grew up in, or you see an old friend, or you have an old experience that you’re reliving. And it’s traumatic and you realize, “Oh, that place is defiled for me.”

I was speaking to one woman some years ago. As soon as she started to develop – she was in her junior high years – she would go to bed and be sound asleep. And then her dad, who was supposed to be a Christian man, would climb into bed with her and he would – he would rape her. And then he would go back to his bed with his wife, who apparently did nothing – sin of omission. And then what happened was this girl, she would climb out of her bed and she would sleep under her bed. She wouldn’t sleep in her bed after her father came in. She would sleep under her bed. And I asked her, I said, “Why did you do that?” She said, “I just felt dirty and gross on the bed so I slept under it.” See, he had made that bed defiled. It was unclean. It was filthy. And he’d stained his daughter’s soul.

I’ll give you another example. A pastor friend of mine – dear friend whom I love and respect greatly – he started a church some years ago. And we were at a pastor’s retreat together out of state, and I was back at the lodge hanging out with the guys and he was out golfing. I don’t know how to golf so I wasn’t golfing with him. And the call came into the lodge that one of the families in his church that was very close to him – one of their best family friends, only lived a block away. They had a little girl who was his daughter’s best friend, about the same age. And that the family had gone to bed and somebody broke into the house and molested the little girl in her own bed and then escaped, and they hadn’t caught him. And this has happened a few times in this neighborhood. They think it’s the same guy and they haven’t caught him yet. And so the call came in frantically looking for him because he was out of cell coverage in the middle of nowhere.

And so some pastors and I, we jumped in the cart and we drove to the golf course. And we got in the cart and we were just racing around the golf course trying to find our friend, who’s a pastor, telling him that this family in his church desperately needed him. And as soon as we found him we told him the story as we understood it, and he immediately – very large, strong, masculine guy – just broke. He was just weeping openly, weeping bitterly – just devastated. And we all, too, as pastors, just broken. I mean, we’re all thinking of our daughters and the little girls in our church, and just weeping. Prayed – prayed for him, took him home. He got on a plane. He went home.

And it was interesting because the police had to ask the family to leave the house because it now was a crime scene. They had to check for fingerprints and DNA and such things. And so the family moved into a hotel for a few days, and then they decided that they would never again go into that home. And the church went in, packed up the family, moved them out into a new home. That home was sold and that family never again entered into that home. And that little girl never again entered into that bedroom because it had been defiled. It had been made unclean. It had been made filthy. A place had been defiled.

In addition to place, things can become defiled. Hebrews says that marriage should be honored by all – Hebrews 13:4 – and the marriage bed should be kept pure and undefiled. See, a marriage bed, for example, is a thing that could become defiled. I’ll give you an example. There was a man I knew. His wife, he thought, was loyal and faithful to him. She wasn’t. This was some years ago. He doesn’t go here, but it was one of those amazing conversations where I was just heartbroken. He said, “I loved her. And I was working hard and taking good care of her. And I thought she loved me. And the whole time she was sleeping with my best friend in my bed.” He said, “I would go to work and my best friend would know that I was at work, and my wife would know that I was at work. So they would meet at my house and they would have sex in my bed. And then I’d oftentimes go out to dinner after work with my best friend, and he had sex with my wife that day. For years, never said a thing. Then I’d come home and have dinner with my wife and go into that bed with my wife.”

She ended up confessing and they went to counseling and they saved their marriage, but he told me – he said, “And I never slept in that bed again.” He said, “I just felt that that bed was disgusting and I wouldn’t go near it.” So what he did was, he moved out for a while, went to counseling, worked on his marriage. When he moved back in, the first thing he did is he threw away the mattress. They threw away the bed, took it to the dump. And he bought a new mattress and he told his wife, “We now have a new bed, we have a new marriage, and we start over. That other one was dirty.”

See, places become defiled, things become defiled, and people become defiled. People become defiled. I never understood this as I was reading the Old Testament. I didn’t understand why they had to have all these ceremonial washings and these regulations and these rules. Have you ever read the Old Testament? It looks like a bunch of people with OCD. (Laughter) They just – they’re always going down to the river and bathing and shaving and it’s like, “What, are you germ freaks? You know, are you – you’re farmers. You should – you know, you’re gonna get dirty.” And I was reading the Old Testament as a new Christian going, “What’s up with all the cleaning? Clean the house. Clean the body. Clean everything.”

Well, sometimes God uses symbolic acts outwardly to demonstrate inward acts that he has done. God wants to know that he’s cleansed us so he has us go through rituals so that we see cleansing, because we can’t see cleansing in our soul like we could see it on our body or in our home. So God will have us do outward, symbolic acts to teach us what he is doing internally and inwardly.

And I was thinking about it, too. Jesus broke all the cultural taboos with spiritual defilement. Not supposed to be with women who were sexually promiscuous – well, he was. He actually loved and befriended women who were sexually promiscuous. Didn’t sin with them, but he was friends with them. There were certain men who were really bad guys. They were thieves and crooks and they were – they were ripping people off, like Matthew. And Jesus befriended them. See, religious people wouldn’t go near them ‘cause they would say, “Oh, those people are dirty and defiled, and if you go near them you will be defiled. So maintain your cleanliness through distance.”

And some people, too, were just considered outcasts they were so defiled – lepers, people of other races, all these kinds of things. Yet those are the kinds of people that Jesus touched – people that were bleeding, people that were ritually unclean. Jesus would touch them. And I wonder if they didn’t cower away saying, “No, Jesus, you’ll become dirty.” And I wonder if Jesus didn’t persist saying, “No, I won’t become dirty, but you will become clean.” And I was thinking about this.

Some years ago my – the church was very small, maybe 100 people. It was really small. And the office was at my house and I had all the meetings in my living room, for counseling. And this guy had been coming to the church, and he was just having a very time – a deep bout with depression. And he came over to meet with me and I said, “So, what is troubling you?” He said, “Pastor Mark, I’ve done a terrible thing. Some years ago I sexually abused – I molested a little girl. And I confessed to it. And I went to prison. And I’ve been through rehabilitation and therapy. And I’ve become a Christian. And I know what I did was wrong and I feel terrible. But it just haunts me everyday. I can’t believe that I did that.”

So I asked him. I said, “Well, do you believe that Jesus Christ died to forgive you of your sin?” He said, “Yes, I can believe that.” I said, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ also can cleanse your unrighteousness, that he can take away the stain on your soul for what you have done?” And he said, “I – I don’t think so.” See, this guy felt marked like Cain. The rest of his life he was just marked. And I said, “So you don’t think that God would extend a hand to you, that he would embrace you?” “No, I don’t.”

And it was interesting, because at that moment my little daughter – she’s eight now. She was about two or three at the time. She’d gotten up from her nap and she came downstairs – pigtails, cute as always, wiping the sleep out of her eyes. Comes over to sit on my lap. She looks at him. He’s sitting across from me on our couch and he’s crying. And she says, “Daddy, why is he crying?” I said, “Honey, he feels bad because he did a very bad thing.” She says, “Well, Jesus will forgive him.” I said, “I know, honey, but he’s having a hard time with that. What he did is really, really bad.” She said, “Well, then we should pray for him.” My daughter got off my lap and walked toward the convicted pedophile who molested a little girl about the same age as her. And my daughter was going to touch him and pray for him.

And immediately the man just recoiled. He just could not accept any kind of contact from a child. And she persisted and she put her hand on him. And she prayed something to the effect of, “Jesus, please help him not be so sad,” and then she came back and sat on my lap. I looked at him. I said, “Well, there’s your answer. There’s your answer, that God will touch you. God will forgive you. God will cleanse you. God will embrace you. God will take the stain out of your soul.”

And in saying that story, I need to be careful and tell you that I am not a Christian who preaches or believes forgive and forget. I believe this man was genuinely saved, wholeheartedly converted, and sincerely repentant. He will not have any relationship with my children. He will never babysit. He will not be their friend. He will never be alone with them. Doesn’t mean that I don’t love him – I do, I just will not take that chance with a child. Doesn’t mean that God can’t forgive him – God has forgiven him and so have we, but this Christian notion of forgive and forget puts people into harm’s way again and we don’t encourage that. But all I’m saying is that in this one moment, God used my little girl to touch this man who needed to know that God would clean him and forgive him.

Now, some of you may protest at this point and anticipate that Mark’s been reading a lot of counseling books this week, and I thought this was a Bible-based church. Okay, I’ll tell you a Bible story. (Laughter) In Genesis 3 – okay? We’ll go back to the early days of Genesis. We’ll go back to Genesis 3 where sin got its inception and it began its work on the earth. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were in the image and likeness of God, male and female, equal, beautiful, glorious, built for dignity. And the Bible says they were naked – marital intimacy, nothing to hide, and no – what? No shame. Nothing to be ashamed of. They hadn’t sinned. They hadn’t been sinned against. Nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of.

The Bible then says that they sinned against God and each other and they felt shame. They felt shame, this powerful, debilitating human emotion that no human being had ever felt before because no human being had been touched by sin. And the way they deal with their shame and their sin is twofold. What do they do in relation to God? They hide from God. And what do they do in relation to one another? They hide as well. They cover themselves up with fig leaves – literally – saying, “You can’t know me. You can’t see me. We can’t be intimate. You can’t be trusted. I can’t be vulnerable. I can’t be known.”

And the result of sin that leads to shame instead of repentance – see, they could’ve gone to God and repented and had their sin and their shame taken away. But instead – when they sinned, instead of repenting and running to God they became ashamed and they ran from God. And what happens then, when shame comes in, we hide. We hide from intimacy with people. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have any friends. It just means that there’s a certain emotional level that we will not let them penetrate. We’re not gonna be too close. We keep our distance.

And the same is true with God. We hide from him because what happens in addition to the shame is fear: the fear of being caught, the fear of being found out, the fear of being exposed, and the fear of being known. That’s exactly what Adam says. God comes, speaks to him, says, “Adam, why are you hiding?” Adam says, “I was afraid.” Shame and fear are the only option when we don’t run to God with our sin. Instead we run from him: shame and fear. And the fear then becomes “I need to hide because if you know who I really am, God, you will not love me. You will not embrace me. You will not – you will not be close to me. And also, to those that are on the earth with me, if they really know who I am, if they really know my condition they will be disgusted and they will not be close to be and we can’t be intimate.” So what happens is a life filled with fig leaves.

And the counselors will tell you that the fig leaves often include sort of a role identity that we take on, a mask that we put over our identity. And we live out a role in an effort to pretend that we’re someone we’re not because who we really are, by the sin that we’ve done and the sin that’s been done to us, is disgusting. And it’s shameful. And it makes us feel terrible and dirty and defiled and debased. And it’s just terrible. And we don’t want anyone to know that part of us. And so we have to live our life by pretending that we’re someone else, and by pretending that we’re someone else, that’s sort of a version of a fig leaf. The real me is back here. I’ll put something out there to hide that.

And the counselors will tell you this comes out in three ways. One is the good person, the person who helps everybody, serves everybody, the best Christian in the world, memorized all the verses, volunteers for every committee, shows up early, stays late, is selfless, sacrificial, does more for people than anyone. And the whole time they’re saying, “I’m fine. I’m strong. I’m competent. I have no needs. How can I be of service to you?” They never divulge their own heart, their own life, their own emotional life, but they’re all about serving others and helping others and doing good – mainly because they’re ashamed of who they are and they don’t want you to see a crack in the identity and to find out who they really are ‘cause their greatest fear is being known.

A second option is the person who is not the good person, they’re the fun person. They are the life of the party – hilarious. They get invited to every event because they are funny, they’re charismatic, people are attracted to them, they are – everybody loves them. This is the life of the party. They can laugh about anything. They just – and they give the impression, “Nothing bothers me. Everything just rolls right off me. I can just turn it into a joke. I’m totally hilarious. Nothing affects me because of this amazing sense of humor.” Well, inside when they’re alone and by themselves they’re not that person. That’s a role they play, saying, “Let’s just have fun and I’ll pretend that everything’s great. And I don’t want you to know my pain and my hurt. I don’t want you to know what I’ve done or what’s been done to me because that is heartbreaking and it’s sad. And no one wants to be with a sad, heartbroken person. So I’ll be happy and funny and the life of the party.”

And the counselors will tell you that the third identify fig leaf that people embrace is they just become tough – real tough. “You can’t hurt me. I’m impenetrable. Nothing affects me. Yeah, I got hurt once but never again – doesn’t bother me.” So tell me about your parents. “Eh, I don’t want to talk about that.” What did you have a bad family? “Yeah, but it doesn’t really bug me.” So tell me about your life. You ever been abused, hurt, beaten, raped, left? “You know what? I’m just so strong, and I’m doing so good, and I’m so focused. I’m fine. I’m really tough.” That’s oftentimes what the bitter layer does over the wounded heart or the stained soul.

And the result is so many people are just overcompensating with toughness, or with works righteousness and producing good results and being a good person, or just being so altogether hilarious and the life of the party. But the truth is that they are ashamed. And they’re afraid of being found out. And they are hiding behind an identity that they’ve assumed so that you can’t really get to know them. Because their greatest fear is if you get to know them, you won’t like them. You will reject them and they will be alone. And what they crave is intimacy. What they fear is intimacy. And by playing a role they deny themselves intimacy which is the one thing that they really did need, somebody to love them and to draw near to them – people and God.

And so the result then is that you and I, when it comes to our identity – and these are core issues of identity. Some of you say, “What does this have to do with anything?” I’ll tell you what it has to do with, that many Christians make the excuse of saying, “What happened in my past does not affect my present and will have no bearing on my future. I got saved. I’m a new creation in Christ. All things are new. Doesn’t matter if my dad beat the heck out of me, my wife cheated on me, my brother molested me, my boyfriend raped me. That doesn’t matter because I met Jesus and now everything’s great.”

Well, I’ll tell you what, you meet Jesus, things are great. But the truth is that so much of our identity is shaped by our past that unless we work that out it sets into motion an identity and a way of living and a way of coping and defensive protective mechanisms that don’t allow us to get close to God and people ‘cause we’re still playing our role.

And so we have three options about our identity. One, you can have your identity defined by what you have done. You could say, “Okay, I was an alcoholic. Therefore, for the rest of my days I’m an alcoholic.” That actually bothers me, to be honest with you. I don’t mean to disrespect anyone in AA, but I met a guy recently. I said, “Well, tell me about yourself.” He said, “I’m an alcoholic.” I said, “When’s the last time you had a drink?” He said, “25 years.” I said, “You’re an ex-alcoholic.” 1 Corinthians 6, right? As some of you were – but you’ve been washed. That’s the purification. You’re not an alcoholic, you’re a Christian. You’re a Christian who used to be an alcoholic and maybe is still tempted by alcohol, but when you tell me who you are you gotta start with Christian, not alcoholic, right?

Some people define themselves by what they’ve done. I get this all the time with young gals who have been sexually promiscuous. They come in and they’re with some loser guy. It’s like, “Why are you with that guy? He’s mean to you. He’s abusive. He’s lazy. He’s not a good guy.” “Well, you know, I had sex with him so I’m stuck. That’s what I deserve.” No. You’re not defined by what you did. Just because you did something wrong doesn’t mean that for the rest of your life you need to keep doing it. You made one mistake. Don’t turn it into a lifestyle. Don’t allow that to dominate your life. “Well, I wasn’t a virgin so I have no right to marry a virgin. Well, I didn’t walk faithfully with God. I have no right to marry someone who walks faithfully with God.” You can’t allow your identity to be set by what you’ve done, especially if Jesus died to forgive that and to make you a new creation, give you a new identity.

The second option is to allow your identity to be set not by what you’ve done, but by that which has been done to you. “I’ve been abused so I’m a broken person. I can never be whole.” “I was abandoned by my parents or someone that I love, so therefore I can never trust.” One of the saddest examples I can give you – this was many years ago – just this gal that I loved like a sister. Many people loved her, fed her, housed her, bought her a Bible, bought her books, invested in her, cared for her, prayed for her, just really genuinely, deeply loved her. But she was the most sexually dangerous woman I’ve ever seen. She would have sex with anyone, anywhere, at any time and do anything with any number of people. She had no inhibitions. She had no conscience. She had no restraints whatsoever.

And we kept trying to help her and she kept just continuing in this very, very dangerous life, to the degree where, when she was at work, if someone would walk in and flirt with her, she would go have sex with them on the job, right then – total strangers, multiple people at a time. And I remember looking at her saying, “We love you so much and God loves you so much. You don’t need to be like this.” She looked at me and here’s exactly what she said. She said, “Pastor Mark, I know you want to help, but here’s the deal. Dirty things have been done to me.” And she told me that she was raped and molested in foster care and by stepfathers. And terrible things had been done to her. She’d been forced to do terrible things from childhood all the way up – just one abuse after another. She says, “Dirty things have been done to me. Now I’m a dirty girl. And because I’m a dirty girl, now I do dirty things.”

She articulated this theology of defilement. “Someone made me dirty and now I’m dirty and I have to do dirty things because I’m a dirty person.” And it just broke my heart. I said, “No, you don’t. You don’t need to be a dirty person. Jesus can clean you. He can cleanse you. He can – he can heal you. He can help you.” And she turned and she walked away, and I haven’t seen her since. It’s been many years. I pray for her all the time. Sometimes when I’m at Mars Hill, to be honest with you, I’m looking for her. I hope she comes back.

So many gals that I’ve met who are strippers and prostitutes and call girls, they’ve said the same thing. “Dirty things were done to me. I’m a dirty girl, so now I do dirty things.” No, you don’t. You don’t need to have your identity marked by what you’ve done. You don’t need to have your identity marked by what’s been done to you.

The third option, the only hope, is to have your identity shaped and marked by what Jesus has done for you – not what you’ve done and not what’s been done to you, what he’s done for you. See, that’s why we love Jesus so much. I know so many people are depressed and in counseling and therapy and suicidal. They feel disgusting and defiled and dirty and they don’t know what to do. They change their appearance. They get plastic surgery. They dye their hair. They change their clothes. They change their job. They change their life. They keep trying to change everything around them, not able to penetrate to the layer of the soul and to really clean themselves from the inside out.

I’ll give you some verses on this. This is where the cross – the cross makes all the sense in the world. Again, so many of you, if I would’ve said, “How do you get your sins forgiven?” you would say, “Jesus died on the cross. He’ll forgive you.” But I say, “How do you get your filth cleansed?” so many don’t know. This is the doctrine of the atonement – means “at-one-ment.” It was something that was celebrated annually by the Jews on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, where God would deal with sin. And the high priest would offer a sacrifice and blood would be shed to deal with the sin problem. That’s all foreshadowing Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and our great High Priest who is able to sympathize with us in our weakness.

Here’s what it says. The great Old Testament section on atonement is around Leviticus 16. It says this on Leviticus 16:30: “On this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sin.” The Day of Atonement was to forgive their sin and clean them from the stain of sin on their soul. I’m not pushing the doctrine of atonement to teach you the doctrine of expiation. It’s one of the effects of the cross. Jesus forgives our sins and cleanses our impurity.

It says the same thing in Jeremiah 33:8. God says, “I will cleanse them from all the sin they have committed against me, and will forgive their sins of rebellion against me.” God says, “I’ll forgive them and cleanse them.” I so desperately need you to understand that. So many of you believe that God forgives you but you wonder if he’ll cleanse you. “He forgives me, but I’m still dirty. And my identity is still marked by what I’ve done or what has been done to me.” No. In addition to the forgiveness there is cleansing so that the soul can be clean and pure toward God.

He uses a great metaphor or illustration in Zechariah 13:1, saying, “On that day a fountain will be open to the House of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and impurity.” To cleanse them from sin and impurity. To forgive their sin and to cleanse the impurity of their soul through a fountain – this concept of a fresh, clean, renewing water.

Let me submit this to you, that Jesus is that fountain. That apart from Jesus there is no forgiveness of sin. There is no cleansing from sin. There is no other fountain.

There was a pastor named John. He was Jesus’ best friend. He loved his church with all his heart. He loved his church in the way that I pray God would allow me to love this church. And John was concerned about his people, as I’m concerned about many of you. And John wanted to help his people understand how important this was, this expiating doctrine of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross as their substitute to forgive their sin and to take their stain. And so he writes in 1 John 1:7-9 what I believe is one of the most poignant, profound sections of Scripture on this great truth.

Here’s what he says. “But if we walk in the light” – we have to make this choice to walk in the light – “as he is in the light” – God’s out there in the truth, he’s not hiding in shame and disgrace in the darkness – “we have fellowship with one another” – we can be friends and help each other – “and the blood of Jesus” – through his death on the cross – “his Son, purifies us” – cleanses us – “from all sin.”

You say, “But what I’ve done is bad.” All sin, any sin, every sin.

“If we claim to be without sin” – if we say that sin hasn’t touched us and we’re fine – “we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins” – if we name it – “he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” – objective – “and purify us from all unrighteousness” – subjective.

Here’s what John tells his people, being led by the Holy Spirit. First, that our greatest fear is being exposed. And that is the key to our healing, is to just be exposed, to stop pretending that we are one person when we are in fact another and being duplicitous and double-minded, and to be one consistent person saying, “Here’s what I have done. Here’s what has been done to me. Here is truly my soul, with its stains, and here’s where I am.”

This is what it means to walk in the light, to be honest. And I know so many of you, you’re saying, “Don’t tell me to tell the truth.” Yes. The truth, Jesus says, is what leads to freedom. And out in the light is where the truth needs to be so that you can forget your bondage and you can move on with a new life. Some of you are here today, your parents have no idea what you’ve done or been doing. You are not walking in the light. Some of you are here today and your spouse has no idea all the things that you’re ashamed of and have never told them about the stains on your soul. One of the things we do with pre-married couples is we make them be honest and bring it all out in the light. And even then, some refuse to because of shame and fear.

There are friends that you’re here with, they’ve done things, you’ve done things, it needs to be brought out. It needs to be brought out into the light. It needs to be accepted, acknowledged, and it needs to be named for what it is. And what I find so often is with victims, somehow they actually blame themselves for the offense that was done to them. Or they have a hard time naming it because they don’t want to define themselves as a victim.

Speaking to a young woman and I said, “Were you ever abused?” She said, “No, I was not abused.” I said, “Were you ever in an abusive relationship?” “Oh, yes. I was in a very abusive relationship.” “How do you be in an abusive relationship without being abused?” She said, “Well, I guess I just don’t like to admit the fact that I was abused.” I said, “Well, how were you abused?” “Well, he would smack me around and yell at me and scare me. He was very intimidating.” I said, “So why are you so ashamed of admitting that, that someone was violent with you? That doesn’t reflect poorly on you.” She said, “Well, I had sex with him a lot.” I said, “Well, you had sex with him. Did you want to have sex with him?” “No.” “Well, then why did you have sex with him?” “Because I was afraid of him and he would hurt me and he was violent and I was scared of him.” “Well, that’s rape.” She says, “No, it wasn’t rape because I didn’t say no.” “Why didn’t you say no?” “Because I was afraid he would hurt me.” “Well, that’s rape. That’s violence. That’s not loving intimacy. That’s danger and fear. There’s no love in that.” I said, “You have to name yourself as an abuse victim – physical, emotional, sexual, spiritual abuse. For years somebody intimidated you, controlled you, yelled at you, screamed at you, shoved you around, and forced sex on you. You were abused. And that has affected your roles and that’s affected your identity. And that’ll affect your future. And it needs to be brought out in the light.”

See, these are the things that we need to talk to God about. These are the things we need to talk to pastors about, and counselors about. These are the kind of things that we need to share with those who love us. And you’ve gotta be careful with this, because it says if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. We have people to walk with and link arms with. We call them recovery groups here – people who were sexually abused, physically abused, drug, alcohol addiction, sexual addiction, whatever it is. Get in a group where people don’t just point the finger and condemn. Because what I find is that sometimes the most judgmental, mean-spirited Christians are the ones who have the same shame. And as you talk about it, you’re drawing them out. And so they’re gonna attack you and shut you down because they don’t want to deal with their stuff. So you gotta be careful.

Are you in a community group with godly people who love you and will pray for you and walk with you and help you? Are in a recovery group to where somebody can walk with you and say, “You know what? I’ve been walking in the light for a while. I promise you it gets better and I promise you the blood of Jesus does purify us from sin. Let me walk with you. Let me be a friend to you.”

Again, the one thing that people fear who have been abused is intimacy. What they need is intimacy. They need to get out in the light and be close to God, close to God’s people. They need to name their life and their pain and their stain for what it is. And then they need to allow God and people to lovingly help and serve them to work through those issues so that they’re not marked by their depravity, but they’re marked by their dignity because they were made in the image and likeness of God.

And that’s what recovery is. Recovery is recovering the image and likeness of God, that part of us that was made to love and adore God from a pure heart. That part of us that had no shame because the sin wasn’t present. And as Jesus takes away the sin, the sin is not present for us, and the shame need not be present. And we can live the life that we were created and intended to live as we are purified by the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.

Now, I know some of you are saying, “But to put that out there, to confess that to my parents, my spouse, my friends, my pastor, my counselor, my community group, my recovery group – that is just so shameful.” Okay, let me give you a word on the life of Jesus. Hebrews 12: “He endured the cross, scorning its” – what? Shame. As Jesus was looking at his undignified public execution on the cross, he knew that surrounding that would be tremendous shame. Plucking a man’s beard out – one of the most shameful things you could do in that culture. Stripping him naked, spitting on him, beating him, humiliating him, yelling at him, cursing him – shame. Shame. What did Jesus do with his shame? He scorned it. He scorned it and he endured his cross. And it says on the other side there was joy. If you want to get to joy you’ve gotta go through your cross. To get through your cross you have got to scorn your shame, and then go through your hardship of the cross. And then the joy is set before you – that’s what Hebrews 12 teaches about Jesus.

And I promise you this. I promise you that once you get through the shame there is healing. It’s a cleansing thing. I’ll be honest with you. When I started this church one of my great motivations was to take young men and train them to love God and to treat women with dignity and respect and with propriety. It was one of – and to this day it’s – if you’ve been here for more than one week, this is the drum I beat every week. Dudes, get it together, right? That’s my drum. That’s the drum I beat.

And I was so filled with shame because I was sexually active before I became a Christian. And so there were women that I did things with that I should not have done things with. And then once I became a Christian I was filled with, just, great shame. And I knew that God had put this call on my life to teach the Bible and to raise up young men, but every time I taught I just felt totally ashamed because I felt like I was telling all the guys to do things, and I was a hypocrite. And I had disobeyed God. And I had sinned. And I was telling them to not be like me. For years – this may sound silly to some of you – for years my biggest fear was actually acknowledging that I didn’t go into marriage sexually clean and pure with an unstained soul, because I wanted you all to like me, to feel close to me, to say, “Boy, Mark – he’s a superhero. He’s a great guy. We want to be just like that.” And deep down I knew I had done some things that I just so woefully regret and that had stained my soul, stained the soul of others, and should not have been done, and was totally ashamed of.

So for eight years I’m preaching all these sermons, teaching all these classes, telling young guys, “Do this, do this, do this, do this. Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this.” All true, all biblical, all good. And I’m teaching the covenant retreat here for singles a few years ago and I lay out all the things you’re not supposed to do and all the things you’re supposed to do. And then God convicts me and says, “Well, tell them that you didn’t do those things.” I’m like, “Nah, I don’t want to tell them because I’m ashamed.” But looking out in the room I’m saying, “Be pure. Don’t touch people sexually outside of marriage. Save yourself for marriage.” All true, but looking out in the room at the 400 or 500 people, I could tell, like, one of them still had hope. The rest, it was already too late. (Laughter) They’re all like, “Oh, boy. What about us? We – we’ve already done stuff we shouldn’t do. We get the condemnation and the shame. It’s too late. We want to walk with Jesus now, but what – what? What for us? We’ve already blown it.”

So I told them, “Look, I did things I shouldn’t have done. And I repented. And I stopped. And I went into marriage with self-control. And I’ve been faithful to my wife through the totality of our marriage. And I love her. And I’m not a porn guy. And I’m not a flirtation guy. And I’m not an online chat guy. I really am a one-woman man in my heart and adore my wife. And we’re close. But it caused damage for the first years of our marriage. And shame was between us. And we had to work that out. And it was hard.”

Sometimes we don’t say anything because we’re ashamed, and the truth is there’s a lot of people that are ashamed about the same thing. And if we said something maybe altogether we’d link arms and be cleansed and forgiven and get a new life in Christ. And not be marked by what we’ve done or what’s been done to us, but be marked instead by what Jesus has done for us. Then we could all get better instead of all pretending that we’re just fine.

Some of you may struggle with this theologically. Let me give you – let me give you a few illustrations from Scripture. I’ve got many, but I’ll just give two for the sake of time. Acts 22:16 – I need you to see it. “Get up, be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” Christian baptism is one of the great showing of the doctrine of expiation. That Jesus died, was buried, and rose, and we in baptism are identified with Christ. Dead to sin, buried, raised in newness of life clean. That’s what the water shows – cleansed from the stain of sin on our soul. That’s why we baptize new Christians, because new Christians sometimes have a hard time wondering, “Does Jesus really clean me up?” Yes he does, and never forget your baptism. It’s showing that that’s exactly what he does.

And I’ll close with this picture, and I hope it ministers to you as it has to me. It’s from Revelation 19. Again, Jesus’ best friend writes, “Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory” – that’s Jesus. “For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.” Here the groom is Jesus – great poetic metaphor, runs throughout Scripture. Jesus is like a groom. The collective church is like a beloved bride. And that Jesus is coming for his bride. We wait for the coming of Jesus like a bride eagerly waits for her wedding day. “For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.”

Jesus Christ comes back to take his bride, the church. Now, is the church spotless, pure, radiant, glorious, sinless, holy and good? No. We’re the church. We know better, right? Some of you will walk into the church and say, “It’s all hypocrites.” Yeah. Welcome! (Laughter) We’re here to deal with sin. Guess what? We’re sinners. Doesn’t excuse our sin, but the truth is that’s what the church is for, is to help sinners deal with sin.

You think, “Well, should the church then really be clothed in white fine linen, beautiful, radiant, holy and good, showing perfection?” Yes. How many of you ladies want to wear white on your wedding day? Right. That’s because it’s a biblical concept. How many Christian women in this room even thinking about their wedding day struggle with the concept of wearing white because they feel impure, unclean, defiled, dirty, their soul is stained. They say, “I don’t know if I could wear white. What I’ve done, what’s been done to me – white just doesn’t seem appropriate.” I get that from a lot of women getting married in this church. “Pastor Mark, can I really wear white?” Did Jesus die on a cross for you? “Yes.” Does he forgive your sins? “Yes.” Does he cleanse your unrighteousness? “Yes.” Is your soul now purified through his death? “Yes.” Then get your white dress because you’ve been cleansed.

And that’s how Jesus sees his bride. He sees her in light, not of what she’s done or what has been done to her, but in light of what he has done for her on the cross. He sees her as pure and clean and holy and unstained and unblemished.

I’ll close with this story. There was a gentleman that I know. He loved his wife very dearly, but during their dating and courtship years she had been very promiscuous. She had done lots of sexual things with other men. Some were forced on her and she was abused. Some she ran off and did just bad things that she should not have done. She concealed those things from her husband for many, many years in shame and fear of being exposed. It came between the two of them, greatly hurt their marriage and their intimacy and their relationship, hurt her relationship with God, with her friends, with her kids, with her husband, devastating effects. That bitter root grew up. It caused trouble and defiled many.

And then one day she finally just broke down and she just told him, “I have done – all these things have been done to me in my past: rape, molestation, all these things. And then I’ve done all these things: promiscuity, and I cheated on you, and I didn’t tell you because I knew you would marry me, and I knew you wouldn’t want to be with me, and you’d be disgusted by me.” And she told him.

Now, at that moment that husband needed to respond to his wife, and his response would tell you everything about the gospel that he believed. Would he condemn her? Would he divorce her? What would he do?

He went out and he bought her a white outfit. He brought it home and he put it on her. And he looked at her and he said, “I choose to see you as Jesus sees you.” That is the gospel. That is the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now she could trust her husband. She could be intimate with him. Her shame is gone. She gets to walk in the light. She gets to be close to God. She gets to be close to her friends and her family and her husband because of the purifying blood of Jesus Christ, and a husband who knows how to apply it. That’s the best news. It’s Christmas. Everybody knows Jesus has come. Hardly anyone knows why.

Lord Jesus, thank you so much for an opportunity to teach the Bible to this church that I love with my whole heart. Jesus, I thank you that every week I get the great privilege of telling the story of the gospel, that you are the hero, that you are the savior, that you are our God, that you are our friend. Jesus, I pray for my friends here today that they would accept that whatever sin they have committed, you will forgive them. Whatever sin has been committed against them, that you will cleanse them. I pray, Lord God, that your Holy Spirit would compel us to walk in the light, to be honest, to call it for what it is, to get into groups, to have friends, to have accountability, to have loving intimacy with others and with you. I pray, God, that we would not run to any other fountain. There is no other fountain for cleansing. Jesus, I thank you so much for your work. And I thank you that there will be a day when each of us is standing before you wearing white if we repent of sin and trust in you. So I pray for my friends that we would repent of sin and we would trust in you, and that we would see ourselves as you see us, through the cross. Amen.