Conviction...or Not

I used to do a balloon exercise after sinning: I would imagine my sin in all of its weight, shame, and vile, releasing from me like a balloon floating away. I felt ok until the next time (I was struggling with addiction, after all), and then I inevitably felt like I was once again connected to a balloon, but instead of helium – lead, and instead of a
curly-q ribbon – chains.

I constantly felt convicted of my sin. More than that, I felt like a convict, imprisoned to my addiction. My sin felt indistinguishable from who I was as a person. If I knew Jesus, why couldn’t I stop; better yet, why wasn’t Jesus intervening?

Would you believe me if I told you that the word conviction is never used in relation to Jesus’s people in Scripture? When used as a verb, the only references of conviction are regarding the world and those who choose not to believe in Jesus. The word is never used in reference to Jesus’s followers and their sin mistakes. While this might seem like a tomayto-tomahto situation, I wonder how the trickling nuance of vocabulary impacts us in the depths of our souls- when we feel dirty, unacceptable, unloveable – when we’ve screwed up, forgotten who we are and Whose we are, and returned to the mud pies, as C.S. Lewis wrote.

Using the word convict or conviction is like picking up the chains He destroyed when He died and rose, attempting to piece the rusty metal back together, and re-shackling with super glue. Seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? But what would change for you if you no longer saw yourself as a disgraced convict, but instead as beloved and redeemed? What would change if you saw yourself as abundantly free?

There’s no condemnation for us: We’re free of guilt, shame, and any quality that deems us as unacceptable. So when you feel that tinge of remorse stirring in your spirit, what if the Spirit isn’t convicting you, but actually reorienting you? What if it’s less a verb associated with accusation and judgement, and instead one of redirection and restoration?

The Spirit reorients us by reminding us of our reality- we’re in Jesus. It redirects us by gently lifting our heads towards the unbreakable, loving gaze of both the Son and God – a gaze that is far more enticing than any place towards sin. And the Spirit restores us by continuously baptizing our mind, refreshing our memory with who we are, and Whose we are, and why we are – because of Jesus.

We’re not convicts, we’re free. We’re not cloaked in shame, we’re dressed in righteousness. And though we’re not perfect, we also don’t need to prove ourselves as such. He is our perfection: He has intervened. He busted the chains, He opened the cell door, He has embraced us in His arms, He has set us free. 🌼

Photo by Ryan Ray