Return To Innocence

The soldiers also approached him, mocking him. “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

It had to be him. What could he possibly have done wrong? Were they executing him for the people he had healed? Were they abusing him for the good he had done?

Then the other thief that was crucified with us that day even spoke to him, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us?”

I pushed up on my feet. “How dare you mock him!” I cried out. “Don’t you fear God? You’re going to die too. And you know that you and I deserve what we’re getting – but this man hasn’t done anything wrong!”

If this man was who he claimed to be then everyone was missing the point, I thought! It’s not that he can’t save himself – he won’t save himself. This is his destiny. It’s God’s plan for his life. What did I have to lose? I had messed up my life pretty badly , there was nothing more they could do to me, and now I was dying – if this man really was the Chosen One of God then his kingdom wasn’t ending – it was just beginning. And I wanted to be a part of it!

I turned my head to him and said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Then he said the words that changed my destiny: “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

I could tell you about the darkness that came for the next few hours. I could go on and on about the intense pain that filled the rest of the day. About how Jesus died first and how they finally would break our legs causing us to suffocate later that evening. But there’s something much more important for me to share with you.

When Jesus spoke those words to me it was as if the weight of the entire world was lifted from my shoulders. All of the guilt and shame that I had felt, it was gone. I didn’t know how, but somehow the innocence of my childhood, you remember it, when you were young and as of yet had not made any mistakes for which you would never forgive yourself, that innocence returned. And I felt as if I were a brand-new person. As if I had just been given a whole new identity.

The words he spoke, they were true. My home today is in paradise. And as I watch others struggle with the same guilt and frustration with their pasts that I had felt, I wish they would read my story.

Jesus wants to speak the same words of forgiveness and hope into your life. I know now what I didn’t know then. You don’t have to carry that guilt around any longer. You can be free! Free to live, free to love, free to have purpose and meaning, free to be the person you’ve always wanted to be.

For, you see, Jesus hung on that cross; he wouldn’t save himself, because the sacrifice of his innocence was the only means that could return our innocence to us.

If you find yourself trying to be free from your guilt, running from your past, give it up! You can’t save yourself! Like me, you’re bound to your guilt and as if you were tied to the cross, your death is imminent. You will die and worse yet, paradise will never be a reality for you, unless you allow yourself to be set free by him.