A naked 2-year-old streaked past us on the beach. His parents scrambled to catch him. He was laughing and wobbling in and out of the edge of the waves, totally oblivious to anything or anyone around him. You couldn’t help but chuckle to yourself at the scene and covet the absolute freedom and reckless abandon that this child possessed.
Naked and unashamed. There was a time when adults possessed this freedom and it wasn’t just with physical nakedness. There was no sin in the world, so every emotion, thought, or past experience laid bare held nothing that shackled Adam and Eve to shame or guilt.
When I was a kid and we were playing games with neighborhood friends, if something put you in jeopardy of losing, we would yell out, “do-over!”
Similar things exist in life – pencils have erasers, golf has mulligans, computers have delete and “undo” buttons, and occasionally, teachers allow do-overs on bad tests or papers. However, shame and guilt from past thoughts or actions often weigh us down, and we can’t use any of those means to eliminate the feelings or what caused them.
Giving our life to Christ is life’s giant “do-over” button! We first recognize our sin and ask His forgiveness. He then covers all of our sins with His precious magical blood! When God looks at us, He no longer sees the separation from Him that our sin causes, but rather the sweet redemption ticket that draws us close to Him.
Sadly, most humans don’t have the eternal perspective, mindset, or discipline to take God’s approach. As a result, we may have to live with the perpetual judgement of human beings, but as Christ followers, there is no condemnation from the audience that matters – HIM!
Accusation by people is a tool of Satan, the enemy of God, intended to oppress us. In scripture, Satan is called “the accuser” – accusing us day and night of all our mistakes. He wants us to be locked into the trips and falls of our past. We have to ACTIVELY “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
If GOD, the Master of all space, time, and dimension, who is our supreme Judge, has given us FREEDOM by not holding against us all that causes us guilt and shame, shouldn’t we do the same?! We tend to wrap ourselves up in the cocoon of familiar self-deprecation. We embrace that we will go to heaven, but we continue to tuck our tail here on earth.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). In Christ, when we are the offender, we are told that God removes our sin as far as the east is from the west, which is to infinity and beyond! We must live in that freedom!
The hardest steps to take toward forgiveness:
As the offended, we also have responsibility: We are to remember that vengeance belongs to God, not us. The God who controls the lightning is who we want to handle the injustices done to us. However, we want the God who wields mercy first to be the one handling our own indiscretions. Thanks be to Him that He is the just and loving Judge.
Daily laying our sins at Jesus’s feet allows us to take it all off!! All the shackles and things that bind us can be thrown off! We get to live in the great “do-over”! Naked and unashamed – the way that God designed a relationship with Him in the first place. 
