When I was three years old, I fell off a swing in my backyard and landed face-first in gravel. 27 years later, I still have a scar under my nose from the incident. It’s a fun story to tell. A couple of years later, when I was around twelve years old, I stumbled across pornography for the first time. I have a scar from that as well, but it’s not visible. That one isn’t a fun story to tell. It’s not usually a story I tell at all, actually. The memories and the images I’ve seen and the guilt that I felt are both seared into my mind from years of that wound never fully being healed. It gets ripped open every time I stumble and fall into my past. I bear the consequences of that scar often. I get these deceptive whispers in my ear when I’m at my most vulnerable that say, “Remember all the things you’ve seen? Remember how dirty you are? How is any man, much less God, going to love you when you’ve been so corrupted?”

The times when the enemy knows that we’re striving to make a change and do better, so he adds burdens to our backs. The burdens of:

Our past. (Memories of pornography we’ve viewed or sexual encounters we’ve had)

Our guilt. (Shame over those memories)

Our invisible scars. (Isolation and self-rejection)

For Christian women, the idea that our level of purity is directly proportional to our value is one that I think the church desperately needs to move away from. The amount of harm I have seen and witnessed - both personally and in other women I know - in being told that we are tainted for even thinking about sex is astronomical. If we can’t even talk about struggling with sexual thoughts, how can we possibly talk about struggling with something like porn or masturbation? Something that, for years, has only been “a guy thing”.

There are far more women out there who have sexual sin scars than people realize. We don’t tell anybody because we think it will cause people to see us differently. If we open up, we will no longer carry the pure, wholesome image that is given to us and expected of us. We will no longer be able to stand on that pedestal of virginity, spotless and clean, proud of being able to keep ourselves in a state that our future husbands deserve. We have had it drilled into our heads since our youth that being pure is the way to attract a spouse. If we have sexual scars, even if we’ve never had sex, men aren’t going to want us anymore. We are going to be less valuable to them because good, Christian men “deserve” virgins. The sexual scars we carry will be all that they see because they’re all that we see in ourselves. It is a spiral effect that starts with not feeling worthy of love from men and ends with not feeling worthy of love from God.

We deflate our own value by making those scars our identity.

My sisters (and brothers), hear this. We are not defined by our scars. In 1st Corinthians 6:11, we are told that we have been washed, sanctified and justified by the blood of Jesus. All the mistakes that we’ve made in our past, the things we’ve experienced, the pornographic content we’ve watched and the thoughts we’ve had are no longer who we are. We are not defined by our darkness.

If you are someone who feels overwhelmed by your invisible scars and you equate your value to how pure you feel, remember that Jesus died on a cross for you. God sent his one and only son to die a horrible, painful death so your scars will no longer define you.

Think about the scars that Jesus has on his hands and feet. Those are for you. You are so valuable to him and worth so much, that he took those for you. He knows all the things that you’ve done and all the things that you have yet to do - nothing is a surprise to Him - and yet He still died for you. Your scars are not too ugly to disqualify you from that sacrifice and they never will be.

Psalm 103 says “God does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”

So, it doesn’t matter how dirty and tainted you feel. It doesn’t matter how often the devil tries to tempt you to remember all those things in your past that you’ve done. It doesn’t even matter how other people see you. When you are in Christ, you are a new creation. You are not “almost” a new creation, you ARE new. That is your new identity. You don’t have to earn that title.It was bought on your behalf by the blood of Jesus Christ, which justifies you. And because of that justification, to God:

You are clean. ( Zechariah 3:4 - And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” )

You are pure. (Isaiah 1:18 - Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. )

You are valuable. (1st Peter 1:18-19 - For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life you inherited from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot. )

You are His. (Psalm 95:7 - For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.)

There is freedom from those scars that live in your heart, and that freedom comes from Christ. We will always see ourselves through the lens of our sins, but God sees us through the lens of Christ, and you are worth all of the love that you spend so much time feeling you don’t deserve.

That is truly the beauty of grace. We are no longer defined by our scars, but His.





Warmly,

Jessica.