cannot possibly live according to His principles according to our own strength. Romans 8 says:
11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors--not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
One of the keys to a believer's life in Christ is humility, recognizing that we are incapable in ourselves of experiencing true, lasting change. People seek freedom and validation in so many artificial ways, according to worldly principles. The world cannot and does not offer an effective way to deal with our own sinfulness. We can turn to our Healer, our Redeemer, who offers us the power of His Spirit to cleanse us and to empower us to live in the way God intended.
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The power to change is a gift that is offered by our Heavenly Father, who calls us out of sinful desires and activities and gives us the power to crucify the flesh so that we live in the Spirit. 1st
Thessalonians 4 says this:
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality;
4 that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor,
5 not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God;
6 that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified.
7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.
Here's a story that is truly an indicator of the culture in which we live. It has to do with a 23-year-old Iowa man by the name of Joseph Matthew Smith. He is formerly a student at Midwest Christian Services. A National Review story reports that Smith "...was convicted of molesting a fellow student in 2014 and is accused of molesting as many as 15 victims from ages one to 13, including the repeated molestation of a 7-year-old. Smith was molested repeatedly as a child around age seven as well." He was imprisoned in 2015.
In 2017, presumably at taxpayers' expense, Smith began a gender transition with hormone therapy. An state expert, Dr. Jeffrey Davis, according to the article, had "put the chance that Smith would offend again sometime over the next five years at over 20 percent."
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The report said, “Mr. Smith has not had an intimate relationship...His sexual encounters appear to have primarily involved molestation, including his own molestation by multiple perpetrators, or his victimization of others.”
Mr. Smith is now Josie Smith, identifies as a woman, and will be released soon. The article states:
The attorney general’s office on January 9 dismissed the application to commit Smith, who now goes by the name Josie and was transferred this month to the Sioux City Residential Treatment Facility in anticipation of an eventual release.
“An offender’s hormone levels are an important part of substantiating an offender’s likelihood of recidivism,” a spokesman for the attorney general said. “We don’t believe we have evidence sufficient to prove Josie Smith has a significant chance of re-offending."Smith will still be required to register as a sex offender, but he did not meet a 50 percent threshold in likelihood to offend again. The lower testosterone levels affected that. The expert had recommended that Smith be committed to a mental health facility indefinitely.
Nevertheless, this sex offender will soon be back on the streets.
This is unnerving on so many levels. So, is taxpayer-funded gender transition "treatment" the ticket out for convicted sex offenders? And, having to register as a sex offender is a small price to pay for the freedom that this individual will receive.
But is it freedom? Not only does Joseph Smith carry around the innate desire to engage in illicit acts, but now he has allowed his metabolism to be changed, chasing the false freedom of so-called "gender transition."
People are seeking freedom and go about it in all sorts of insufficient ways. But, there is a source of true, lasting change - a power greater than ourselves through the presence of the Holy Spirit that is greater than the sin within us. Yes, we have all sinned against Almighty God, and there are consequences for our actions in this life. But, there is also forgiveness for the person who is willing to humble himself or herself before Jesus and allow His life to flow through him or her.
Each of us bears a responsibility for our sins. That includes the prisoner who has committed crimes. And, the person who is a prisoner to sinful desires. We need help, we need freedom, and God wants to change us His way so that we can be empowered to walk in His ways. Treating the symptoms or altering the surface doesn't produce the lasting life change that Jesus can.
