I wish I had known what to say to her. She had shared that she was molested as a little girl almost as if it was a passing comment, some tertiary point to our conversation. I didn’t know what to do, what to say, or how to respond. I was a young pastor, more ignorant then than I am now. I let the comment slide by without a word…I regret it often. The truth is that I wasn’t equipped to help the woman address the issues of her past, I am not sure I am equipped now but I don’t let those comments slide by anymore. As the associate pastor at a young “inner-city” (for lack of a better term) church I meet with people often who have suffered from sexual assault. The only help I can give them is to point them again and again to the gospel.What does the gospel have to say to the hurting and suffering soul that has experienced sexual assault? More than many of us realize.
Justin and Lindsey Holcomb have identified six common results people suffer from the trauma of sexual abuse. They list them as denial, distorted self-image, shame, guilt, anger, and despair. In each case they see how the gospel can help us begin the process of healing. It’s not that the gospel just makes it all better, but it does give us hope beyond our circumstances, and it does give us a way to move forward.
The key here is that we understand first and foremost the gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ is that he, though being God, came in the flesh and suffered humiliation, degradation, and torture at the hands of sinful men, and spiritual separation from God in order to save the world. That is to say, Jesus suffered for sinners so that they could be made right with God, he paid the penalty for sin to unite sinners to the perfect and holy God. So Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Jesus suffered to free sinners from the wrath of God.
In addition Jesus suffered in order to rescue the world from its bondage to sin and death. That is to say that the sins of oppression, injustice, war, and rape will one day be made right because of Jesus’ death and resurrection. So again Paul writes:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:19-21)
This gospel, I have told my folks, can be a real help to the healing process, even for those who have been sinned against in such traumatic ways as sexual assault.
As we come to understand this gospel we must see several other things as they relate to the experience of sexual assault. First, we must see a solidarity between Jesus’ experience and that of the assault victim. Jesus was himself stripped naked, humiliated, beaten, and tortured. He was abandoned by friends and by God (victims have often confessed to feeling such loneliness and abandonment). He knows what you have suffered, friends, he knows it and he wants to heal you from it. The Holcombs write:
The cross is God’s solidarity with and compassion for the assaulted, and the resurrection is his promise that he can heal and redeem your suffering. (Rid of My Disgrace, 61)
I want to tell my folks who I counsel that they are not alone. The God of the universe sees and understands your suffering. He has been where you are and endured what you have endured. And the author Hebrews tells us why that is good news for us. He writes:
Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17)
You can go to Christ for healing, friends, because he understands what you’ve suffered.
There is so much more that the gospel does for us as it relates particularly to this subject, and I want to unpack some more of that next week. But for now think on this: Jesus can sympathize with your suffering, and you can trust him to heal it too.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 