The Verdict I Passed on Myself

Every page on this site opens the same way and it comes first here too. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in the place of a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If anybody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, before another word of this.

Now. There was a trial and nobody was invited.

It has been running for months in a house you keep tidy and in a car you drive to work. The evidence was gathered carefully, because you are a thorough person. The charges were read. There was a prosecutor and there was a judge and there was no defense at all, and all three positions were held by the same woman.

And a verdict was handed down at some point, in the dark, and it was guilty.

And the thing I want to say first is that nobody knows. Not your husband, not your sister, not one person at that church. Because the sentence is not something you would ever say out loud, and so it has never once been in a room with another human being in it.

The verdict is announced first, before anything else

There is a sentence at the start of Romans eight that arrives like a door being shut on a courtroom.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1, King James Version)

Now. Not eventually. Not once something resolves.

And notice the word condemnation, which is a legal word. It is not a feeling word. It means a sentence passed, formally, by a court with authority, and the verse says there is not one.

You are standing under a verdict that no lawful court has ever once handed down. Romans 8:1 uses a legal word to say that no sentence exists, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a person which courtroom their verdict came from.

That is the thing that changes it. The question is not whether you are guilty. The question is who held the trial, and the answer is that the only court with jurisdiction has already given its finding and the finding is no condemnation.

You have been sentenced by a court that has never once had authority over you. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a person the difference between a feeling and a finding, and it is written that there is therefore now no condemnation, in the present tense, about people who are in Christ.

What the trial has actually been for

Let me say the practical half, because self blame does something that nobody admits.

A verdict is easier to live with than randomness. If it did not work because of something you did, then the world is still a place where things happen for reasons and where the reasons can be managed. If it did not work and there was no reason, then the floor is gone.

So the guilty verdict is not only cruelty. It is also a kind of shelter, and that is exactly why it is so hard to put down.

You are holding a verdict because it is easier than the alternative, and no one has ever once chosen that on purpose. Romans 8:1 removes the sentence without offering an explanation in its place, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present with a person standing in the space where the reason used to be.

And I am not going to fill that space. I cannot and neither can anybody. What I will say is that this site has never once put the burden of an outcome on the person carrying it, and it is not going to start with you.

You were never the reason, and the burden has never once been on the one who was hoping. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a weight off a person that was only ever placed there by themselves, and what is written announces no condemnation before it explains anything at all.

The plain routing, which has no verdict in it

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and it belongs here.

If something is happening right now that frightens you, that is 911. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, and particularly if the sentence you handed down has started to include things about not being here, 988 answers, and a real person picks up, and that is exactly what it exists for. And whatever the situation is, it goes to a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today.

You are permitted to bring yourself somewhere without a verdict in your hands. Romans 8:1 puts the no condemnation at the front rather than at the end of a process, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets somebody to walk into a room without prosecuting herself in it.

I want to underline the middle one, because women who run trials like this one do not usually mention it. If the sentence has got heavier than guilt, tell somebody today.

You have a number and a person and neither has ever once been for other people only. The Spirit of God is the one who is present with somebody making that call, and what is written says there is now no condemnation and does not qualify it afterwards.