When the time came for your arrest, you were booked into the local jail. Records were made of your arrest, what you were charged with, and so on. Your appearances in court for indictment and plea bargain or trial were all documented. Upon your conviction, this event was recorded in a number of places. During your time in prison, records were made of all that pertained to you—your transfers, your trips to medical, any disciplinary reports you might have gotten—everything. When you walked out of prison, whether it was an outright release with no further requirements, or on parole, or on probation, all of this was noted down somewhere.
As a convicted sex offender leaving prison you had a limited amount of time to go to your local sheriff’s department to register because it is the law in all 50 states. You had to share a lot of information in the process, even being photographed and fingerprinted, all of which goes into their records on you. Depending on the state’s laws and your tier classification level, you have to register once or twice a year or even more often. Anytime various information has to be updated which law enforcement is required to be informed of, legally you must report to the sheriff’s office and make the update within a set amount of time. That information also goes into your record.
When you go to find a job or a place to live, one thing which will come up sooner or later is your criminal history. Unless you can somehow get your record expunged, which rarely happens, your record stays with you for the rest of your life. It overshadows every job application, every change of residence, and in a lot of cases as an RSO it even hangs over your application for church membership, a strange thing indeed in a setting where redemption is preached.
And let’s not forget your personal life. Your family, if you still have one, remembers what you did. When you, in a desire to be transparent, disclose your past to potential close friends or a romantic partner, they may withdraw from you. Alternately, they might stick close to you just so they can undermine you to others. If all else fails, when you get into a disagreement with them they may throw your past back up in your face even when they supposedly care about you and have forgiven you.
If ever there was a scarlet letter or a brand that is worn by some in modern society, it is the label of RSO: Registered Sex Offender. Our names are on registries, in multiple law enforcement databases, and a great many other locations. Our record, even if we cannot physically see it, is ever present like some ghostly vampire sucking the vitality out of our lives. It is already bad when the world will not let us get past our past. When the Church gets in on it, it’s enough to make you wonder if even God Himself has forgiven us, if He is so repulsed over what we have done that no matter how sorry we are for what we have done, He will not pardon us.
This is exactly what Satan, the enemy of our souls, wants us to believe. Through the sending of his demonic emissaries he wants us to conflate our criminal history with our record in heaven. He wants us to be aware of our record no matter where we go, no matter who we turn to, even when we are alone. If we get too wrapped up in this state of mind, then suicide begins to look appealing. Even if you do not reach that point of despondency it can still be easy to give up on trying to live for Christ. After all, you may think, what’s the point if He hates you anyway? If you have reached that point, you will be glad to know that Jesus does not hate you.
If you are lost, Jesus Christ wants to save your soul regardless of what you have done. The only unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. This is attributing the works of God to Satan when someone has enough knowledge to know better than that (Matthew 12:22-32). Sex crimes are not included in this. And if you had blasphemed the Holy Spirit you would not care anymore. Your conscience will have been seared and you will have been given over to a debased mind (1 Timothy 4:1-2; Romans 1:28-32). You would no longer have any desire to even seek the Lord, much less have any desire to be right with Him.
If you are saved, your sins have been washed away by the blood of Christ. Heaven does keep records of what you do for the Lord and His kingdom. One day we as believers will have to give an account to Jesus at His judgment seat. Our salvation will not be at issue, but we will either be given or denied rewards based on how we lived for Him while on earth (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). However, our sinful past—including our criminal record—is a dead issue with God:
Colossians 1:13b-14: …having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
You may have a criminal record on earth, but you do not have one in heaven. Instead, you are recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Do you even know at all how much God loves you? This is just a sample:
Matthew 10:29-30: “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Psalm 56:8-9: You number my wanderings; put my tears into Your bottle; are they not in Your book? When I cry out to You, then my enemies will turn back; this I know, because God is for me.
Psalm 139:17-18: How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; when I awake, I am still with You.
Ephesians 2:4-7: But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
King David is one of the greatest heroes of faith in the entire Word of God, yet he had some serious flaws. During a time of grievous backsliding he committed adultery with a woman named Bathsheba. When she became pregnant he tried various ways to cover it up but finally had her husband Uriah, a great soldier and one of David’s most loyal subjects, murdered by getting him sent into a serious battle situation and having others retreat from him so he would be certain to die. When confronted by the bold prophet Nathan, David immediately repented.
Under Old Testament Law, David and Bathsheba should both have been stoned to death, but God spared them. David, however, had trouble in his household and in his kingdom. There were consequences he had to live with because of what he had done. Still, God had forgiven him, and in fact, before David was even called to be king, God, knowing everything that David had done, was doing, or would ever do in his life, called him a man after His own heart (1 Samuel 13:14; 2 Samuel 12:13; Acts 13:22).
When we are forgiven of our sins, we are forgiven of them all, past, present, and future; we are forever perfected, eternally secure unless we quit believing in Jesus Christ and wholeheartedly renounce our faith (Hebrews 6:4-8; 10:11-14, 26-31). People will remember your past. Your record is on paper and in numerous databases. As far as the world is concerned, we are worthless. Secular psychology has written us off as being beyond help or hope. Even many professing Christians wish we were not forgiven, not wanting us in their churches or in their company. People remember your RSO status even if your crime(s) occurred decades ago. But in heaven we are not listed as criminals. The heavenly record lists us as saints, God’s own, adopted into His family, saved through faith in Jesus Christ and washed clean by His redeeming blood.
No criminal record can overthrow what was done for us at Calvary. No hater can change God’s mind. When it comes to your record in this world versus your record in heaven, it is no contest: Heaven wins, hands down. When you gave your life to Christ He stopped seeing you as a lost RSO and started seeing you as a saint despite your earthly RSO status. And God is so good that He can and will bring people into your corner, Christians who will love you unconditionally. He can move upon the hearts of lost people to deal kindly with you. And even when there seems to be no one there, He is there. Jesus Christ is with us always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20b). Know this also, that the demons whom Satan sends to remind you of your past do so because each and every demon and fallen angel knows that they have no future, only damnation. Not you. Fellow Christian, you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23:6).
