For the Searching Heart
"Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?"
John 9:35
This page is not going to defend anybody.
You have probably been handed explanations before — that it was not as bad as you remember, that the man meant well, that you should consider his side, that every family has its troubles. If that is what you are bracing for, you can stop bracing. None of it is coming.
Something was done to you by people who claimed to speak for God, and the first thing that needs saying is the simplest: it was wrong, and it was not your fault, and you were right to be wounded by it.
The wounds are not all the same, and it matters to name them rather than fold them into one vague word like hurt.
Some were abused — physically, sexually, by a man in a position of trust, in a building where they had been told they were safe. Some told, and were not believed. Some told, and were believed, and watched nothing happen.
Some were controlled. Told what to wear, whom to marry, whether to take a job, when to speak. Taught that questioning leadership was rebellion against God, so that the ordinary act of thinking became a sin.
Some were shamed in public — named from a pulpit, disciplined in front of people who had been friends, made an example of.
Some were shunned. The phone stopped ringing. People they had known for twenty years crossed the road. Some lost their own parents, their own children, over a doctrinal difference or a decision to leave.
Some were used for money — pressed to give what they did not have, promised returns that never came, made to feel that poverty was a lack of faith.
Some watched the institution protect itself. The man was moved to another town. The file was closed. The victim was asked, in so many words, to think about the damage to the ministry.
And some carry something harder to name: not a single event but a slow crushing over years, until a person who was once open and hopeful became small and frightened and could not remember when it happened.
If your experience is on that list, you were not imagining it. If it is not on the list, it is not because it does not count.
It is worth clearing these away, because you have heard them and they made it worse.
It will not say you should be over it by now. There is no schedule. Some of this takes decades and some of it is carried to the grave, and neither of those is a spiritual failure.
It will not say the church is a hospital and hospitals have sick people. That line has been used to excuse an enormous amount. A hospital that harms its patients is not excused by being a hospital.
It will not say you misunderstood. You did not misunderstand being hit. You did not misunderstand being cut off. You did not misunderstand being told you were worthless by a man with a Bible in his hand.
It will not ask you to consider his side. There may be another side. It is not your job to construct it while you are still bleeding.
And it will not tell you that you must forgive right now, or that your salvation depends on producing a feeling you do not have. There is a section on forgiveness further down, and it will not say what you are expecting.
Here is something most people never hear, because the passage is rarely preached where it would be uncomfortable.
The angriest recorded words of the Lord Jesus Christ were not aimed at prostitutes, or thieves, or the Roman occupation, or unbelievers. They were aimed at religious leaders.
He called them whited sepulchres — clean and respectable on the outside, full of dead men's bones within. He called them blind guides who strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel. He called them a generation of vipers. He said they laid heavy burdens on other people's shoulders and would not move them with one of their own fingers. He said they shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, going in neither themselves nor suffering those who were entering to go in.
And about those who harm the vulnerable, He said something that should be read slowly by anyone who has ever done it: that it would be better for such a man to have a millstone hanged about his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Read that again. Whatever anger you have carried about what was done to you, Christ said it harder than you have. You are not being disloyal to God by being angry at religious abusers. You are, on this point, agreeing with Him.
Everything so far has been about what was done to you. Now turn and look at Him, because you will find your own story already there, and worse.
The people who arranged the death of the Lord Jesus Christ were not pagans. Rome supplied the nails, but Rome did not want Him dead. The men who did were the religious establishment — the ones with the Scriptures, the credentials, the buildings, the reputations and the right to speak for God.
Look at how the court behaved.
"Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death; But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none." (Matthew 26:59-60)
They were not weighing evidence. They were hunting for it. The verdict was settled and all that remained was to obtain the paperwork — and when honest testimony would not serve, dishonest testimony was solicited. If you have ever sat through a church process where the outcome was decided before you walked in, you have read this verse from the inside.
Then the court turned physical.
"Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands, Saying, Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote thee?" (Matthew 26:67-68)
That is a religious tribunal spitting in a bound man's face and then making a game of it — striking Him and taunting Him to guess which of them had done it. These were not soldiers. These were the men who taught the law.
And now the detail that should stop anyone who has been hurt by religious people, because it is the whole disease in a single sentence.
"Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover." (John 18:28)
Read it again slowly. They were delivering an innocent man to be executed — and they would not step inside a Gentile building, lest they should be defiled, because they wanted to keep the feast with clean hands.
Scrupulous about a ceremonial rule while arranging a judicial murder. That is the signature of religious abuse everywhere it has ever appeared: meticulous about the small things, monstrous about the person. You have seen it. The man who would not miss a service and wrecked a family. The board that debated the carpet and buried the complaint. The household where the standards were exact and the child was terrified.
God wrote that sentence down so that nobody could ever say He had not noticed.
Here is the part that is rarely dwelt on, and it is the part you most need.
They did not do their work and go home. When He had been scourged and nailed up, the religious leadership followed Him to the place of execution and stayed to watch.
"Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God." (Matthew 27:41-43)
Weigh what they chose to attack. Not His conduct — they had failed to find anything. They mocked His faith. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now. They took the very trust that was holding Him and turned it into the joke, at the moment when it was costing Him everything.
If a religious person has ever used your faith against you — told you that your suffering proved God was displeased, that your unanswered prayer showed you had not believed enough, that if God were really with you your life would look different — then you have heard the exact words that were shouted at the foot of the cross, by men in office, at the Son of God.
And notice the position He was in. He was nailed. He could not walk out. He could not answer back. He could not go somewhere the mockery would not follow. He was exposed, stripped, in their power, and there was nowhere to go.
That is precisely the position an abused person is in under a religious authority. He has been there. He was there for six hours, and He did not leave.
The prophet had written it centuries before — despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; one from whom men hide their faces.
And out of that, while it was still happening, He said this:
"Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)
Mark carefully what that prayer does and does not do. It does not say the act was acceptable. It does not deny that they did it. It does not excuse the court, the false witnesses, the spitting or the mockery — He names it as something needing forgiveness, which means He names it as wrong.
What He does is hand it to the Father rather than carry the collecting of it Himself. Which is exactly what will be asked of you further down this page, and it is worth knowing that the One asking it did it first, under worse, and with more right to refuse.
One more thing belongs here, because for many the sharpest wound was not from the institution but from a person who had been close.
The man who sold Him was one of the twelve. Not an enemy from outside — a friend, who had eaten with Him for three years, who had heard every sermon and watched every miracle, and who did it with a kiss.
The Psalms had already put words to that particular grief, and they are honest words: it was not an enemy, for then it could have been borne; but a companion, a guide, an acquaintance, with whom there had been sweet counsel.
So whatever else is true, you are not bringing this to Someone who needs the background explained. He knows exactly what religious men are capable of, and exactly what it is to be handed over by somebody who sat at the same table. They did it to Him, and He let them, and He is the only one in the account who could have stopped it and chose not to.
There is a chapter in John's Gospel that is, as far as I can tell, in the Bible for people in your position.
A man born blind was healed. He had asked for nothing and understood very little. And instead of rejoicing, the religious authorities began an investigation — interrogating him, then his parents, then him again, trying to establish that something improper had occurred.
His parents, questioned, were afraid and would not stand with him. The text says plainly that they feared being put out of the synagogue, so they said, he is of age; ask him. His own family stepped back and left him to face it alone.
He would not lie for them. He told them what had happened to him and would not be talked out of it. And so:
"They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out." (John 9:34)
They told him he was too sinful to be listened to — and then they threw him out of the only religious community he had ever known.
Now read the next verse, which is one of the most tender sentences in the Bible:
"Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" (John 9:35)
Three things are in that sentence, and each one matters.
He heard. The Lord Jesus Christ knew what had been done, and to whom, and by whom. Nothing that was done to you happened outside His knowledge.
He went looking. The man did not find Him. He was not told to come back and try harder, and he did not have to prove anything first. Christ went out after a man who had just been thrown out of church.
And He found him where he was — outside, excluded, with the door shut behind him. It was in that place, not in the synagogue, that the man saw who He was and worshipped Him.
If you have been put out, or walked out, or simply stopped going because you could not breathe in there — that is not the far side of God's reach. It is exactly where He went looking in John chapter nine.
People who have not been through it underestimate this, so let it be said plainly.
Ordinary betrayal costs you a person. This kind costs you a person, a community, a family, a routine, a language and a framework for understanding your own life — often all in the same month.
And it does something more particular. When the harm is done in God's name, by people quoting Scripture, then the injury and the remedy get welded together. Where do you take a wound like that? The place you would normally go for comfort is the place it came from. The words that once steadied you now sound like the man who used them against you. Even prayer can feel like walking back into the building.
That is not weak faith. It is what happens when a thing is used as a weapon: you flinch at the sight of it afterwards, and the flinching is not a moral failure.
Here is the one thing this page most wants to say, and it is not said as an argument to be won.
Christ is not the same as those who used His name.
That sounds like the sort of tidy line people say to get you back into a pew. So test it against evidence rather than taking it on trust.
Look at how He actually treated the exact kinds of people the religious were hardest on. The woman taken in adultery, dragged in for public shaming — He shamed the accusers instead and let her go without a lecture. The tax collector everybody despised — He invited Himself to the man's house for dinner. The woman with the bleeding, ritually unclean for twelve years and untouchable — He stopped a crowd to speak to her gently. The leper, whom the law said must not be touched — He touched him. The thief dying beside Him with hours of life remaining and nothing to offer — paradise, that day, no conditions.
Now set that beside what was done to you, and ask honestly whether it is the same person acting.
It is not. The men who hurt you were doing the opposite of what He did, while claiming His authority for it. That is not Christianity working. It is Christianity being contradicted by people wearing its name — which is precisely why He denounced them so fiercely.
This word has been used as a weapon against wounded people so often that it needs stripping down.
Forgiveness is not saying it was acceptable. It never was and it never will be. God does not ask you to file a false report about your own life.
It is not a feeling you must manufacture. If you wait until you feel warmly toward the person, you may wait forever, and the waiting is not disobedience.
It is not reconciliation. Those are two different things and they have been deliberately confused. Forgiveness happens in one heart. Reconciliation requires two people, honesty, and repentance from the one who did the harm. Where that repentance has not happened, reconciliation is not required of you and may be unwise.
It is not returning. Nobody is obliged to go back into a place, or near a person, who harmed them. There is no verse requiring you to hand yourself back to an unrepentant abuser, and any teacher who implies there is has misused his office.
It is not silence. Naming what happened, warning others, reporting a crime to the police — these are not failures to forgive. Scripture says a great deal about protecting the vulnerable and nothing about concealing the guilty.
What forgiveness actually is, in Scripture, is releasing the debt to God rather than carrying the collection of it yourself — handing over the right of vengeance to the One who said vengeance belongs to Him. It is not letting the person off. It is transferring the case to a higher court, because you were never built to be judge, jury and executioner over a wound this deep, and the carrying of it is destroying you and not them.
And if you cannot do that yet, you can say so. Lord, I cannot forgive this yet. Help me. That is an honest prayer, and it is heard.
No pressure will be applied here, so read this as information rather than instruction.
You may need a long time before you can sit in a service without your chest tightening, and there is no obligation to hurry. Some people need years. Some need to visit a building on a weekday, when it is empty, before they can manage a Sunday.
What can be said is that a healthy assembly does exist, and it looks different in ways you would notice. The money is accounted for and anyone may ask. The pastor can be disagreed with without consequence. Nobody is required to submit their private decisions for approval. Questions are welcomed rather than treated as rebellion. People leave without being pursued or slandered. And the leadership can be examined by the standards God wrote down.
If you ever go looking again, do not go on charisma. Ask the awkward questions early, and watch how the answers are received. A man who cannot bear the question has told you the answer.
And if you never go back, you are still not outside the reach of Christ. The man in John nine met Him outside the building.
Something needs saying about justice, because the absence of it is often the sharpest part.
Perhaps the man was never charged. Perhaps he is still preaching, respected, with a congregation who would be shocked to hear a word against him. Perhaps he died with his reputation intact and you watched people praise him at the funeral.
Scripture does not pretend that this is settled. What it says is that it is not finished.
Everything hidden will be revealed. Nothing has been lost in the files, nothing has been successfully covered, and nobody has got away with anything. Men who used God's name to do harm will answer to the One whose name they used, and that meeting will not go as they expect.
You do not have to secure the justice yourself. That is not a command to be passive; it is permission to put down a weight that was never yours to carry, because a court exists that cannot be lied to.
This is said gently, and it is the only appeal on the page.
If you walked away from God because of what people did, you may have handed them something more than they already took. They took your community, your trust and years of your life. It would be a bitter thing if they also took the one Person in the whole account who never harmed you.
He did not do it. He was not there approving. He is, in fact, the only figure in the entire story with clean hands — and He was Himself destroyed by men exactly like the ones who destroyed something in you.
You may not be able to trust a church. That is understandable and may be wisdom. But trusting a church and trusting Christ are two different acts, and only one of them is required of anybody.
"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:15-16)
You may go straight to Him. No building, no membership, no man's permission, and no one standing in the way this time.
Set out without pressure, so you know what is there whenever you want it.
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." (Acts 16:31)
Notice what is absent. No congregation to be approved by. No leader to be authorised by. No probation. It is offered directly to a person, and it cannot be withheld by anybody who once withheld other things from you.
If you take one sentence from this page, take that one.
He heard. Not a version of it, not the account the leadership gave afterwards — He heard what actually happened. And He did not wait at the door for the man to come back and apologise for being thrown out of it. He went and found him.
Whatever was done to you, it was done in front of Him, and He has not mistaken you for the people who did it.
You may take a long time. You may never again be able to sit comfortably in a religious building. But the Man in that chapter went out looking for someone the religious had discarded, and there is no indication anywhere in Scripture that He has changed His habits.
"Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?"John 9:35
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Thy throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Thy presence.
We thank Thee for Thy beloved Son, and for **Him** who was condemned by a religious court and mocked at the cross by men in office. We praise Thee for Thy preserved Word, which declareth **"Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him..."** (John 9:35), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before Thee for every wound given in **Thy** name by hands that should have healed. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for Thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech Thee for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Thy Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Thy Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Thy people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to find every soul that religion has driven out, as **Thy Son** found the man in John chapter nine, for Thy glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to Thee, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to Thee just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Thy law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring Thee nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Thy Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).