In my struggle with crossdressing, many Bible verses have been helpful to me. I’ve studied them, memorized some of them, and often read them after failures. I’ll periodically mention and comment on some of them and how they relate to our fight with sexual sin. For those of you who are still struggling, it would surely help you to write some of these down and read them daily, or in times of temptation, or after a failure when you need to be built back up by God’s Word.
Psalm 143 –
A Psalm of David.
1 Lord, hear my prayer,
listen to my cry for mercy;
in your faithfulness and righteousness
come to my relief.
2 Do not bring your servant into judgment,
for no one living is righteous before you.
3 The enemy pursues me,
he crushes me to the ground;
he makes me dwell in the darkness
like those long dead.
4 So my spirit grows faint within me;
my heart within me is dismayed.
5 I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.
6 I spread out my hands to you;
I thirst for you like a parched land.
7 Answer me quickly, Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me
or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
8 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I entrust my life.
9 Rescue me from my enemies, Lord,
for I hide myself in you.
10 Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God;
may your good Spirit
lead me on level ground.
11 For your name’s sake, Lord, preserve my life;
in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.
12 In your unfailing love, silence my enemies;
destroy all my foes,
for I am your servant.
I share this Psalm mainly just to recommend another great psalm of confession for those times that we fail in crossdressing and are confessing to God and thanking him for his forgiveness. Most of us are not dealing with physical enemies as the Psalm is talking about, but I think we can consider instead our spiritual enemies when we pray this Psalm, the demons who try to make us fall into temptation. The psalm is beautiful and fairly self-explanatory, so I won’t clutter up the power of this psalm with long comments of my own.
Hebrews 4:12-16
12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
The beginning part of this passage speaks to the power of God’s Word. In our fight against any kind of sin, we must not underestimate the power of God’s Word to cut through our false rationalizations, its power to convict of sin, its power to encourage and comfort us, and its power to fill us with assurance of God’s forgiveness and motivation to live for him. Also, it mentions that God’s Word has the power to clearly expose all of our hidden thoughts and motivations. There is nothing that we do or think or imagine in this life that God does not know about. He knows us even more completely than we know ourselves. Nothing we do, including our crossdressing or our internal fantasies, are hidden from God’s sight, to him whom we have to give account.
But this passage gives us great hope as well. Jesus as our great high priest is our representative through whom we can have a relationship with God. Unlike a regular priest of Israel, Jesus is a perfect priest. Unlike those priests who had to continually sacrifice over and over, Jesus’ sacrifice is perfect and once and for all. And unlike those priests who were sinful themselves and themselves needed mediation before God, Jesus is perfect and has a perfect relationship with the Father. He can truly stand in for us and connect us to the Father. He advocates to the Father on our behalf, giving himself and his righteousness to stand in for our unrighteousness.
Verse 15 is quite a stunning statement, that Jesus can empathize with us and our weaknesses because he has been tempted in every way that we have, but didn’t sin, unlike us who have sinned. What does this mean? Does this mean that Jesus had temptations to homosexual behavior, to murder, to stealing, to pedophilia, to bestiality, and to crossdressing, as so many people have had? It’s hard to imagine Jesus having such temptations. I’m not sure if he did or not. One way to take this verse is to say that Jesus experienced every “kind” of temptation that we face, including sexual temptation. If that was the case, then perhaps he was not specifically tempted to crossdress, but he still understands sexual temptation perfectly, and being God, he knows how strong our desires are for it, and how hard it is for us to resist. Again, he knows us better than we know ourselves. But maybe Jesus, being who he is, the Savior of humankind, actually did have the unique experience of being tempted to every possible kind of sin there is. Maybe Satan, seeing Jesus not fail in any sin, kept trying every imaginable type of temptation to sin to try to get Jesus to fail, only to see that Jesus did not fail.
In the end, either way we interpret this verse, the truth is the same and it’s still comforting. Jesus knows exactly what we are going through, he experienced temptation to sin himself, tougher temptations than any of us have faced (since he knew he had the power to do whatever he wanted, but still chose to suffer for us). He has compassion on us in our struggles. This doesn’t mean that he dismisses our sins as unimportant. But it means that while calling us to a high standard, he still has compassion onus, knowing the difficulty of struggling against our sinful nature, and he offered himself in our place so that we could be forgiven of our sins and shortcomings. Because of God’s gift of Jesus for our sins, we can approach God’s throne, his presence, with confidence, knowing that we will receive mercy, and don’t have to fear God’s judgment. We surely deserve God’s wrath for our sins, but that is not what we get. We get unbelievable grace.
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