While the jurors in the Clancy case were in deliberation, Corie Walsh of Illinois reportedly killed her toddler son, nicknamed “Bear,” before attempting to take her own life. In 2026 alone, fifteen mothers have killed seventeen of their already-born children. Mothers have also murdered nearly one million unborn babies by bloody abortion this year.
So many souls, and it’s only September. I wrote about this topic on this site and here, and the response shows that many are concerned.
While I don’t know what led to Bear’s murder, it has been widely reported that Corie was “very invested” in the Clancy trial. Whether she was or not, a verse of warning comes to mind.
Do not envy a man of violence
and do not choose any of his ways. (Proverbs 3:31)
Identity Matters
For the past few weeks, we have watched women line up on social media and at the courthouse not just in support of Lindsay, but in celebration of her. Women have identified with her, filming videos of themselves acting out their own rage towards their children and tagging them with #IamLindsay. How much influence this social behavior has had on Corie Walsh we do not yet know. But we do know that this sort of identifying is doing some influencing, and the innocent are suffering harm.
Our identity matters. Jesus died for declaring his, and all of human history hinges on his testimony. At his trial, Jesus was sentenced to death by crucifixion for the crime of blasphemy. He had called himself by God’s name, identified himself publicly as God, and openly claimed the power to forgive sins. The fact is, if Jesus is not God, then there is no hope. Not for Corie, not for Lindsay, not for any of us. And our own innocence depends more on the truth behind his public trial than we may realize.
During Jesus’ trial, Pilate could find no fault in him. To avoid adjudicating the case, Pilate gave the mob of people that served as jury a choice: He would grant a pardon and release Jesus, or he would release a murderer named Barabbas.
“Free Barabbas! Free Barabbas!” the people demanded.
Free the murderer! “Free Lindsay!”
The Echo of the Ages
We are a culture that rejects truth and trades evil for good. It’s the echo of the ages, and this hatred for biblical justice and for God’s authority continues. People not only condone the specific sins of Romans 1—they celebrate them and declare their allegiance. Romans 1:23 says:
Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
When asked why they affirm sinners in their sins, people often say it is because Jesus did, citing the Bible’s red letters and his compassion. But they are cherry-picking and doing violence to God’s Word. Every word of the Bible is from the mouth of God, not just the red ones. And God is angry with sinners every single day.
In truth, Jesus told the woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more, and warned the blind man that if he did not stop sinning, something worse would happen to him. Jesus never affirmed anyone in their sins, and yet people camp outside the tomb (and the courthouse), giving their approval to evil as if he never rose from the grave defeating it. And it seems they are increasingly willing to identify themselves with any wretched thing rather than the beauty of an identity found in Christ.
And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)
Identifying Ourselves by Our Sin
We have seen this sort of sin-approval on full display during this case, but it’s not just happening out there. People who claim to be Christians are also identifying themselves by their sins. It’s not just “I am Lindsay,” it is:
“I am a gay Christian.”
“I am a Christian who likes to get drunk.”
“I am a sensual Christian, and God understands my need to sleep around.”
“I am a pro-choice Christian.”
“I am an ally and a Christian.”
“She/her/Christian.”
These sinful identities are the things for which Christ died, and some of them are the things for which I once lived. But these are not labels to wear in pride; they are violations of his Laws. Once we are in Christ, we should be absolutely murderous to one thing only—sins like these. We are to kill them in the power of the Holy Spirit. We must slay our dragons, and the stakes are high:
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:26-31)
Clinging to Sin
During the years that my sins became impossible to hide, someone shared these warnings of Jesus with me. I don’t remember her name, and I have tried to track her down since, but I do remember how her hands shook as she opened her Bible to 1 Corinthians and lovingly called me to Christ. She pleaded with me.
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)
She was young and gentle, and at this time, I must have been so intimidating. I smiled to her face, but I cursed her in my mind as I walked away. I knew she was aiming at my sins, and I loved them much more than this Jesus.
C.S. Lewis illustrates our tendency to cling to sin in TheGreat Divorce. In it, a man carries his pet sin on his shoulder in the form of a red lizard. An angel approaches and offers to free him from this lizard, which is increasingly controlling. The angel repeatedly asks the man, “May I kill it?” The man refuses the angel’s offer over and over again, insisting he can tame his lizard. Of course, there is no taming sin, and someone, eventually, will die.
I coddled my own pet sins until my lizard grew fangs and a tail. Eventually, it was wrapped around my neck. And I fancied myself a Christian while it took aim at my jugular. But true biblical repentance does not accommodate pet lizards. It nails sin to the cross, where freedom from such burdens was painstakingly bought with blood through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We must agree with him about our sins and turn away from them, not toward them.
Labeling Ourselves with the Things God Hates
To wave sinful identity banners in pride is to miss the very point on the tip of the nail that went through Jesus’ willing hands. Labeling ourselves with the things that God hates is to hate God himself. We are to count his cost, not just our own.
While we may think our sins aren’t harming anyone, and we are not on TikTok tossing water on our babies’ faces to make them cry, God says that our own hearts are deceitfully wicked above all things. The mic drop moment is the understanding that while we may never have imagined choking the life out of our own babies with exercise bands, our own hands, or by bloody abortion, God says that if you have ever hated someone, you also are a murderer at heart.
Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. (1 John 3:15)
This may shock you, and it is biblical truth that it would. It certainly shocked me. But without him, we cannot even see our true condition. We know not what we do. Even our good deeds are as filthy rags apart from him, because we do them for our own glory instead of his.
Hope, Peace, a New Spirit
But there is hope, and Hope arrived in humility.
Jesus, the creator of heaven and earth, who holds all things together by the power of his word, was born in a filthy stable so that he could die in our filthy sins. He offers peace to all the identities we can possibly come up with for ourselves, because he knows exactly what to do with the whole murderous lot of us.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)
No matter what I thought my identity was before Christ, it boils down to one thing: I was rightly hell-bound and deserving of death. We have all sinned against a Holy God, and he will not play nice with our sins. Instead, he sent his Son, who makes peace by the blood of his cross. Jesus lived a sinless life as both God and man, and he offered himself as the final payment for sin.
He offers to take our sinful past and future and trade them for his righteous life. When we are born again, God no longer sees our sins; he just sees his perfect Son’s life and sacrifice. Jesus trades our sins for his spotless record. He kept the commandments perfectly because we could not, and he gives us his identity. He gives us his actual life, that we would live for him.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)
And if Jesus loved you to the death, God most certainly will, too. Scripture has a word for every age, and a path forward. Let’s read the rest of Proverbs 3:31-32:
Do not envy a man of violence
and do not choose any of his ways,
for the devious person is an abomination to the Lord,
but the upright are in his confidence.
We need to find our true identity in the Lord’s confidence. We need to be the upright. The upright of heart are the only ones who will be saved, and the only way to be upright is to be in Christ, and in nothing else. He is reaching out his hand even now, and it is pierced and bloodied for you. He is patient that none should perish, and if we look closely, he proved this in his own public trial.
The Murderer Goes Free
The identity of the earlier-mentioned Barabbas (the murderer Pilate set free instead of Jesus) reveals the true heart of God the Father, and it reveals something crucial about ourselves as well. In biblical times, a father would name his son to show his lineage, like “son of Bartholomew.” But Barabbas’s name simply means “son of the father.” In Barabbas’s case, he had been branded at birth as a generic son of an unnamed father. Barabbas was, quite literally, no one.
This Barabbas, this murderous son of the father, was traded for the sinless Son of the Father, who died in his place. Barabbas, a man of violence, walked away a free man. This was me—and this is you. You are this man. In your sinful state of unbelief, you are Barabbas, an enemy of God.
What you do with this identity is the most important juncture of your eternity. A trade must be made. If you are unbelieving, get down on your knees and ask God to save you. Ask him to bring you to repentance. He can silence your protests. He calls us to come.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)
When that young woman shared 1 Corinthians 6 with me, I despised her for it. I knew I was on the list of those who would not inherit the kingdom of God. My whole identity was wrapped around sins like these. For years, her words danced around on my ceiling while I lay awake at night, shaking the walls of my own prison, until they finally caved in on me. These words of God—the rest of that passage she had shared—were the death of me:
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)
Moving from death to life was not a path without earthly consequences; I carry some of them still. But the forgiveness I found in Christ has been a wide open space for me to run free, without the guilt that had burdened me for so long.
We don’t know if Barabbas ever repented of his sins, so his freedom may have been only physical and not spiritual. Jesus granted mercy and forgiveness to the thief on the cross, and he also allowed that thief to pay the debt he owed for his crimes. True repentance brings us to a heart posture of admitting our crimes and accepting the penalties for them, knowing that our own spiritual innocence is of far greater value and is secure in the finished work of Christ.
This washing into a new life by regeneration and pardon is what Jesus offers to idolaters, adulterers, thieves, drunkards, revilers, swindlers, mockers, and murderers. This is what He offers to you. Today is the day of salvation. He calls you out of your cell and into His righteousness. The doors are already opened, the bonds are unfastened, and His forgiveness awaits.
It’s not too late, even for those who have killed their own children by abortion or other means. And it’s not too late for you. His voice shatters prison walls and proclaims, “Freedom for captives!”
This is where he found me, and this is where he finds you.
Be identified with nothing else.
Be born again.
