Once upon a time a group of highly religious people callously threw a woman, guilty of sexual sin, in the dust at the feet of Jesus. She had knowingly acted in a way that was against God's design. According to the design of God - according to the very nature of God, who by nature cannot be in the presence of sin - the wages of her sin was a death sentence. And the crowd who had brought her to the feet of Jesus - who claimed to speak for God Himself - was chomping at the bit to have that sentence carried out right then and there; they held the weapons in their hands that would be used to execute the woman. This moment was an incredibly combustible face-off between two of the most powerful forces of the day: in one corner stood the religious elite - the people who held the title of God's chosen race and holy nation, the people whose charge it was to represent the great I Am to a world outside of that covenant and who did not know God; what the world knew about God was what they learned through observing this holy nation of chosen people. And in the other corner stood Jesus, who claimed to be the very Son of God Himself. Not only did He speak exclusively for God, but He was God.
They asked Jesus again and again and demanded an answer.
But Jesus just sat down and started doodling in the dirt.
As you can imagine, this didn't make the mob happy. Finally, after much pestering, Jesus stood up and faced the angry mob of the religious elite. He looked them in the eye and instructed the woman to be stoned -- as long as the stoning began by the person in the crowd who had no sin throwing the first rock.
One by one, oldest to youngest, every single person in the angry crowd left. Soon only Jesus and the woman remained.
Upon noting that no one was left to condemn the woman, Jesus told the woman one single sentence - one that just might change the world. "Neither do I condemn you," Jesus said. "Now go your way and sin no more."
The woman walked in expecting to be executed - and she walked away a free woman. After one meeting with Jesus, her life was forever changed.
There's four things about this event that I believe are absolutely pivotal.
◆ Jesus refused to get caught up in the emotion of the moment. He wouldn't jump on the bandwagon of hate and condemnation towards the woman, and yet He didn't act hateful towards the self-righteous either. He kept His cool.
◆ Jesus reminded the religious elite what they had evidently forgotten: that they too had fallen far short of the glory of God. They had no room to treat the woman as if they embodied God's law perfectly -- regardless of whether or not they had ever committed the same sin that this woman stood condemned for, they had nonetheless sinned. And if you were guilty of breaking one part of the law, you were guilty of the weight of the whole law.
◆ The fact that these people were guilty of sin did not excuse the behavior of the woman. Jesus then addressed her - but He did so in love and with compassion; He did not demean her or belittle her. In fact, He forgave her. He did the unthinkable and said that He did not condemn her.
◆ Far from excusing what she had done and the gravity of the situation, Jesus addressed her sinful life head-on. After forgiving her and wiping her slate clean, he told her to "go and sin no more." He recognized that what she had done was sin, and that she should never do this again. Because of the love she received from Him, He expects her life to look differently. She had been given a charge by the Son of God to change her life -- and I would think that being given the chance to walk away from death row would emblazon that on her heart in a way that made her think long & hard about that advice and her choice of lifestyles.
So why is this so important? Because frankly, in most conversations about sin I hear (and worse, what I see in the media), people ignore #1, have forgotten #2, refuse #3 and skip over #4. If we act like #3 and #4 are an either/or buffet; we either focus on excusing people of their sin, or we take it upon ourselves to campaign for everyone else to "go and sin no more." Typically that involves a lot of finger pointing and quoting our favorite "clobber verses." God's Word should be used as a healing balm, and not as a way to cauterize an open wound we just inflicted.
If we emphasize only #3 (Jesus' statement that He did not condemn the woman in sin) while neglecting #4 (the second half of Jesus' sentence warning her not to sin any more), we have perverted Jesus' message and are in danger of endorsing what has been called "cheap grace." But the flip side of that coin is just as dangerous! If all we talk about are the laws and "Thou Shalt Not's," then God becomes nothing more than a supernatural bully who is eagerly waiting for each of us to trip up so He can strike us with lightning and the full power of His wrath. That is not the God I know! That is not the God of the Bible! That is not Jesus!
I recently read an interesting blog post about some disturbing trends among Christendom today, and I thought the author made one especially poignant observation. Even though 80% of youth will leave "church" by the time they hit 30, the reasons they give for leaving - such as the experience of Christianity being shallow, or the church being antagonistic to unbelievers - "[U]pon heavy scrutiny [of their reasons for leaving], none of this remotely sounded like Jesus, so He wasn't the problem, which was a relief because when having a faith crisis, you don't want to discover your Main Character is a fraud. As far as I can tell, Jesus is still the easiest sell on earth, because if you don't love a guy who healed lepers and pulled children onto His lap and silenced the religious elite and ate and drank with sinners, then you just don't know Him."
The GOOD NEWS is that when we are humbly at the feet of Jesus, He will not condemn us. He will help us to our feet and dust us off. When Jesus encounters a person caught up in sin, He doesn't jump on the bandwagon of those who ignore their own sin while accusing others'. Instead, He extends love to the person, and He then adjures that person to change their life.
Is that what happens when you or I encounter a person caught up in sin?
God is love, so the only way we can accurately represent Him is by loving others.
"By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another."
--Jesus
