John, Chapter 8
2 Early in the
morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down
and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who
had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they
said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing
adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do
you say?" 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some
charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the
ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to
them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a
stone at her." 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9
When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and
Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened
up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned
you?" 11 She said, "No one, sir." And Jesus said, "Neither
do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again."
Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Imagine standing
before God and Jesus on the Day of Judgment.
And imagine that the Accuser begins to read the litany of your sins for
which you will be judged.
Do you suppose
that it will read:
·
She was too loving.
·
He was too forgiving.
·
She was too merciful.
·
He was too compassionate.
·
She was too accepting.
Do you suppose,
if those were the charges levied against you on the Day of Judgment, that God
would then condemn you??
No. Of course not.
For this is all
the stuff of grace and near to the heart of God.
And though we can
never be perfect, and everything we do is in some way tainted by sin, it is
better for us to err on the side of grace, than the law.
We, however,
often feel most righteous when we are most judgmental, and condemning.
Some lament the
fact that we simply don’t preach against sin enough in the Church.
I quote a Dr.
James Emery White from his blog page:
“In 1973, psychiatrist Karl Menninger published
a book with the provocative title, Whatever Became of Sin? His point
was that sociology and psychology tend to avoid terms like “evil,” or
“immorality,” and “wrongdoing.” Menninger detailed how the
theological notion of sin became the legal idea of crime and then slid further
from its true meaning when it was relegated to the psychological category of
sickness.
Sin is now regarded as little more than a
set of emotions that can be explained through genetics.
So something like lust is not a wrong that
threatens our own health and the well-being of others; it’s simply an emotional
urge that is rooted in the need to propagate the human species. It’s
fixed in our genes.”
And hearing
someone say something like that, there is a whole chorus of voices that say “Yes,
that’s what wrong with our world. We need
to take a strong stance against sin, and for righteousness.
What is the world
coming to anyway?
One of the things
we do is focus on certain sins more than others.
And frequently
that means that we focus on other’s sins, not our own. And we particularly love to focus on sexual
sins. That has been the case for a long
time.
Imagine how
righteous those scribes and Pharisees felt when they brought that woman before
Jesus who had been caught in the very act of committing adultery. I mean, really, in the very act. . . One would assume she’d been pulled naked from
the bed and her lover’s arms.
The judgment
couldn’t be questioned at that point.
“Jesus, what do
you say?”
People who
committed adultery were to be stoned to death.
If a man raped a
woman in the city, both of them were to be stoned to death—the man because he raped
her, the woman because she didn’t cry out for help.
If, however, the
rape took place in the country, the woman’s life was to be spared.
If a man rapes a
virgin, who is not yet engaged, in other words a young girl, he is required to
make the girl his wife and cannot divorce her.
And so the Law of
Moses goes.
And it’s not only
sexual sins that count.
Rebellious and
stubborn sons are also to be executed by the elders of the town.
Even Jesus, at
times, preaches a very strict understanding of the Law.
In Mark 10:11 he
says "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery
against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits
adultery."
Yes indeed,
whatever happened to sin?
Whatever happened
to sin?
So there this
woman was, standing before Jesus, having been caught in the very act of
adultery.
She is without
defense.
Then Jesus does a
curious thing. He bends down and starts
writing something with his finger on the ground.
“When they kept on questioning him, he
straightened up and said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin
be the first to throw a stone at her." And once again he bent down and
wrote on the ground.”
Wouldn’t you love
to know just exactly what it was that he wrote on the ground???
Some have
speculated that he was writing down the sins that these scribes and Pharisees
had committed.
Or perhaps Jesus
wrote something like “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn,
and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven;”, that’s from
his sermon on the Plain in Luke.
He says something
similar in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew:
"Do not judge, so that you
may not be judged. 2 For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the
measure you give will be the measure you get. 3 Why do you see the speck in
your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 4 Or how can
you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the
log is in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own
eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's
eye.
In Romans, Paul
writes:
“Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you
are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn
yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.”
As Jesus wrote
with his finger in the dust, the woman’s accusers left one by one.
Finally, she was
alone with Jesus.
"Woman, where are they? Has no one
condemned you?" 11 She said, "No one, sir." And Jesus said,
"Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin
again."
“Neither do I
condemn you.”
“"Indeed, God did not send the Son into
the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved
through him.” John 3:17
Such is the heart
and the love of Jesus.
He is unwilling
to condemn because he came to save.
Those among us
who are ready to condemn will cling to the final words of Jesus “do not sin
again”.
Forgiveness is
possible, but only if true repentance is found.
Sin no more. And if you are not
willing to repent and sin no more, the condemnation remains.
Actually, I’ve
come to believe that true forgiveness means that ‘your sins are no more’, not
that you will ‘sin no more’.
Paul makes it
quite clear in the seventh chapter of Romans that our battle with sin
continues. He writes:
“For I know that nothing good dwells within
me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For
I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if
I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within
me.”
This is the
thing, though.
We are forgiven
by the grace of God, even though we will continue to struggle with sin all the
days of our lives.
We are forgiven.
Forgiveness isn’t
contingent on our never sinning again.
Yes, Jesus forgives
us to set us free.
But his offer of
forgiveness is renewed each and every day.
One of the most
important things I’ve learned about this is that forgiveness is not contingent
on our repentance, but rather that our repentance is in response to God’s
forgiveness.
Repentance is the
turning around, turning from our sinful ways, toward God.
And this turning,
or better, returning to God, is only possible because of the forgiveness freely
offered to us in Christ Jesus.
And so we, like
this woman, stand before Jesus and hear those most wonderful words: “Neither do I condemn you.”
As a Church we
simply cannot be too loving, too forgiving, too merciful, too compassionate,
and too accepting.
No amount of
grace is too much grace.
Because grace, in
all its lavish abundance, is precisely what transforms the lives of sinners and
sets us free and brings us back to God.
Amen
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