Think You Would Throw the Stone

Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”¹¹ “No one, sir,” she said.“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”  - John 8:10-11

We have all come to the point in life where we had to go outside of our immediate feelings and take the “high road” so to speak.  Not easy and most of the time avoided.  Christ knelt in the dirt of a street in Jerusalem where a group of authorities had gathered around a woman.  With anger in their eyes and hatred in their hearts they were determined to unleash their own version of wrath upon this woman for the sins she had been guilty of.  His blue eyes cut through the anger, the venom and the superiority which poured forth from their hearts.  His words forced upon them the reality of the truth in their hearts.  The truth they knew in their heart is that they were just as guilty of sin as was the woman before them.  Each of them came to the same conclusion and walked away reconsidering their anger.

So many of us struggle with accepting and loving those that we see as blatant sinners.  Can you honestly look at any other person with eyes of judgement without first looking at your own sinful actions?  You can dislike their actions, their choices and their disregard for God’s commandments, but what gives you the right to condemn them?  If you live as if your sins are forgiven through God’s grace and treat others as if their sin is not, are you not extending your authority beyond your rightful place?  God alone can judge a man’s soul for eternity and though you and I may feel as though we understand God, we are completely wrong.  For God is beyond human comprehension.

Love them.  Forgive them.  Help them to understand the righteousness that God has made available through His loving grace and forgiveness.  A truly fulfilling love of Jesus Christ will create within you a heart with a desire to serve and follow His commandments in all of their truth and righteousness.  Sin becomes apparent and one is driven to their knees with a desire to be forgiven, redeemed and made whole within. 

You need to know, regardless of where you are in life, what you are holding onto and what you have done; that you are a child of the one true God.  You are worthy of His love, His forgiveness, grace and salvation from the past that haunts you.  Christ tells you, as He told the woman on the streets of Jerusalem, “Neither do I condemn you, go forth and sin no more.”