Friday, Aug. 30

To download an audio version, click here. 

And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”  - John 8:7-11

What a beautiful picture!  A guilty woman finds herself forgiven and set free!  

Notice how Jesus calls her “woman”.  This is the same word He used to address His own mother in John 19:26, “Woman, behold your son!”  Jesus addresses her, not as an object of scorn, but as an individual of dignity and value in the eyes of God.  Who knows, this may be the first time in her life a man has spoken to her in this way.

Jesus also calls her attention to the fact that she has no human accusers. He has dismissed the jury; their malice has disqualified them to serve.  Even today if you are arrested for a crime, and nobody appears in court to accuse you, the judge will dismiss the case. So Jesus dismissed these men.

But then come these amazing words: "Neither do I condemn you." He alone had the right to condemn this woman. He was the Sinless One, the only One who fulfilled the qualifications to stone her. But he did not do so.  How could Jesus just dismiss her sin like that?  Did Jesus just God never waves his hand and dismisses sin as though it is of no account. His own truth, his law, his holy character, demand that sin be punished.  So, again, how could He just say that He doesn’t condemn this woman when she is a sinner?  

The only way, is if Jesus Himself is going to pay the penalty for her sin.  Her sin will be punished by death, but it won’t be hers, it will be the death of Jesus Himself!  

The cross is always an eternal event in the mind of God. The sins of the people who lived in Old Testament days were also forgiven on the basis of the death of Jesus on the cross. There is no other way that God can forgive sin. In anticipation of that cross, Jesus forgave her sin. The proof of it is in the words he next said, "Go, and do not sin again."

 If we have acknowledged our guilt, and heard God's words of forgiveness, he is saying to us, "Go, and do not sin again."  He could never say that to this woman unless something had happened within her heart; the power of sin had been broken. We do not sin because we are temporarily overwhelmed by a strong passion of the moment.  We sin because we have a nature of sin, of self-centeredness; we hunger after things that are wrong and we easily yield to sin. We cannot help ourselves at times.

"Man is born unto sin," (Job 5:7). We all are born to share that fallen nature. Unless that power of sin is broken within us, unless God does something to free us and give us the possibility of a new life he never will say to us, "Go, and sin no more."

But when Jesus says these words to this woman it is clear that she has the possibility of a new life!  He never tells anyone to do something that he does not enable him or her to do. Thus, he does not forgive us in order that we might go back and continue in our sins. The Apostle Paul wrote these wonderful words to his son in the faith, Titus, “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” (Titus 2:14).

Perhaps no individual in history has illustrated this as well as John Newton. Newton was once a wild and sinful man, a slave trader who ran slaves from Africa to England. But God saved him. He was converted in the midst of a storm in the Atlantic when he thought he was doomed. He became a great preacher, and a great hymn writer in England. Everyone knows his most famous hymn, “Amazing Grace”, however, one of his lesser known hymns. “In Evil Long I Took Delight”, He captures the essence of how the death of Jesus Christ transformed his life...

In evil, long I took delight,
Unawed by shame or fear,
'Til a new object met my sight,
And stopped my wild career.

I saw One hanging on a tree,
In agony and blood,
Who fixed His languid eyes on me,
As near His cross I stood.

Sure, never to my latest breath
Shall I forget that look.
It seemed to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke.

A second look He gave, which said,
"I freely all forgive,
My blood was for thy ransom paid,
I died that thou mayest live.

Jeff Frazier