When listening to music with my kids,
I will often say, “What was that line?” Sometimes, one word, or one line,
understood correctly, changes my whole understanding of the song.
That can
happen with scripture too. In fact, it
happened to me this past weekend. A guy
named Steve Bell was about to sing a song taken from a story in John chapter
eight. Just before he started, he
pointed out one thing that changed the whole story for me. Before I give you the insight that he shared,
let me share the details of the story.
Jesus was in
the temple in Jerusalem when a group of religious leaders brought a woman to
him and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the
Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They did this as a way to trap him. If Jesus said, “Let her go!” they could
accuse him of not being faithful to the old teaching. If he said, “Stone her”, of course, that
would not go over well. Either way, he
was going to lose favour in the sight of his followers.
Jesus bent
down and wrote in the sand. Now, we do
not know what he wrote, but we do know what he said when he stood up: “Let any
one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” then he
bent over and wrote in the sand again.
Soon, everyone left, with the oldest ones leading the way.
When Jesus
got up he said to the woman, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
and she replied, “No one, sir.”
“Then
neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
It was this
line that Steve Bell commented on. He
said, “Notice the order of the words.
They are important! Jesus did not
say, ‘Go and leave your life of sin and I will condemn you no more’, he said,
‘I do not condemn you. Go and live
differently!’”
The order
is important. God does not say, “Live a really
good life and, maybe, I will forgive your sins at the end of time”. Instead God says, “I love you so much that I
sent my Son to pay for your sins. Now,
accept that forgiveness and live the new life I have given you both now and in
forever (See John 3:16; Acts 2; Romans 6:1-4).
Her new
life was not a way to earn forgiveness.
Rather, it was to be a response to the gift of forgiveness that she had
already been given.
Sometimes,
hearing things properly makes all the difference.
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