Is there no one left to accuse you?” “No one, Lord,” she answered. “Well, then,” Jesus said, “I do not condemn you either. Go, but do not sin any more.” John 8:10,11
Last time we were looking at the woman caught in sin who Jesus spoke our verses of today to. Tradition tells us it was Magdalene. We saw how Jesus dealt with her accusers. But what about how Jesus dealt with her?
Obviously, there was no one in the story who cared about this woman except Jesus. She didn’t care about herself or she wouldn’t have been sinning in the first place. The Pharisees didn’t care about her; she was a means to an end of putting this up-start preacher in His place. The crowd would have been more excited had Jesus said, “Let the one who is the MOST SPIRITUAL among you cast the first stone.” They were there for the show.
What about the woman? She made no defense, no excuse, no cry for mercy. Nothing. She knew she was wrong. Did the Pharisees know they were wrong? No, I guess not. The onlookers? Did they know how wrong they were? Apparently they needed to be reminded—but Jesus simply wrote in the dust.
Suppose tradition is correct and this woman was Magdalene. Luke says that Jesus cast 7 demons out of her. Surely her sin was nothing compared to that kind of torment. But still, she knew she had sinned.
That day Jesus refused to condemn her . . . what would you make of it if it had happened to you? Oh, it has happened to you? Did you know that He is a God of restoration? No sin is too big.
God didn’t send his Son into the world to condemn it or be its judge, but to be its Savior (Jn3:17). Jesus doesn’t run around condemning you and me, either; He’s not ‘the accuser’. That’s the devil’s job.
This woman caught in sin, experienced Jesus’ non-condemnation first hand and was never the same again. Can you imagine being enslaved to demons all your life and suddenly being set free? It’s unlikely that anyone reading this was ever set free from 7 demons. But if Christ set you and me free then we have been just as set free as Magdalene. The question is: do we know that, or are we coming to worship in our own righteousness.
Magdalene knew what she’d been delivered from. Is that one of the ingredients that made her such a worshiper? I think so.
Real worshipers don’t come in their own righteousness. God hates all sin. But if there’s a particular sin that God hates more than others it’s self righteousness—spiritual arrogance.
People who can’t seem to get their eyes off of other people’s sins and failings. . .
People who bolster their own spiritual self-image by accusing others. . .
People who make themselves look holier than they are by standing on the corpses of those they have stoned. . .
It’s no wonder they can’t connect with God in worship.
But those who come to worship in the power of the Holy Spirit: The Good News Bible (the first New Testament I ever studied) put it this way:
“But the time is coming and is already here, when by the power of God’s Spirit people will worship the Father as he really is, offering him the true worship that he wants.
God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is.”
(Jn 4:23,24).