Go and Sin No More

...And Jesus said, "I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more." Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life." (John 8:11-12)

This story of the woman forgiven by Jesus is one of the most powerful stories in the world to reveal the real truth about how God treats sinners. And yet all of my life the impact of this story has been seriously blunted by those who seemed to want to minimize God's graciousness and put extra emphasis on obedience. But our real problem is not our need for more obedience itself but is the form or method of obedience promoted by those who believe that God is in the helping business rather than the saving business.

For most of my life, every time I came across announcements of the good news in the Bible it was neutralized by something of this nature that would create so much fear in my heart that the gospel would lose all its power for me. Satan was so subtle to use religious beliefs and teachings to steal away the very things that could have empowered me to escape from the lies about God that had kept me in bondage. I see these lies abounding both on the left and on the right and it has taken most of my life to come to discern the real good news that God has been seeking to present to me as it is in Jesus.

When I would read this phrase, go and sin no more, all the daunting efforts required to stop sinning would rise up so preponderantly inside my mind that I would be ready to give up in hopeless despair as soon as I was done reading this story. All I could imagine was that this woman was being instructed to go and try even harder to quit sinning in appreciation from getting off the hook from being stoned. It was taught to me that somehow the gratitude she must have felt from being rescued from stoning was supposed to motivate enough her to resist sin in order to satisfy this demand of Jesus for her to quit her life of sin altogether. Translating that into my own experience I felt that this story was just another ploy by religion to entice me (or compel me) to try and figure out once again how to access God's power to help my efforts to overcome sin.

Overcoming sin was the main theme of the people I grew up around and who had the greatest influence in my development. Again, I am certainly all for becoming overcomers, but how that is arrived at is the issue that has created more confusion and heated arguments and debates over the years than almost anything else I can think of in my experience. For the very same verses that one side insists defends their position are sometimes used by the other side to present something completely different.

Wonderfully I have been the recipient of gracious revelations from God over the past few years that have opened my understanding in a very different direction from what I perceived growing up. The misery of soul that I experienced most of my life attempting to overcome sin by working harder with God's help became such a mountain of discouragement for me that I was compelled to wonder if there just might be a better way to overcome. If overcoming required all the hard work, the anxiety, the constant search for just the right formulas and living in constant fear of offending God while never enjoying real assurance, then it was just too much to endure. In fact, it was on the heels of this personal search for a better answer that brought me to this study in the book of John to discover for myself what saving belief really looks and feels like. And I have not been disappointed.

As I read the two verses above the last couple of mornings with a better context of a clearer picture of God as my backdrop, many things that used to greatly trouble me now actually serve as reinforcements for assurance of God's love and grace for me. And part of the problem I have discovered about my previous way of looking at Scriptures was the segmentation that is so often used in reading just selected portions to prove some doctrine or teaching. Now as I allow passages to flow together and to integrate and interpret themselves more fluidly, much more is coming into the open that is refreshing and life-giving for me. The same is very true in this story.

When Jesus instructed this woman to go and sin no more, I suspect that she might have had some of the same feelings initially as I have experienced upon hearing those words. She may have been very thankful certainly for having her life saved, but gratitude for one incident alone is not enough power to keep one from all sin when life is going wrong again and temptation blinds you emotionally. There has to be something far more effective than simply being rescued from death one time, as powerful as that may be; there has to be a power that is ever-present and accessible in the life that can keep one's focus in a different direction when temptations assert their influence on the soul.

As is often the case, the answer is found very close by in Scripture if one ignores the artificial separations that have been put into place. Whether it be chapter breaks, verse divisions or story transitions, too often we miss the most powerful truths by stopping where we think the thought has ended. In this case that is also true, for in the very next verse Jesus reveals both to this woman and to anyone else willing to listen the real method for overcoming sin in our lives. It is by following Him and all that that implies in seeking to have an intimate relationship with Him.

Again, the idea of following Jesus used to mean I had to simply emulate His example of living a perfect life with help from God like I thought Jesus did while here on earth. But now I have come to see that Jesus did not come to show us how to live a life of perfect behavior with God's help, but He came to show us that living in intimate relationship and total dependence on an outside power above Him was the only way we could be brought back into a right relationship of trust with our Creator.

Instead of focusing on reforming my behavior and trying to get my external act together in order to look like a good Christian, I am coming to realize that all my external changes must flow from a transformed heart which in turn will only happen as the natural result of living in relationship with a different Friend. True transformation is not something put on or forced in from the outside like I have spent far too much of my life attempting to do, transformation must simply be the natural outworking of living in relationship with the only Source of life which renews my mind (Romans 12:2). Heart transformation happens when I come to perceive what God is really like, how gracious and forgiving and loving and merciful and beautiful His character is like. As I follow Him the way people follow their favorite movie stars or pop idols and try to learn everything possible about Him in every respect, my own life and spirit and attitudes and disposition will begin to morph into acting and thinking and relating to others like He does. And that is exactly what Jesus was relaying to this woman right after He saved her from her accusers.