“Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, ‘Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?’ ‘No, Lord,’ she said. And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I. Go and sin no more.’” John 8:10-11 NLT)
It’s interesting to me though the Lord didn’t say to the woman some version of: “Come, follow Me!” my sense is she never let Him far out of her sight. Her life was changed forever and she knew the source of that change.
Nothing had appeal to her like Jesus after that life-changing encounter with Him. All her longings were centered and focused on pleasing Him, following His instructions, learning what it meant to be a lover of Truth. John Newton grasped the reason for her response when he wrote: “Wonderful are the effects when a crucified, glorious Savior is presented to the eye of Faith. This sight destroys the love of sin.”
No, He hadn’t been crucified yet, but my sense is she was there when He was and she mourned likely more than the other disciples. Why? Because few had come from where she’d been, and few had come so far in their love and devotion to Him. This may well have been the woman who poured the expensive ointment over His head as recorded in Mark 14, but we won’t know for sure until we get to heaven.
The point is, when Jesus is our first love the things we value become gifts to give expression to our love for Him. He’s the focus of our desire, no longer the things that once brought us pleasure. We wrestle with sin because we haven’t yet come to terms with who we love the most – ourselves or Jesus? Our sin or our freedom to love and serve our Lord? When we love ourselves, we want to please ourselves and there’s really no limit to the ways or means by which we’ll seek to accomplish that.
Sex, drugs, lying, cheating, immorality on whatever level, even religiosity is no problem until we meet Jesus and we realize He doesn’t tolerate habitual sin in our lives. What does that mean? It means we do the same sin over and over and over and believe it won’t matter in our walk with the Lord. Sin is what separates us from the Lord, so, if our goal is to please and honor ourselves, it’s a pretty good indicator that we haven’t had a true encounter with the living God.
A religious experience can be very emotional and make us feel really good, but unless and until it causes our heart to break at the thought of what our sin cost our Savior, it’s just another religious hoop we jumped through to soothe our conscious or to check a religious box. If our behavior isn’t governed by our love for and devotion to our Savior, our sin won’t make us sick and cause us to rush to our Savior for forgiveness.
When we ignore sin or believe it isn’t a big deal, it’s simply evidence of who we’re trying to please and why. When our motivation is to make it to heaven or to miss hell and not to magnify, please, and honor our eternal Savior, we’re wearing a costume that may prevent others from seeing who we really are but can never fool the Lord. Not until we love the Lord more than we love our sin will we ever be free of sin’s shackles. The closer we get to the Lord the looser sin’s grip is on our lives.
Yes, of course, as long as we’re in these bodies of clay, we’ll always have the capacity to sin, but we’ll also, by the power of the Holy Spirit, have the ability to live without habitual sin in our life.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 