Leave Your Life of Sin

In John chapter 8:1-11, John writes one of the most famous stories in the Bible. It’s a story of a woman who was caught in adultery and is forced to stand in front of Jesus by her accusers, the Pharisees. This isn’t one of those stories where Jesus teaches with a lot of words because as this woman is brought to Jesus the Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus by questioning him about the law of Moses and whether this woman should be stoned or not. But Jesus doesn’t say a word to the angry mob and bends over and begins to write something in the sand; something scholars have never been able to figure out.
But as the Pharisees kept questioning Jesus, he finally stands up and says, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her”, then he bends back down to continue writing in the sand. As the story goes, one by one, from oldest to youngest, people in the crowd began to drop their stones and walk away, knowing that none of them could throw a stone at her because they knew they had sin in their lives.
Yet, the drama doesn’t end there because as the crowd clears out, Jesus is still there with the woman. And so Jesus stands back up asking her if anyone was there to condemn her, to which she replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus says, “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin”, marking some of the greatest words of Jesus that ever been written.
Now it’s here that we need to focus on these words because here is a sinful woman standing in front of Jesus, guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, and alone. And this woman is a person who represents all of us. She represents, the sexually immoral, the liars, cheaters, gossips, those who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, pornography, the pedophiles, abusers, murders, and all other sins and sinners. This woman represents you and I because we have all been there before, deserving to be stoned for our sins. Yet it is Jesus, who has every right to judge and condemn us, stands beside us loving us and forgiving us, encouraging us to “leave our life of sin.”
We don’t know what this woman did after she left Jesus that day. But Jesus made it clear to her that she was to stop living a life of adultery and she was to make the decisions in her life for that to be possible. Too often we just accept the forgiveness of Jesus, yet don’t “leave our life of sin” and we find ourselves back in the same mess, with the same people, doing that “thing” we need forgiveness for. But the instruction is clear and we need to make choices in our life so that we can truly leave our sin. Perhaps that means letting go of some friends, leaving your job, throwing out the computer or television or moving all together. Whatever choices we have to make let’s make them and truly leave our lives of sin.
This may be difficult and we may have to make some of the hardest decisions in our lives. But just as Jesus is there to stand by us in our time of guilt and shame, he also stands by us and helps us to have some of our greatest victories over sin.
May God stand with us as we “leave our life of sin.”

Brian