“At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘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 were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’
‘No one, sir,’ she said.
‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’” (John 8:2-11 NIV)
Rob Bell, popular author and former pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church, said this last spring: “I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs – I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”
Bell’s views are being repeated and promoted in churches and blogs across the country and reflect the changing attitude toward sin. Sin is being viewed less as an affront to God and more as an incurable disease with which everyone is afflicted. Thus, don’t blame the victim. Our response to sin, as Bell and others tell us, should be love and affirmation. It sounds good and reasonable, until we look a little deeper.
In this story, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law fit perfectly the profile of the “haters” of today. They don’t love; they only condemn. They are hypocrites of the highest order. And Jesus rightly puts them in their place by making a simple statement: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” They walk away in shame and you can almost hear the applause of this generation and the collective shout of approval: “Way to go Jesus! Now that’s what we’re talkin’ about! No more hate; only love!”
If this were an unknown story, the expectation would follow that Jesus would affirm the woman and say nothing at all about the sin in her life. For isn’t that how love is being defined these days? We only affirm. We accept people for who they are and how they live. To correct is offensive and condemning. Of course, Jesus did exactly what people today say shouldn’t be done. He dared to tell the woman to leave her life of sin.
I believe Rob Bell and others have good intentions, but what I don’t think they realize is by preaching God’s love at the expense of an emphasis on sin they are rendering that love meaningless. What is so extraordinary about God’s love if sin is removed from the equation? What need of a Savior do we have if condemnation and death are not the consequence of sin? Would this story have even been recorded if sin (theirs and hers) were not mentioned?
Sin is what separates us from God. Sin is deadly and our destiny is in peril because of it. Sin is why Jesus came. To understand the fullness of His love, we must recognize the depth of our own sin. God’s love is never intended to “make us proud of who we are,” but to be a mirror into which we gaze and see how far we have fallen and how desperate we are for a Savior. It is not to lead to the acceptance of any sinful lifestyle or habit, but rather to the departure from it.
Today, contemplate this question: If loving God means affirming those engaging in habitual sin, what meaning does His love really have?
© Jim Musser 2014
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