NOT GUILTY!
the Saving GRACE of God’s Redeeming LOVE
April 24th, 2023
Dust in the Wind
John 8:10-11, ‘Until finally, Jesus was left alone with the woman still standing in front of Him. So, He stood up and said to her, “Dear woman, where are your accusers now? Is there no one left to condemn you?” Looking around, she replied, ‘I see no one, Lord.’ Jesus said, “Then I certainly don’t condemn you either. Go, and from now on, be free from a life of sin.”’ (TPT)
I imagine the humiliation! The Bible doesn’t spare much detail and tells us about a woman who is drug in front of Jesus, having been caught—some versions say—in the very act of adultery. My mind is like a movie set sometimes, and it paints vivid pictures that even cause me to blush; so I wonder things like, ‘Did they allow her to pull some clothing on?’ ‘Is she wrapped in a blanket or a bedsheet?’ I think, gosh, she likely is a mess; the fear in her chest and the truth on her face, caught with her vulnerabilities laid bare, intimacy no longer a whispered secret. Then, I become indignant. ‘Where is the man in this story?!’ My momma always taught me, ‘it takes two to tango’, and that it does.
So we ask, why is the woman the only one brought to stand trial before Jesus, suspected to be the Son of the Most High God? We learn nothing more of this story anyplace else in the Bible, so it is unlikely a man stepped forward to defend her honor. Oh, wait! there was a Man Who did step for up to protect her, and His name is Jesus, and when it was left to her to take on the brutality of the scene, He pardoned her and set her free from a ‘life of sin’. (Can you imagine the gift of being freed from the life you find yourself immersed in?!) In fact, the stones meant for her were set aside. Her blemish was cleansed while her accusers dropped their hands, vacating their stance of condemnation, and walking away.
No one knows what Jesus scribbled in the dirt that day. I want to ask Him someday when I get to hang out with Him in heaven. But there’s a part of me that wonders if what He scrawled, like dust in the wind, blew away, as far as the east is from the west. There is a place I heard about where our sins disappear, where they are buried in the nailprints of His hands, where they are negated and nailed to the cross, forever redeemed, our stained virginity as white as snow. I am so thankful to this Man Who chose to see me and other women as daughters, as brides, as pure white, as forgiven.
Psalm 138:8, ‘The Lord will perfect that which concerns me.’ (NKJV)
God’s Loving Kindness Leads Me to Repentance
