Walking With Christ

John 8:3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst(ESV)

I believe that nearly every Christian has heard this story, but for the sake of clarity I will quickly paraphrase. The woman had been caught in the act of adultery. The Pharisees knew that the law required that she be stoned to death. There was enough evidence (two male witnesses) and the law was very clear on the subject. Jesus knew what the law said. He also knew this was a test. So, He did not act how the Pharisees, or anyone else for that matter, expected. He simply bent down and started writing in the dirt with His finger. I have a personal theory about what He wrote that I’ll share after the message. When the Pharisees pressed Him, He stood up and said the most amazing thing.

John 8:7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”(ESV)

Then He went back to writing on the ground. Every single one of the accusers walked away and probably had to seriously reassess their lives under the weight of conviction. But that isn’t the end of the story. After all of her accusers dropped the stones they were so willing to throw only moments before, she was left standing there, certainly in a messy state considering how she was found, with only Jesus. It’s what He said next that has been playing in my head on repeat for the last few hours.

John 8:10-11 (1)Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” (11)She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”(ESV)

“Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” Sin no more.

That’s the part that I’ve struggled with for most of my life. It’s not the accidental sins that worry me the most. It’s usually when I’m feeling self-destructive and want to do something that I know I shouldn’t do. I know that every sin has a cost. Still, I choose to take that step backward. It’s usually to punish myself for not being good enough, strong enough, smart enough, fast enough, for just not being enough. That’s the most constant voice in my head when I’m at my worst. That’s a voice from my past because of how I grew up. I was never enough. I was never someone’s first choice, or second, third, fifth, or even tenth choice. I was the last resort. I was the desperation pick. The pity choice.

It wasn’t until I met my now wife that I began to see my value as a human being. It wasn’t until I saw how she looked at me and saw me in ways that I couldn’t see myself that I began to even think of myself as human. She saw me as a complete human being despite my many flaws that I was adamant about pointing out in painstaking detail. I pushed her away. She stayed. She lifted me up when even those I was told I could rely on were pushing me down. In her eyes, I wasn’t the spare. She didn’t pick me because she settled.

She put me first. She has continued to put me first in the twenty years that we’ve been married. She picked me up. She carried me at times. She pushed me and encouraged me even when it was us against the world.

Through her love, grace, and faithfulness I survived the wilderness and healed enough to hear the call to return to the flock when it came. This is the value of a good woman. This is the value of a true friend. This is supposed to be the value of every Christian.

John 13:34-35 (34)A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. (35)By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.(ESV)

We Christians should be easily identifiable by the love we show each other, our friends, and our enemies. Anyone can be kind to friends, but it’s how we treat our enemies that sets us apart from most of the world and history.

Matthew 22:39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.(ESV)

This is where I fell flat on my face. How could I love my neighbor as myself when all I knew growing up was self-loathing? How could I show something that I never knew or had? Since God is love, I could never actually understand God because this concept was just foreign to me. It wasn’t until my precious gift of a wife plucked me out of the rocky soil and transplanted me into a far more fertile garden that I began to grow.

The lesson here is that it doesn’t matter what life you have lived, how you grew up, or even the things that happened to you along the way, God has a plan for you and knows exactly what you will need when the time is right. He prepared my amazing wife for the rocky road we would share long before we ever met even thought she had no idea that the things she was going through were meant to prepare her for someone like me. This is why the song choice for our wedding was so perfect at the time and is still so perfect today.

God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you.

When I’m down and at my worst, when things seem like they can’t get any worse, I always start with taking stock of the blessings in my life and the things that I’m grateful for. My wife is always first on that list. She gets so much credit for the good things in my life. She isn’t the only person I’m thankful for, but she is always the first.

Now, as promised, I personally think that Jesus’ hand was the floating hand that wrote on the wall in Daniel 5. Jesus may have been fully human but He was also fully God which means that, at least, part of Him exists outside of time and space. The words He wrote in the plaster of the wall were written in the heavenly language as evidenced by the fact that nobody understood the words then and they have to be translated even now.