Falling into the hands of God

Had it been worth it? Those stolen minutes with a man who was not her husband and who also was not here? Were they worth the dreadful fear as the three witnesses dragged her along and threw her before Jesus. It was the time when religious law ruled the land and anyone breaking that law died without mercy. This time the vigilantes would try to score two victories, they would have this woman condemned and stoned to death but they would also put Jesus into such a position that he either participated in the cruelty or repudiated the holy law.

The crowd grows frustrated as it struggles to get an answer from Jesus, but he is silent, bending over to write in the desert sand. At last he lifts his head and says, "Let the person without sin be the first person to throw a stone at her." and then he continues writing in the sand. When the accusers have crept silently away he questions the woman again: "Woman has anyone condemned you?" When she answers, "No one, Sir." He replies, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more."

The woman pushed before Jesus did not know it, but she was falling into the hands of God. Jesus would find a way to grant her mercy although at that time he had no earthly authority over the religious law enforcers.

It's a good place to fall into: the hands of God. King David, who lived about one thousand years before Jesus, was the first to use this phrase, He had seriously displeased God; he knew it, and asked forgiveness in a short rather flippant way. God's mercy took the form of discipline, David and the nation he led suffered until David seriously attended to the broken relationship between him and God.

People who have declared loyalty to God through Jesus, do sometimes suffer discipline. God disciplines them because he loves them and is training them for a continued and deepening relationship with himself. Sometimes, if a person is a leader of a nation, it is necessary that God show his disapproval of certain actions. The things that offend God include: callousness, hypocrisy, arrogance and deceit. When a person who has declared loyalty to God experiences his discipline they are comforted to realize that although God is displeased with them he has not abandoned them, they are still in his hands. Later they are always grateful for the discipline that prevented them from continuing to sin.

"Sin no more" said Jesus to the woman. Liberating words. Mercy is not given that we may continue to sin and excuse ourselves. Mercy is given so that we may refrain from sinning.

The Gospel of John, chapter 8: verses 2-11
Old Testament: Second book of Samuel, chapter 24:verses 10-25
New Testament: Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 27, verses 26-31

Is it bad to do good, on certain days?

Triumphantly the angry law-makers confronted Jesus, and hurled their accusation: he had broken the law, the religious law, by healing someone on the day of rest. They expected a defensive statement, but Jesus replied that His Father works (all the time) and he was doing the same. Jesus was making the assertion, that he was the Son of God the Father. Not a son, Jerusalem was full of people saying they were sons of God, but God appearing in human form. Jesus's name for that inexplicable mystery was 'The Son of God.'

The Jewish leaders never for a moment thought of this as meaning that God had married a female god and together they had had a child. They knew that there is only One God. and God is a spirit. They knew that he has no equal, yet Jesus, by this statement was making himself equal to God. When accused of that, he did not deny it. Instead he emphasised his unity with God . "I tell you emphatically" he said, "that the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whoever he wishes."

It is likely that the people listening were not personally alarmed, Jesus was committing something that sounded like blasphemy by making himself equal to God, but his audience were not participating in the act. The people listening to Jesus were wonderfully religious people, their whole lives governed by the law and their welfare and destiny guaranteed because they kept the law. The religious law makers especially loved the law, enjoyed setting boundaries and finding way to observe it scrupulously. This keeping of the law was their guarantee of avoiding judgment. What they did not consider was that perhaps the law had become more imprtant to them than God. It was not so much God they worshipped as the law he had given them. By keeping God's law they felt, though they would never have said it, that they had some way of controlling God the judge of all the earth. Now God was bursting out at them in the person of Jesus who claimed that he had been given the right to judge them. Blasphemy they could despise, but judgment was personal. All the structure of their life, all their security was based on keeping the religious law. Now Jesus is undermining that security, with these words, "The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life."

It could have been reassuring, Jesus was saying that anyone who believed God, through the words of Jesus, would never be judged at all, and would exchange religious law for spiritual life.

Why wasn't it? Why was it that people whose lives were dedicated to avoiding judgment did not eagerly accept the chance to avoid judgment?

Because (This is my personal opinion) if you can deal with judgment by keeping moral law then the judgment passed upon you by God is under your control. Work harder to keep the law, accumulate more and greater acts of obedience and you will be safe from God and his judgment. Or believe that Jesus is indeed the manifestation of God, put your confidence in his words and you have given control of your judgment to someone else. Which would you choose?

Was the man who had been the cause of this discussion listening to it? The man who had laid beside healing waters for thirty-eight years without anyone to help him get into the water when it bubbled. Did he think to himself that the law had been powerless to make him well, but the command of Jesus had healed him? Perhaps not, perhaps he was already out in the street planning the many ways he would enjoy his new health.

"Narrow," said Jesus on another occasion, "is the way that leads to life, and few people find it."

Conversation is recorded in The gospel of John: chapter five, verses 15 to 24
Narrow way is recorded in gospel of Matthew: chapter seven, verses 13 and 14