Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
Many people who heard
Jesus' words followed Him. As more and more people followed Jesus, the Jewish
religious leaders, the chief priests and the Pharisees, sent people into a riot
to arrest Jesus, but in the end they could not catch Jesus. And the crowds who
were present, the chief priests and Pharisees, and their servants all went
home. And finally, Jesus also went to the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives
is the place where Jesus went to pray on the Mount of Olives with his disciples
before he was arrested. Jesus stayed on the Mount of Olives and went back to
the temple the next day to teach. However, while Jesus was teaching the people
in the temple, the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman caught on the spot
while committing fornication and came before Jesus. And they demanded Jesus'
judgment of this woman.“Moses said to
cast stones in the law, but what would Jesus say?”
The purpose of the
scribes and Pharisees who came to this question was not to really seek an
answer to the question of fornication of a woman, but to provoke Jesus' answer.
If Jesus had compassion on the captured woman and told them to let her go, they
would accuse him of not obeying the law, saying that he is the Son of God. On
the other hand, if Jesus told them to stone the woman according to her law,
then because Jesus was Israel under the rule of the Roman Empire at the time,
it would be against the Roman law which forbade any nation from condemning
themselves to death. This was also an answer that provided an excuse for Jesus
to be attacked.
The Pharisees and the
scribes came to Jesus by preparing a trap to make Jesus in trouble no matter
what answer he gave. But in this difficult situation, Jesus falls down and
writes something on the ground. As they continued to urge Jesus to answer,
Jesus got up and said to them, " He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
stone at her.." The Jewish leaders saw
this woman caught in fornication as a good bait for Jesus, and as an impure
woman who had sinned.
However, when Jesus
said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
stone at her.” He made the people who were there to look at
themselves. After a while, the people present, from adults to young people,
left one by one. When they saw her sin, they thought she should be stoned to
death as the law says, but when they heard Jesus' words and saw their sins, no
one dared to justify them for their sins. People were forced to leave the
place.
Many people who were there left, and Jesus and the two were left alone.
To the woman, Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” Jesus forgave her
sin to her immoral woman, whom the people of her world accused her of
committing her sins against.
She is an immoral
woman and she is the one caught at the crime scene. However, in the words of
her Jesus in 『He that is without sin among you, let him first cast
a stone at her.』, all her people left her place. They
had not yet been caught at the crime scene, but they too were sinners not much
different from the fornicators. Likewise, all humans in this world are judging
the sins of others, but all are sinners before God.
Humans are like prodigals who forsook the perfect love of God and left
the side of their father. Just as the prodigal son forsakes his father who
gives everything to him when he asks for property, humans who receive God's
perfect love have forsaken God. This is the appearance of the prodigal son and
shows the fallen nature of man. Before realizing this depravity, man cannot see
the love of God. This depravity is based on the sinful nature of greed to
become like God. So, to become like the prodigal son who died and returned to
his father is repentance. It is difficult to think that if a person who has left
his father unconditionally returns, his father will accept everything. God
tells us to repent and return as the dead.
The cross of Jesus is the way back to God. Unless you go through the
cross of Jesus, you cannot find the way to God.If you just look at the cross of
Jesus and think, “He atoned for my sins and saved me,” you will not reach
perfect faith. You don't just look at the cross, you have to go into it. It is
to take up your cross.
Even those who do not
carry their cross can say “Lord, Lord” with their mouths
and cast out demons and prophesy with their power. But unless Jesus is Lord, he
cannot be saved. For Jesus to become Lord, he must take up his cross through
the repentance of his denial. The Gospel of Matthew warns the unrepentant that
on that day Jesus will say, “I did not know you.” So, the Bible speaks
of repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ as the conditions for
salvation. Many churches today obscure the nature of repentance. They only want
to be forgiven of their sins. They think it's repentance. Sin cannot be
forgiven unless the cause of it is removed. The cause of sin is the idol of
greed of the old man. This is not something to be forgiven for, but something
to die for. The one who repents daily confirms that he is dead.
The church in
Laodicea became a lukewarm church that people liked. A lukewarm church is a
church where there is no burden. It will become a church that has no words to
pierce the conscience, confesses sins appropriately and makes you think that
your sins are forgiven. If you love the Lord, the world will hate you. Because
those who speak the truth but do not accept the truth will hate you. The truth
is Jesus Christ who died on the cross. If the church is not separated from the
world and resembles the world, it becomes the church of Laodicea. If there is
no word of repentance and only a philosophical story about how to live in the world,
the church becomes a place no different from the world. You can only repent
when you first wake up from the world. If you compromise with the world, you
cannot repent. If we do not repent, we become those who do not have the love of
God in them.
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