[Discoveries] 09-05-08 Big Idea #5 -- John 8:10-11

[Inspiration in Your Inbox]

"/*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 8:10-11*/

Big Idea #5. Find the pain... and you will find the door.

The more I meditate on this passage, the more wisdom I see in the 
approach Jesus used. As the story opens, a woman caught in the act of 
adultery, is thrown down before Jesus to see if Jesus will take a hard 
line on sin and insist that she be stoned according to the law of Moses.

She had been exposed. She had nothing to cover herself with except guilt 
and shame.

The opponents of Jesus thought this would be an ingenious way to trap 
Jesus, but God uses all the enemy's traps as opportunities for His glory.

There in her place of shame, Jesus had exactly what He needed to 
transform her life. Why do people end up in extramarital affairs? 
Contrary to all the hype about marriage and sex and romance, people are 
unfaithful because they are searching for solutions to their own 
neediness, their own internal pain.

Jesus was right there, dealing with the root cause -- internal pain and 
shame.

This, by the way, is the reason so many approaches to curing moral 
impurity don't work. They don't work because they magnify shame instead 
of correctly removing it. They leave the root cause intact.

But, with one sweep, Jesus takes out lifelong shame. "Neither do I 
condemn you." Jesus doesn't condone her sin -- he calls it what it is -- 
but He demonstrates to her in her place of exposed pain that His pardon 
is greater than all her sin. She is free. The shame is gone. The Master 
does not condemn her -- the pain is gone. She is free to leave her life 
of sin because nothing now is holding her to it.

The places we protect the most are the places where we need Jesus the 
most. If we don't let the Physician treat the wound, we cannot get 
better. The deeper the pain, the more powerful will be the 
transformation that Jesus brings.

Be encouraged!
Dwight

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