On Tuesday night at youth group I spoke about the woman caught in adultery from John 8. This is a great story, one that I’ve read before and taught before. This time around, though, I was blown away by Jesus’ final words to the woman as she walks away.
Jesus straightened up and asked her, "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."
When I’ve read this passage before, I have been moved by many different aspects. I often thought about Jesus’ compassion, I’ve seen myself as the Pharisees, I have pondered my own sins and I have tried to figure out what exactly Jesus was writing in the dirt. But, as I was studying the passage this week, I was moved by Jesus’ belief that the woman could change.
We don’t really know what happens to this woman; there are some Christian traditions that have her following James to Spain and living out her life there. After Jesus tells her to leave her life of sin, we don’t really know if she ever did. But really, that isn’t the important part of the story. The part that is important for us is that Jesus believed the woman could change; he believed that she could leave her life of sin behind and start a new life. And Jesus believes the same thing about us.
Jesus believes that we can change, that we can leave our old lives behind and begin living the eternal life he died to give us. Sometimes it seems that we may never change, that we’ll continue stumbling around in the darkness, holding onto the same pet sins we always have. That isn’t the life we were intended for; we were intended for something so much more and Jesus believes we can live that way. Jesus believes we can change. Jesus doesn’t condemn us for our sins or our past, but he asks us to change and move beyond them.
Obviously, we don’t change on our own; we’re empowered by the Holy Spirit to grow and change within the context of authentic relationships with other people. It is impossible for us to change ourselves, but we do what we can, and then let God handle the impossible. So we just trust that Jesus really believes that we can change, take encouragement in that and then set out to change our patterns, relying on God for strength and others for support. Because even if we sometimes have trouble believing that we can change, Jesus doesn’t; he believes in us and that’s a good place to start.
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