“That is why I said you will die in your sins, for unless you believe that I AM who I claim to be, you will die in your sins”. – John 8:24

“Why can’t you understand what I am saying? It’s because you can’t even hear me! For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does.” – John 8:43-44

Some of the hardest (and most harsh) teachings in the Gospel come in these few chapters in John. When it says, ‘many of his disciples left him’ I wonder whether I might have been one of them had I been there. What does it all mean?

Over the past few weeks, while walking the streets of our Sydney village, we have come across many atheists, and a lot of people who seem completely uninterested in the Gospel. As a group, we have not come across a period like this before, when so many people reject any offer of prayer or discussion. Is it a sign of the times? It’s a difficult thing. Many sitting in churches today would lament what they see as a casting off of our ‘Christian’ heritage, as society embraces almost every ideology and ‘ism’ that comes to hand. Certainly there is some truth in that but there is more to it. Much more I feel.

Firstly, the church is to blame for much of that anyway, for we have often been the early adopters of worldviews, and failed to do what Jesus has asked us to do. We have followed our traditions more than the leadings of His Spirit and it has led us, and those of the world, nowhere.

But it is still much more. These passages are about God’s answer to the problems of the world, and they are clear and uncluttered. Let us not forget them. At the centre of it all, God has pronounced judgement on the world, and told all of us that we sin. Further, he tells us that sin is a double edged sword – we sin and it makes us guilty before him, and we sin and it makes us sick. Our sickness makes us blind. This is not about labels of whether we are ‘Christian’ or not for some of the worst sins are committed behind the closed closets of the church, this is about how we live before God. I don’t recall Jesus ever talking about ‘decent people.’

In our own experience, time and time again in fact, we meet people who have toyed and played with sin, until eventually it masters them completely (sound familiar? – read Genesis 4:7). The atheists we meet are those who have begun to allow sin to master their lives, often at a very early age. It is tragic mostly because they are blind to what is really happening.

In our gathering this week, somebody gave an incredible testimony about this very fact. How a lifestyle of adopting one sin in their lives, very quickly led to a spiraling down into death and destruction, with a contemplation of suicide because of the total entrapment of sin. All this in their early 20’s. Those around the table who listened were silent as that person gave testimony to how deadly sin really is.

Do you understand that, do I understand that? This is what Jesus tells us here, but we don’t want to hear.

However, there is a second part to God’s pronouncement and it is the most important part. This is the part that says the Son, the glorious Son came to reverse all of the dominion of sin and to set us free. I hear much talk in modern evangelism on ‘our faith, our repentance’ and I think the emphasis is incorrect. We are dead in our sin, helpless and hopeless and only the Son can set us free. We are like bricks or rocks, so how can we make ourselves anything, no, we need outside help.

Never was that more illustrated than in our person’s testimony, and the testimony we see out on the streets. It is the testimony of how God breaks into our lives, and begins to make us alive. Through the Spirit of his Son, he alone causes us to turn and see him, such that we are alive enough to offer him a response.

Our repentance, our faith is all entirely dependent on the Son and we need to allow this truth to go down to the depths of our being. Let us all stop talking of our response, for though it is important there would be no response without God’s first response to our devastating problem. He will never allow his Son to be overshadowed by your response or my response, delighted though he is when we do respond. It is firstly about the Son. Each of us is called.

Lastly, think on this; as devastating as sin is, it’s devastation is powerless against the waves of Grace found in our Lord Jesus Christ. He is so much more. In his death, God took all that we deserved and put it on him, which you would think, would be the end of the matter. But that is not the end, just the beginning. Not only did the Son get what we deserved, but the Father then allows us to share in the inheritance of the Son. We get all that he has a total reversal of fortunes.

Let us take him into the world and proclaim him from the very rooftops. Not how we have responded, but what he has done that has caused us to respond. Just give me this Jesus.

 

“You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, anyone who sins is a slave of sin” – John 8:31-33

The context of this passage, is Jesus talking of his complete unity with his Father. It was difficult for those listening to follow along, as they didn’t yet seen him as the Son of God.

I am convinced, more than anything, that the problems of our world are only moral ones. There are no others. We are, as Jesus so rightly says here, slaves to sin, confused and lost. At the moment, in our disciple making, we are working alongside half a dozen people who are, even by normal standards, messed up. At the bottom of it is the problem of sin. Sin has made them slaves, and extreme sin has put them in almost total bondage. Jesus compares sinfulness with slavery, and truth with freedom. What does that mean though?

At the heart of sin, is our total disregard for God. It is the very opposite of what Jesus speaks of here. We become the centre of our universe, not him, and in doing so we live for ourselves. Very quickly, things spiral out of control, and we find ourselves slaves to sin. Try telling a drug addict to simply ‘stop sinning’ and they will look at you in a hopeless haze. Are you serious, I cannot, I am a slave.

What is the antidote? Ultimately, unity with the Father through Christ.

Every year, I read again “The Ragamuffin Gospel” by Brennan Manning. Manning was an alcoholic Catholic priest who married. Not exactly the model priest, and as a result he suffered acute depression. In ‘Ragamuffin,’ Manning brazenly presents a one-sided Gospel that only deals with the ridiculous love of God. There is no other side to his story, and that is intentional. It is a refreshing book, because after reading it, my focus is again on the outrageous love of God that came alive through Jesus Christ. It reminds me that I am not good enough, and I will never be good enough but he still loves me.

Why is that so important, we may ask? Because, at the core of the Gospel message is God’s love for all humanity, and it is a story that needs to be told. We must be careful when presenting the Gospel that God’s love – not our sin, or even our response to sin, is at the centre of our story. “For God so loved the world…” we are told before any mention of what we have done.

In my experience, most people are totally unaware that there could possibly be a God that loves them, while the church has been telling them for centuries to stop doing whatever it is they are doing. That’s not to say that we need to present a soft Gospel, that doesn’t demand a response on our behalf. God’s love is available to everyone, and how we respond to it has eternal consequences.

Jesus tells us here though, that if we remain faithful to his teachings, we will be set free. Yet his teachings – in fact his entire life, were centred around the love of the Father. Many of his parables were about God seeking and searching for the lost to bring them home (it’s worth noting that the only harsh parables seemed to be reserved for the religious elite of his day, warning them of impending disaster). His whole life was a life lived out in the assurance of his Father’s total love, which he then showered on those around him. You and me.

In a recent post I mentioned Luther’s first treatise in his 95 theses, that “all of life is repentance.” This says to me that everyday, I need to come to the Father in humble submission and acknowledge my wandering off on my own, acknowledging that due to my own misgivings, we have become separated. As I do this, I begin to see his great love for me, and it is the love, this final admission that he loves me and wants me as part of his family, that begins to change me. My response is to God, rather than what I have done, or even what I can do.

His love for me will not be sentimental, in fact at times it may appear quite austere, but nonetheless it is unchanging. He points me to the cross of his Son as the ultimate example of just what such a love means. Sin, our separation is very serious.

But, in our explanation of the Gospel message to others, I am becoming more persuaded that it is this ultimate love of God that will begin the first change in a person. Along the way, we will need no doubt to point out the need for them to ‘turn from their sin’ in repentance. But for some, the response to that is likely to simply be too difficult. ‘I’ve been like this all my life, how do I change?’

The answer is as Jesus suggests here, unity with the Father through him. Turn our gaze from ourselves and our problems to him, and watch him begin to do the impossible in our lives. He will change us. Some of that change may happen instantly, for others it may take longer.

But, our job as disciple makers is to keep these new-born’s, indeed even the mature among us, reminded of our need to get in close to God, to discover his love in our lives, his desire to change us, his willingness to work with us and draw us to him, because of what his Son has done.

We are all slaves to sin, but the antidote is not so much what we do about it, as what he has done about it. This is the story we must tell.

Shall we get started?

Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say? – John 8:4

Many of us, at some point in our lives, wake up and wonder how we arrived at where we are? Shaking our heads in disbelief, we ask ourselves, how did I get to this point? The addictions, the anger, the poverty, the broken relationships that will not heal. The list can be a long one, and few of us are excepted. What went wrong?

It must have been so for this woman here. Adulterous women were stripped naked to the waist and paraded in front of a jeering crowd, before being executed by stoning. As she faced almost certain death, she must have asked the question, how did it all come to this?

We meet many, many people in our day to day who are asking that question almost every day of their lives as they struggle with the gargantuan problems facing them. The answer is not always easy. For the woman here, without doubt the Pharisees will have laid a trap. They knew who she was, she was little more than bait for the bigger prize, hooking Jesus into saying something he didn’t mean to say. It says exactly that a few verses later. As I read this story, I have often wondered how they knew about her, and always come to the same conclusion that she must have been a mistress to one or some of the religious leaders of the day. How, she must have wondered, did I end up in a loveless relationship, as human fodder?

The story has such depth, it is difficult to know exactly what to write about, but there are a few obvious things, especially if you read this and are asking that question. The first is this, and it is the most important, that God is the God of the second chance. He may not provide a detail analysis of your situation, for to him the answer is simple, and Jesus refers to it time and time again. We sin. Far more importantly though, God does not leave us there.

The man Jesus, who masterfully rescues the woman here from her accusers, offers her a second chance. There is no condemnation, she can start afresh. He, this majestic person both divine and man, offers that to every single one of us. A second chance with God.

Sin is a double edged sword you see, on the one hand we are guilty before God, and there is no escaping the punishment that is due to us, on the other sin makes us so sick that we cannot escape. Jesus tells us that if we sin, we are a slave to sin, it is a slavery far worse than any we can imagine. The very sin we abused, turns and abuses us back mercilessly. An encounter with Jesus though, changes all of that.

So often in the Gospels, whether it be when we are healed or escape with our lives, Jesus tells us to stop sinning. For all of us, this is impossible, but with God we can begin again and he gives us the power to change. You get the distinct impression that whenever Jesus tells us to ‘sin no more’ he doesn’t leave us to our own devices, but provides us with the power to choose. Today, through his Spirit we are first convicted, and then given the power to live a life worthy of his calling.

So, God then, provides all of us with a second chance. For those – most of us, even all of us, who wake up one day and ask, ‘how did it all come to this’ we don’t need to even find an answer. God says to each of us, let’s make a fresh start. The double edged sword of sin, that makes us both guilty and sick, is replaced by the refreshing grace of God.

This week I was reminded that our lives of eternity start the moment we commit to living for him, every single day is a day in eternity with Christ. We may not see him, but he has us forever. This can only happen as God takes away our sin, ‘as far as the East is from the West’. God took it, and put it on his Son.

There is more than that as well, the sin that enslaves us no longer needs to make us sick. The healing process can begin, our enslavement can end. Sometimes that is immediate, other times it can be a lifelong journey. Neither should we be dismayed at the prospect of a lifelong journey, that is where we can go deep with God, to really get to know him and his refreshing grace that alone enables us to start again. In my own experience, my darkest times have been where I know him like no other, and as I look back I would not trade those times for all of the good times in my life, where he is merely a passenger.

There is a subtle warning in here as well though, isn’t there? While God is the God of the second chance he may not be the God of the third. Go, sin no more Jesus tells us, repent while there is still time. When he calls us, let us hear him and respond.

How dreadful it will be if we hear the call, and fail to respond. We must warn others it is what he tells us to do. There is a second chance for all of us, but we must take it while it is on offer.