daily java

Daily Java: To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.  (Proverbs 21:3)

The old expression: going to church every Sunday and living like hell each week. Folks think that by going to church, by attendance and knowing songs, by showing up bathed and dressed and looking good, they are fine. But there is more to it than that.

In John 7-8, there is a passage that tells of the religious leaders bringing out a woman caught in the act of adultery. According to Old Testament law, she deserved to be stoned. The law said so. Any person versed in the law, the Bible at the time, would agree.

They brought her to Jesus, figuring that they could trap him in a contradiction. After all, Jesus preached love and peace. This woman had disobeyed the law and as such deserved the punishment. She had  not done this accidentally or anything like this. It was a willful disobedience of the law. It was her fault.

You can imagine the scene. The woman is brought before Jesus by a mob. More than likely, they didn’t even give her time to get dressed. So here is this terrified, naked young woman thrown to the ground in front of a mob of angry men. And here is Jesus.

They say, well? She was caught in the act of adultery. The law says she deserves to be stoned. What do you say?

Jesus looks at all of them and at the young woman. Yes, she is guilty. Yes, the law says she deserves to die. But then again, here is one of these people that Jesus came to touch in the first place.

They’re waiting for him to answer. If he says okay, guys, she is guilty, let’s start the stoning ball, they will accuse him of hypocrisy. Where is that “love” you mentioned. You are just like us. They will laugh at him because he chose the law over his big deal love.

If he says no, guys, let her go, they will accuse him of apostasy and heresy and disobedience of the law and he would be guilty as much as she.

So either way, Jesus was stuck. Either he was a legalist just like them, ready to stone, or he was a heretic, letting people get away with murder in spite of God’s Commands.

But Jesus took a third way. He was good at that. He knelt down and began doodling in the dirt. No one knows what he wrote, and tons of people have tried to guess. I think he was just wasting time while they stood there in “righteous” indignation (and probably ogling the helpless girl).

He looks up and says, oh, by the way, the one who is perfect can start the stoning, then looks back down at the dirt and his artwork.

When he looks back up, there is no one but himself and the woman. He asks, where are your accusers. The woman, no doubt wide-eyed with amazement – after all, a few minutes ago, this naked young woman was going to be stoned by a bunch of slobbering men – says no one, Lord. Lord was the term for anyone you were lesser than at the time. She may not have known he was the Son of God, but she knew, for sure, dude, he had saved her life.

Jesus says, neither will I condemn you. Go and quit sinning. You can imagine, knowing Jesus, that he put his coat around her, gave her a hug, and sent her on her way.

By the way, there was a guy involved that day with that woman, but no one mentioned him. I’ll bet he ran like a scalded dog.

The sacrifice in this case was the stoning of an openly adulterous woman. The doing what is right and just was the mercy Jesus showed to a sinner caught in sin.

The adultery was wrong and Jesus never says otherwise. But at that point, he wanted the woman to live to know him and to accept the grace of God that he brought.

Doing what you need to do is a fat lot better than coming to church. Yes, the coming to church is important and you need to do it. In fact, you cannot be the Christian you need to be if you don’t. But that is not all there is to life.

Life in Jesus means that you love others and not only preach what is wrong, but also live what is right. That is more acceptable to the Lord.


PS  That verse in John (7:53-8:11) is not in some old manuscripts. I believe that is so because some of the early church could not reconcile Jesus’ mercy with God’s commands. So they tried to take it out. But the problem was, it kept coming back in. The reason? God wanted it there. If God is powerful enough to speak light in existence with a word he can also guide his written word to contain what he wants no matter what other people think. It certainly fits what Jesus would do.