Crucis: No Condemnation
God is All Mercy
John 3:14-21
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. March 10th, 2024
There is an account in John chapter 8 that is likely bracketed in your Bibles. In it Jesus is in the Temple teaching when the scribes and pharisees bring a woman to him they caught in the act of adultery. “Now in the law,” they say, “Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?” They said this in order to test him, as so many of their questions were meant to do. At first, Jesus says nothing. He simply doodles in the ground. But when they continue to ask him he looks up and says, simply, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone at her.” And he looks back down, goes back to doodling.
Imagine how excruciating that must have been for the woman! She is caught in the very act of adultery, at least if we are to believe the scribes and pharisees who captured her, and instead of going through the proper proceedings has been dragged into the temple to be used as a “gotcha” in some barely understandable religious feud. As she sits before her judge, this itinerant rabbi who seems more interested in drawing than judging, he ignores her. Until finally, after incessant questioning, he seemingly gives permission to stone her! “Let he who is without sin,” he says, “cast the first stone.” She is surrounded by scribes and pharisees, surely at least one of them is righteous enough to execute her.
But instead there is a very long pause as the crowd begins to disperse. Before long she is alone, in the Temple, with Jesus. He looks up to her and asks, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you.”
“No one, Lord.” She says, with an astonished heart and simple faith.
“Neither do I condemn you,” Jesus says, “Go and sin no more.”
Jesus is the sinless one. Jesus is the judge. He is the one who holds in his hands the power of death and life. And the pharisees, whether they knew it or not, were right to bring this woman before this judge. But he is not interested in condemnation. The sinless one does not lift up a stone. “Neither do I condemn you.” He says, “Go and sin no more.”
This morning Jesus talks about his own cross. He compares his crucifixion to the snake that Moses raised up in the wilderness. When the people complained venomous serpents were sent to bite them. When the people returned to the Lord Moses was instructed to raise a bronze serpent, and when the people looked upon that serpent they were healed. So too, we are to understand, Jesus is lifted up that if we look at him we may be healed. We may be bit by sin, but if we look up to the image of sin in the sinless Christ we may know healing.
He goes on to say, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The cross is not the image of condemnation. It is the image of salvation. Jesus did not come to condemn. Jesus came to save. This is what the woman caught in adultery comes to understand. Jesus has no interest in condemnation. Only her deliverance from her sin. The scribes and pharisees were eager to condemn. But lacked the authority. When they walked away they condemned themselves, acknowledging their own sin.
The Cross should stand as a reminder of God’s love for us. God does not wish to condemn. God desires that all should be saved. That is why God sent his son Jesus. That the world would be saved through him. The cross stands as a sign of that love, the extent of that love, that God so loved the world that he would give his son. His only son. That whoever might believe in his name would receive everlasting life. Such is the Father’s love, and in the Son there is no condemnation.
If we want to know what God is like, there is God without reserve on the Cross giving himself up for you. There is no other God behind that God who looks upon us sternly in judgment, finding the technicalities by which to condemn us. There is only the God who would go so far as to die for his creation. Who bends over backwards to bring us to himself. Who would make the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike such is his love for all he has made.
The Cross tells us how bad sin is, yes, but only after telling us first of his love. Look at how much he loves us, the extent he had to go, look at the sin that is now being washed away. How bad it was. And yet he would heal us regardless. By his stripes we are healed. It is his love that beckons us to repent, not our fear. It is because of what he has done that we follow him. It is because Christ died that we have hope. It is because he lives that we know we shall live.