Damascus Road Church

The last sermon we preached at Damascus Road Church focused on the woman caught in adultery.  This story in John 7.53-8.11 projects one of the most vivid pictures of the gospel in all of the New Testament.  In it, Jesus shows mercy and grace to a woman who, according to the law, deserves to die. In a way that only Jesus can seem to do, he offers forgiveness without approving of her sin.  He gives grace accompanied with a command for genuine repentance.

When Jesus says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her,” we see all the hypocritical and prideful men who wanted to see her punished, walk away.  Even though they were legally “right”, their consciences served well to convict them of their prideful motivations devoid of grace.  We usually overlook the fact that there was one person there who could throw a stone at her, the one against whom she had in fact actually sinned—God incarnate.

But Jesus does not throw a stone; he tells her that he won’t condemn her.  Jesus decides not to judge according to the letter of the law (or at all), rather, the spirit of the law.  Even though God has the legal, positional, natural, judicial, moral, ethical, and personal right as the Creator we rebelled against to end us, he does the very opposite.  But it’s not that God has in fact chosen the judge ONLY according to the Spirit of the Law and ignore the letter of the Law.  From our perspective, he judges us with the Law of Spirit, but the death of Jesus on the cross proves that he in fact still judges according to the letter of the Law.