Are You Gonna Throw That Rock?

     "Did you hear what she did?"  "I can't believe he said that!"  Sound familiar?  Just why is it that we are always so shocked about what others do and say but don't consider our own actions anything but normal and honorable?  Is the person we see in the mirror really better than everyone else?
     John 8 offers an amazing lesson about judging others.  A woman was brought to Jesus after she was caught in the very act of adultery.  According to the law of Moses, those caught in adultery were to be stoned.  Seriously.  Hit with rocks until they died.  No trial.  No defense attorney.  That's how serious the sin of adultery was considered. 
     So there she was.  In front of Jesus.  Surely she thought He would be picking up a rock.  But He didn't.  Instead he challenged her accusers.  "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."  Wow.  Not only was He not throwing rocks at her, nobody else was either!  Was she getting by with her sin?  Not exactly.  And neither do we.
     But let's look for a moment at another aspect of this story.  Recently I had one of those ah-ha moments when thinking about what Jesus said that day.  "He who is without sin......."  He didn't say "he who hasn't committed adultery".  He said "He who is without sin."  Oh my......  That means if someone had lied, if someone had stolen something, if someone cheated, if someone gossiped, coveted, and so on and so on and so on.  Jesus' challenge to them was that if anyone had not sinned at all, in any way, not just adultery, in any way, that person was to throw the first stone.  Well, that leaves me out, how about you?  So right there, Jesus put all sin on the same level.
     I had never thought about it just like this before.  For some reason I always considered this more of a defeat for the accusers.  More of a lost argument than anything else.  Can't you just see them walking away, tails tucked between their legs, kicking the dirt and mumbling?  And some of them probably did just that.  But there was a much bigger lesson here.
     The Law had been given to Moses.  The Law had specific punishments for specific sins.  When Jesus came, things changed.  Jesus' blood covered all sin.  Jesus' blood still covers all sin!  There is no sin too great.  There is no person too bad.  Ah.....but there is also no person too good.  Ever been the one to say "did you see" or "did you hear"?  Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  Three chapters later, Romans 6:23 tells us that "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."  In fact the whole chapter instructs us not to continue in sin.  Like Jesus told the woman brought to him, "go and sin no more".  We have a new life!  We are a new creation!
     What did she do?  What did he say?  What did I do?  What did I say?  Doesn't matter to Jesus as long as we come to Him.  His blood, His precious blood, covered it all.  Do you know Him?  Would you like to?  You haven't committed a sin that He can't forgive if you ask Him.