I preached on this text once before 28 years ago in my first parish as a bright shiny new preacher in North Dakota, and also as an expectant father.  I recently read those sermon notes and was amazed at how much has happened since then.  I had some lofty dreams and hopes back then, and most have been fulfilled.  But like yours, my life has taken a few unexpected turns in the road.  Like you, I have experienced first hand the miracle of forgiveness.

          When I first began my ministry I had no real vision of where it would take me, except that I wanted to be a pastor and share God's love.  And I was pretty naive about my humanity and my limitations.  Over the years, mistakes have made confession more necessary and absolution more wonderful than ever.  And over the years I have discovered the wonder of God's love towards all His precious children.

          Next to life itself, forgiveness is the most precious gift God has ever given.  This divine act of cleansing the unclean, of making righteous the unrighteous, is a truly a miracle.  It's not only that you and I can forgive each other.  That can certainly be miraculous, especially since people have such different personalities.

          But the truly miraculous is that God can forgive anyone our foolish acts, our sins, and our rebellion.  God is perfect and holy.  He gives life and He takes life away - blessed be His name!  But the way we all act should lead Him to drown us all in a new flood and start all over again.  But His rainbow is His promise never to do that again.

          We all dream of what we want to do and to be, and oh, how often we fail along the way!  The young man dreams of strength and finds weakness, and the young woman dreams of love and finds disappointment.  The young married couple dreams of never-ending love and then find they have feet of clay.  The older couple dreams of retirement, and then find failing health.

          I wonder about the woman in this text, caught in the act of adultery.  Surely she had not planned to be an adulterer, and certainly she had not planned to be caught.  But she did wrong and she was caught, and the mob would have stoned her to death had not Jesus intervened.  Her dreams of life were altered forever by Jesus.

          We still treat adultery more harshly than other sins.  Though today movies, music and even McCalls magazine display all kinds of sexual things, still today we view such things more sternly.  In the church it's still easy to look at the divorcé through a jaundiced eye.  We may not stone people, but we isolate them.  We may not cast them in prison, but we can treat them as invisible people.  We believe God can forgive the adulterer, but we don't try very hard to do it ourselves.

          We really don't know how to treat those who are divorced in the church.  Perhaps this is because those who are not divorced fear it may be catching.  In my years of working with divorced people, they often say family and friends treat them very differently afterwards.  Some say they're treated like they have leprosy.  Others feel they are lepers.  It's hard to forgive oneself when a marriage breaks apart.

          The townspeople who caught the woman had an open and shut case against her.  She deserved no mercy and yet Christ showed it.  She should have lost her life, but Jesus gave her life back.  His words are miraculous:  "Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and leave your life of sin."  God didn't condemn an adulterer?  Of course He condemned what she did.  Sin is sin.  It separates us from God and from people.  It condemns us before our holy God.  Then why didn't Jesus condemn her?  He didn't condone her adultery, but shouldn't He have been harder on her?  If we had been there, we probably would have.  In fact, I'm sure we would have.

          John 8:1-11 is not included in all Bible manuscripts.  Some believe it was added later.  I think it was there first.  I believe John wrote it in his first edition, but later scribes left it out, considering it unbelievable that the Son of God could ever forgive an adulterer.  Sometimes scribes edited the manuscript to make it agree with their beliefs, adding or deleting a word.  But this passage is so genuinely Christ-like that the church through the centuries has never doubted Jesus did this.

          Such amazing words of Jesus:  "Then neither do I condemn you.  Go and leave your life of sin."  Some in the church of today have forgotten the last part.  They have stopped condemning any and all sin because the world wants them to.  I even heard a Lutheran pastor say he is working on a service to bless homosexual unions.  When I asked why, he said he didn't believe Christ condemned that sin any worse than others, so why not bless their union?  That man has given in to the world.  Many people today would rather hear Jesus say, "Go, and do your own thing."  But He said, "Go, and leave your life of sin."  It was the miracle of forgiveness.

          What is forgiveness?  Biblically it means to cancel a debt or sin, or to blot out a wrong, from memory and even from consequence.  In forgiveness God puts an end to the unhappy situation created by our sin.  He bridges the gap, and heals the broken relationship.  He is the bridge over troubled waters.  In our relationships, forgiveness is giving up all claim to hurt back.  Forgiveness is surrendering one's right of retribution.  We may feel we have the right of an "eye for an eye", but forgiveness gives up that right.  It lets go and lets God deal with it, in His way, the right way.

          However we may define it, forgiveness can never be taken lightly.  It's crucial for healing to take place.  After Columbine, already ten months ago, one parent forgave his child's killers and another refused.  The one who forgave did so because he said Christ would have done so, and the other refused because he believed unless the sinner repents, he should never be forgiven.  Both claimed their rights from the Bible.  What do you suppose Jesus would have done?

          When pastoring in California I heard of a child being molested, and the parents publicly forgave the man who did it.  Interviewed by a reporter, they said they were angry at him, but did not wish his death.  They would leave that to God.  The reporter said she didn't know if this was an act of weakness or strength.  What do you think?  I believe forgiveness is an act of strength, not weakness.  It takes great strength to lay aside one's anger and to let God handle it.

          Forgiveness is a decision.  It's the firm resolve not to hurt back.  Because we are forgiven, we are enabled to live in peace, not bitterness.  The one who holds a grudge does not want peace, but retaliation.  Yet retaliation brings more bitterness.

          St. Paul in Romans 12:19 tells us, "Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written:  'It is mine to avenge;  I will repay,' says the Lord."  He continues, "'If your enemy is hungry, feed him;  if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.  In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.'  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."  How difficult to do, and yet how necessary!

          You and I must forgive because we've been forgiven.  The whole Bible is devoted to God's forgiveness.  We all have sinned and fall short of God's glory.  We all deserve only to be banished from God's presence forever.  But God in His mercy sent His only Son Jesus to suffer and die on our behalf.  When He said, "It is finished," it was.  And we should let it be finished.  God has forgiven sin, and so must we.

          In the movie, "The Unforgiven," a bad guy is shot, and the young man tells the aged gunfighter, "He had it coming!"  The old man turns to him and says, "Son, we all have it coming."  For once Hollywood got it right.  We all have it coming, but by faith in Christ Jesus we won't get it.  He has forgiven us and now we're set free to forgive, to share the miracle of forgiveness.  Praise God!  We're not condemned.  So let's go and do likewise.  Amen.

Copyright © 2000 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.