Once again the Pharisees thought they had the perfect situation. They had a woman who had been caught in an adulterous act. Hebrew law said that she should be stoned, though divorce was the more common solution of the day. Still, if Jesus didn’t say, “Stone her,” they could show people that He was “soft” on God’s Law. But, and this is the beauty of it, if he DID say, “Stone her,” He was violating Roman law, and subject to Roman discipline. How could they lose? One thing leads to another, and here both choices were “poisoned”.
Jesus answer shocked them two-fold. First, He had once again sidestepped a very cunning trap. He made them look to be fools, or children who didn’t know anything about God or His authority. Second, and more powerfully, He forced them from external judgment to internal inspection. He made them look at themselves through God’s eyes, and showed them that they were lacking. One simple statement did all that. “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” This begs the question, what is sin?
I’ve told you before about Susanna Wesley’s definition of sin, but I believe it bears repeating here. Susanna was the mother of Charles and John Wesley. They once asked her, “What is sin?” Her reply was very insightful. She said, “Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things, in short, whatever increases the authority of your body over mind, that for you is sin." Sin is what distracts us from God. It is that which becomes so compelling to us, that we subordinate God to it.
To truly understand what sin is, we have to look at a few other points first In Genesis 1:26 we find two very important points. The verse says, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image…’”. The two points we have to ponder are 1) what does it mean to be in God’s image, and, 2) what does this text say about God.
The first point means we need to define who God is. 1st John 1:8 does that very plainly – God is love. This fits with the teaching of Jesus. Jesus didn’t command us to be humble, nor did he command us to be obedient. Jesus commanded us “to love one another.” Jesus taught us that the greatest commandment is “love the Lord your God with all you heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. And the second greatest [commandment] is just like this, love your neighbor as yourself.” So God is love.
The second point, I submit, is a reference to the Trinitarian concept of God. Though both the Hebrew scriptures and Jesus state that “God is One”, none-the-less, we are faced here with a plurality. God is an Us. God is One. God is a perfect relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three are One. So, a proper inference here is that God is relationship.
So if God is love, and Perfect Relationship, being created in His image, we humans are created as loving, relational creatures. In Genesis 2:18, we see God declaring that it is not good for man to be alone, so he creates woman, to allow for relationship. As long as Adam and Eve are in proper relationship, everything is good. Its when they break God’s trust that they sin. They sever their relationship with God by going behind His back, by breaking His rules, and by trying to cover it. Their sin is one of divisiveness, one of self-love and not communal love, one which fractures relationship. Sin is anything which further divides us from our Loving God.
Sin taints us. It makes our soul feel heavy and black. It’s like spiritual plaque. It starts off small, almost unnoticeable, but it builds and grows. You know, one thing leads to another. Eventually, it is a noticeable thing, something you can no longer ignore. And let me tell you this, there is no way to clean it by yourself. No amount of elbow grease will remove this stain.
There is only one solution, and it ain’t oxy-clean. If sin is spiritual plaque, then the Blood of Jesus is like spiritual Listerine. It gets the stain out, and keeps it out. Isaiah 1:18 says, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” So, getting with God first, or, another way of saying it, subordinating your fleshly desires, keeps you from sin. Getting your priorities straight and using your time to worship God in all you do, be it washing dishes, typing at a computer, or teaching children, this will lead you away from sin. Again, one thing leads to another. Jesus will wash you clean, if you let Him.
So how does sin get such a hold of us? Most of us wouldn’t imagine doing something outrageous, yet many of us find ourselves having done something beyond imagination. Like the Apostle Paul, we get confused, and trip over ourselves. He wrote in Romans 7:14-17, “We know that the Law is spiritual. But I am merely a human, and I have been sold as a slave to sin. In fact, I don’t understand why I act the way I do. I don’t do what I know is right. I do the things I hate. Although I don’t do what I know is right, I agree that the Law is good. So I am not the one doing these evil things. The sin that lives in me is what does them.”
Let’s look at an example of the “snowball effect” of sin. In 2 Samuel 11, King David, now very famous as a great leader, is sitting around his palace while his army is off to war. That is important, and we’ll address it more in a bit. Anyway, he’s sitting around looking out over the town when he sees a woman taking a bath on her roof.
Now, this was not out of the ordinary in those days. Most people’s roofs had little walls around them and thus couldn’t be looked at by other roofs, unless you were the king. Also, people tended to just walk in to your house to visit you, but, by unwritten rule, they never went up on the roof. Thus, if you wanted any privacy for your bath, you went up on the roof. What WAS out of the ordinary was the woman. Think of the best-looking women you can imagine – Rita Heyworth, Bo Derek, Morgan Fairchild, or Catherine Zeta-Jones. OK, she looked better than that.
It started out innocently enough. David asked people who she was. But, evidently, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. So he sent some men to bring her to the palace. She came, or rather, the Bible says David’s men “took her.” He must have talked a little bit, one thing led to another, and they had sex. One thing led to another. That’s what we always say, isn’t it.
Well, this one thing led to another again. Bathsheba got pregnant. She sent word to David, and he started a horrible chain of events. He had Uriah, the Hittite, her husband and one of David’s best soldiers, brought back from the front. He asked him a few questions for appearances, and then he sent Uriah home. Well, Uriah was such a good man, he didn’t think it was fair to go home to be with his wife when his men were fighting a war away from their wives, so he camped out by the palace gates. David tried again, even getting him drunk, but Uriah would not go to his wife.
So David sent him back with a note for the general, Joab. The note gave instructions to Joab to put Uriah in the toughest fight and then pull out everyone else, abandoning him to die. Uriah was slain in battle, and David went on to marry Bathsheba. 2 Samuel 11 ends with “but the thing that David had done was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
It started out as “wow, she’s pretty.” It ended up with, “I must find a way to get rid of her husband!” David would not have started at the last point. Neither would most of us. But “one thing led to another,” and he did “evil in the sight of the Lord.”
Sin only takes a moment, but the effects can last a lifetime. David had to deal with that sin for the rest of his days. I’m sure it weighed on him occasionally. But, the good news is that there IS a way out. There is an escape. Turn to God, and He will remove your sin, and set you right again.
Turn to God. A shorter way to say that is “repent.” An interesting word. According to Mark, it is the word Jesus used to start his ministry. “Repent and believe the gospel.” (Mark 1:15) We have to trust God, and His Son, Jesus.
When you push away from God, when you go into the shadow, and out of His light, when you stray from the warmth of His love, and let your heart become cold, you invite sin into your life. He got famous. David got prideful. One thing led to another. He stopped bothering with his kingly duty to lead the war. The entire Bathsheba incident would have been avoided if he had been doing his duty. Instead, he stopped honoring God and leading his people in God’s ways. David let pride make him complacent, and that is when he saw Bathsheba. Had he been where he ought to be, leading God’s people in battle, well, this one thing would not have led to Uriah’s death, or any of the other sins David committed.
Many of us have let ourselves get comfortable and complacent. THAT, is not a sin. However, when we get too accustomed to that comfort, when it becomes more important than doing God’s will, when it takes our focus off of Jesus, when we cease to let the Spirit move us, we cannot but sin! One thing leads to another.
When I was in 5th Grade, I was not the best student. Oh, I tested well, and so I felt I had proved that I knew the material, and thus didn’t need to do the homework, despite what Mrs. Jordan said. Well, I didn’t do a big project, in fact, I had successfully kept my parents from even knowing I had a big project due! That was the first step, the thing which led to the others.
You see, my parents didn’t know, so they couldn’t make me do it. It was brilliant, I thought. But, when the project wasn’t turned in, my teacher sent a note home, which she had the audacity to want signed and returned, telling my parents about my failure to do the project. Well, that note got destroyed VERY quickly. And, again, everything was good. Until [pause] the next morning when it was time to go to school. I couldn’t go, I didn’t have a signed note to give to Mrs. Jordan! I literally got sick with worry, which saved me [pause] temporarily.
Mrs. Jordan called my parents, “Is he ok? Did you get the note? The one I sent home yesterday?” I heard mom on the phone, and knew it was all over. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father that mad. I don’t think I ever tasted soap again after that! That was enough. I was in big trouble. One thing, one tiny little thing, had led to another, bigger, horribly tasting, hard to sit down, grounded for a month with no TV, no stereo, gotta stay in my room thing.
Yet sin is in our nature. Augustine argued that all our sin stems from hubris, or pride. We wanted to be like God, so we ate that little apple, and it led to who we are! Others say, and I am one, that sin stems from our breaking of relationship with God, eating the apple was like Judas’ kiss, like kissing your best friends date, it fractured trust. We had, in the immortal words of Soft Cell, “tainted love”.
Sin is in our nature. The more we do it, the more we want to do it. One thing ALWAYS leads to another. There is nothing YOU can do to stop it. Only God can stop it. Remember what Paul taught us, “All who call out to the Lord will be saved.” Jesus taught us this principle. John 15:5 has Him telling us, “ I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.” Nothing but sin. And sin leads to sin. One thing leads to another.
For us, to paraphrase a popular bumper sticker, “Sin happens”. We will drift from God, there is nothing we can do about it. We’re stupid like that. But, the comforting thought is, God can do something about it. Seek Him out, and one thing will lead to another. Paul tells us in Galatians 5:16-17, “Walk by the Spirit [that is, the Holy Spirit of God] and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh, [the sinful nature], for the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.”
When you continually seek relationship with Jesus, He will take you to the Father, and God will keep you pure. Seek to walk by the Spirit, and let this one thing lead to a better other. Amen.
