Neither Do I Condemn You
I’ll be preaching this Sunday, week 17 of our current sermon series through the Gospel According to John. Specifically, I’ll be preaching from John 7:53–8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery.__
As I was doing some reading for this weekend I ran across this passionate quote by Bruce Milne[1]:
It is surely a remarkable fact that he who is the embodiment of divine holiness, the ‘I AM’ who met the people of God at Sinai in fire and thunder (Ex. 19:16ff.), should say to a self-confessed sinner with the guilt of the broken commandment heavy on her conscience, neither do I condemn you. Here is the miracle of the grace of God. There is no greater wonder than this. The turning of water into wine, the healing of a dying lad by a word, the feeding of five thousand and more with a snack lunch, the walking on a storm-tossed sea; none of these, nor all of them together, compares with this, that Jesus said neither do I condemn you. In this sentence, and in the heart of mercy which lay behind it, is all our hope and all our salvation for ever.
The miracle of the grace of God indeed!
- Bruce Milne, The Message of John (The Bible Speaks Today; ed. John R. W. Stott; Accordance electronic ed. Downers Grove.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 123–127. ↩