I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 8-9.

    When Jesus spoke to the woman caught in adultery, He told her to go and sin no more. Many people note that He refused to condemn her, and that He got those who had accused her to back down. That is true and important, but they often fail to note that in doing so He did not accept her sin. He did not tell her to go an return to her sin. He did mot ignore the fact that she had sinned. No, He told her to go and sin no more. That should be our response to sinners as well, not condemnation, but the admonition to go and sin no more.

    One of Jesus’ statements which has struck a chord with people throughout history is, “the truth will set you free.” Most people are content to use just that phrase, a phrase which is true. In many ways this is like the way a lot of people use the story of the woman caught in adultery. They take the main point and strip it of the context which gives it meaning. In the case of the woman caught in adultery, if you strip away Jesus’ acknowledgement of her sin and His admonishment to leave that sin behind, His failure to condemn her His refusal to condemn her loses its meaning.
    In the same way, if we do not pay attention to what Jesus says before He says that the truth will set us free, we lose something very important, because Jesus tells us that we WILL know the truth. And the most important part of this teaching is that He tells us HOW we will come to know the truth. The key to that entire statement is that He tells us that we will know the truth if we remain faithful to His teachings. It is by remaining faithful to His teachings that we learn the truth, that we learn to distinguish the truth from the many falsehoods and deceptions in the world around us. It does us no good to know that the truth will set us free if we do not know how to learn and recognize the truth.