Falling into the Trap of Sin

We continue our meditation on God’s call for pastoral, merciful, restorative churches in a society that is in flux and in process, and that requires us to approach it with an appreciation for complexity.

We have spoken about King David, his terrible sin, and the nuanced, merciful, fatherly, and just way God dealt with him. And we were saying that we must deal in that same way with the people who come to our churches. That is why it is so important for you always to understand that when I speak of the call to grace and mercy, I am not speaking of license to sin, but of balance.

I ask the Lord that, through these meditations, our brothers and sisters, our spiritual leaders, our pastors, men and women, will receive this call and ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom on how to express that balanced posture of Christ Jesus and be truly restorative churches. They will also be evangelistic churches, making it possible for many wounded people, imprisoned by all kinds of addictions, such as homosexuality, for example, to enter the Church.

Imagine a homosexual person who wants to be touched by God, who wants to receive healing, and who comes to one of our churches. If what they receive is condemnation, hostile and suspicious looks, and insinuations from the pastor or the people, they will flee immediately and leave the Church—going out, as the Bible says, twice as much a child of the devil—because they will not receive the generous, open, and patient welcome that people like this need in order truly to begin the journey of sanctification and of being dealt with by God.

These addictions are terrible. They touch the very heart of the mind so deeply that they even become intertwined with a person’s spirit, emotions, memories, attitudes, way of speaking, and gestures. It is difficult to extract these things from a person’s psyche, even through the work of the Holy Spirit, because God works with people in an organic way, respecting their freedom and other areas of their lives. He is like a surgeon trying to remove a tumor that is surrounded by vital veins and arteries: if they are cut, the patient will bleed to death.

So the surgeon has to work around those veins and use a very cautious and delicate process to remove the tumor while leaving everything else intact. And so it is with the way God deals with a believer, or with a person bound by many sins, in the process of restoration—though it is far more complex. Alongside the bad things are many good things, and so, little by little, in the process of sanctification, God has to renew this person’s understanding until the person is healed. That can take an entire lifetime, even in the best of cases.

That is why we need people with understanding who can work through these processes until the result we desire comes about. Let us turn to the New Testament and see how Christ deals with all these things. Think, for example, of the adulterous woman who is caught, as it says here: “If anyone is caught in any trespass.”

Now, by the way, being caught can mean that our own sinfulness, or a trap of the devil, or a temptation takes us by surprise; or we can be caught in the act of doing something and someone discovers us. But there are many ways to be caught. Some people fall into sin not because they are seeking it, not because they are plotting to sin, not because they are sitting there with a clear mind scheming how to do it, but because at a certain moment they fall into a situation and do not know how to get out of it. They then fall into a trap that lasts a lifetime, and afterward they have to be pulled out, like a sheep that has fallen into a ravine, from the mental or spiritual trap into which they have fallen.

And so many people are sometimes caught up in these things, and we have to try to help them somehow. The Lord Jesus Christ sees this woman who has been caught in her sin by a group of Pharisaical men. They want Him to give them permission to stone her, and they also want to trap Him and put Him in a difficult position, as so many people sometimes want to do to pastors: “Oh, look, so-and-so is doing this and this and this. What are you going to do about it, Pastor?”

Then they begin preaching at the poor pastor, who is trying to save that soul and save the person’s marriage, save the children so they do not go off into the world, or keep that person from leaving the Church so the devil cannot do whatever he wants with them. This poor pastor is trying to be sensitive, and here are people who do not understand that complexity, making life harder for someone who wants to fulfill God’s will.

These men wanted to trap Jesus; they wanted to see what He would do. Then the Lord, inspired by the Holy Spirit—we know the story—begins writing there. Some commentators on Scripture say that perhaps He was writing: adultery, evil thoughts, resentment, gossip; and when they saw those sins, they felt that their own sins were being pointed out as well.

The Bible says they slipped away one by one, because they knew what was inside them, and finally Jesus and the woman were left alone. And the Lord says to her, “Woman”—He asks her—“where are those who accused you?” She says to Him, “They have all gone,” and the Lord says to her, “You know what? Neither do I condemn you.”

Now, one could stop there, couldn’t one? And there is the Lord’s mercy, love, patience, and kindness: “Neither do I condemn you.” Who knows how or why this woman fell into that sin, how she came to sin, what things brought her to this situation. And the Lord in His mercy says, “You know what? I am not going to condemn you”—that is, I am not going to consign you to God’s indifference and to a life completely apart from God. But let us remember the rest of His word.

The Lord says, “Go and sin no more.” There is the call to holiness, isn’t there? Just as He told the other person—I think it was the paralytic—“Your sins are forgiven,” and He told another, “Go and sin no more, so that something even worse does not happen to you,” because sin is always accompanied by consequences, as we have seen before, isn’t that so?

So the Lord not only refrained from condemning her but also told her, “Now live a holy life, an upright life. Do not commit the same sin again.” In other words, the Lord did not let go of one thing to grasp the other; He kept both in balance. And that is what we must do with people who are caught in some fault or sin, just as we too might be one day, or have been. People of restoration, people of mercy, and people of holiness.

God bless you. I say goodbye until our next meditation, and I hope this is a blessing in your lives.