"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--
"Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more."--John viii. 11.
The Gracious Verdict.
How much more tender is Jesus than the tenderest of earthly friends? The
Apostles, in a moment of irritation would have called down fire from
heaven on obstinate sinners. Their Master rebuked the unkind suggestion.
Peter, the trusted but treacherous disciple, expected nothing but harsh
and merited reproof for faithlessness. He who knew well how that heart
would be bowed with penitential sorrow, sends first the kindest of
messages, and then the gentlest of rebukes, "Lovest thou me?" The
watchmen in the Canticles smote the bride, tore off her veil, and loaded
her with reproaches. When she found her lost Lord, there was not one
word of upbraiding! "So slow is He to anger," says an illustrious
believer, "so ready to forgive, that when His prophets lost all patience
with the people so as to make intercession _against_ them, yet even then
could He not be got to cast off this people whom He foreknew, for his
great name's sake."
The guilty sinner to whom He speaks this comforting "word," was frowned
upon by her accusers. But, if others spurned her from their presence,
"_Neither do I condemn thee._" Well it is to fall into the hands of this
blessed Saviour-God, for great are His mercies.
Are we to infer from this, that He winks at sin? Far from it. His blood,
His work--Bethlehem, and Calvary, refute the thought! Ere the guilt even
of one solitary soul could be washed out, He had to descend from His
everlasting throne to agonise on the accursed tree. But this "word of
Jesus" is a word of tender encouragement to every sincere,
broken-hearted penitent, that crimson sins, and scarlet sins, are no
barriers to a free, full, everlasting forgiveness. The Israelite of old,
gasping in his agony in the sands of the wilderness, had but to "_look_
and _live_;" and still does He say, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all
the ends of the earth." Up-reared by the side of his own cross there was
a monumental column for all Time, only second to itself in wonder. Over
the head of the dying felon is the superscription written for despairing
guilt and trembling penitence, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of
all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."
"He never yet," says Charnock, "put out a dim candle that was lighted at
the Sun of Righteousness." "Whatever our guiltiness be," says
Rutherford, "yet when it falleth into the sea of God's mercy, it is but
like a drop of blood fallen into the great ocean."
Reader, you may be the chief of sinners, or it may be the chief of
backsliders; your soul may have started aside like a broken bow. As the
bankrupt is afraid to look into his books, you may be afraid to look
into your own heart. You are hovering on the verge of despair.
Conscience, and the memory of unnumbered sins, is uttering the
desponding verdict, "I condemn thee." Jesus has a kinder word--a more
cheering declaration--"_I_ condemn thee _not_: go, and sin no more!"
"AND ALL WONDERED AT THE GRACIOUS _WORDS_ THAT PROCEEDED OUT OF
HIS MOUTH."