Condemned & Forgiven
If you keep up in the social media world at all, somewhere in your feed over the past couple of years, you have probably seen reports of some high-profile OnlyFans women who claim to have been converted. These women are high-profile because of some of the outrageously immoral acts that they committed to be splashed on the internet. For various reasons, they come to a crisis point, decide this is not the lifestyle for them, and are converted. Some are genuine. Some “conversions” are to get a new media spike, drawing renewed attention to them and bringing in more money. Sceptics abound. Their sins are too excessive and of such a nature that they can’t simply turn to Christ and be forgiven, having their pasts wiped away. It all seems like a ploy to many.
On the other hand, there are those men who condemn sexual sins in their public ministry, only to be discovered to be participating in the sins they condemn. The latest revealed casualty as of this writing is the popular Christian author Philip Yancey, who, in his seventies, has admitted to an eight-year adulterous relationship. Steve Lawson and others have done the same over the past few years.
These two groups converge in the story of the adulterous woman recorded in John 8.* On the one hand, there is a woman who is caught “in the act” of adultery. She is guilty of sexual sin and, according to the Law of Moses, is to be stoned to death (Lev 20:10; Dt 22:22). There are some curiosities about this situation. Where is the man? According to the Law, both the man and the woman are to be stoned. Second, how did they catch her “in the act?” Adultery is ordinarily a private affair.
On the other hand, there are condemners, the scribes and Pharisees. They use this case to test Jesus. If he upholds the Law of Moses to have her stoned, he will bring the wrath of Rome against him because it was unlawful for the Jews to carry out the death penalty under Roman rule (Jn 19:31). If he doesn’t uphold the Law of Moses, he is teaching people that they should obey men over God. They’ve got him!
From Jesus’ answer, “Let him who is among you without sin cast the first stone,” the whole plot unravels. Jesus isn’t saying that civil magistrates must be sinless to carry out capital punishment. If that were the case, God’s laws concerning capital punishment would be moot. He is saying that you can’t be a participant in the sin you are condemning. I believe this translates to the fact that the whole thing was a setup. Either one of these men was the man she was committing adultery with and the primary witness, or they set the woman up and knew where to find her to use her sin to test Jesus. Either way, they participated in her sin and stand condemned with her. The condemners became the condemned.
Beware of condemning sins in others of which you yourself are guilty. Some of the loudest voices out there condemning certain sins are using their condemnations as something of an atonement for their own sins. There are times when people are excessive in their protests in order to hide their own guilt. (“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”) Loud condemnations are not atonement for the sin you are committing.
Those who come humbly seeking mercy at the feet of Jesus will find it. Jesus didn’t condemn the woman but forgave her, telling her to go and sin no more. He didn’t take her sin lightly. Her adultery was condemnable, but it was also forgivable.
This woman is an image of the woman Jesus came to make his bride. We were impure, adulterous. He came to cleanse us from our sin through his death and resurrection. Now he calls us to forsake the sin from which he saved us, to go and sin no more. He has come to free us from the penalty and power of sin.
*Whether or not this story should be placed here, elsewhere, or included at all in the canon of Scripture is not the concern of this article. The story is well-attested in the Western church. Ambrose and Augustine believed it should be included in the canon, and Jerome included it in the Vulgate. It appears to have been a free-floating story that became a part of the Gospel record.
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