Guilty But Not Condemned: The Heart of the Gospel

This post is an excerpt from Loved to Life by Ann Voskamp. Published with permission from Tyndale House Publishers.

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. 

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. 

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 

“No one, sir,” she said. 

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” 

John 8:1-11 

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You are not condemned. 

It reverberates off the walls of the deepest pits, straight across the universe, from the very throne room of God’s heart, quaking your heart awake. 

You are not condemned, though you are guilty of the hidden thing, the unspoken thing, the proud thing, the gossiping thing, the thing you keep doing again and again, the thing you would do anything to take back and get a do-over for, the thing about you that you’d never want shared at any dinner table, from any microphone, or in any headline. You are not condemned, even though there are people you ended up failing. Even though there are wounds you’ve caused and damage you’ve done but didn’t intend. Even though there are all those things you desperately wish you could undo. 

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), because the love of your life, Jesus, takes all the condemnation on Himself. 

These seven words, “You are guilty, but you aren’t condemned”—this is the perfection of the gospel. Write them up the walls of your cerebrum, across your forehead so you see them in every mirror you’ll ever look into. 

What the woman wrapped in bedsheets didn’t know was that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were about to trap her—the woman ensnared and caught in adultery. 

To accuse anyone of adultery, the bar was such that there could be absolutely no presumption or innuendo or question; one had to be caught in the physical act. Yet it was on her alone that the trap snapped shut, not the man tangled in the sheets. She alone was dragged out of bed and publicly humiliated, swathed in a tangle of shame—that very verb caught in the original Greek indicating “taken with her shame upon her.”1 Shame swells in isolation, grows larger and larger when it lives alone. And when shame is upon you, you can’t remember how His grace could ever be upon you, how grace is always coming to meet you, how grace never wants to leave you. Shame hungrily devours any hope you can change, while grace keeps laying out a feast of hope and says, “Come, eat.” 

When this woman was flung in front of God in the flesh, the Word said nothing but bent down in the dust like He did at our Eden beginning, when He kissed us to life out of dust. And with the same finger that carved stars out of nothing, there, in the dirt, the Word wrote words—the only time Jesus is ever recorded writing. 

“In the story of the woman taken in adultery we are told Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger,” writes C. S. Lewis. “Nothing comes of this. No one has ever based any doctrine on it. And the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is a purely modern art. Surely the only explanation of this passage is that the thing really happened? The author put it in simply because he had seen it.”2 Who knows what Jesus wrote in the dust, but what we know is that this happened, that there were eyewitnesses who saw the fingers that handmade the heavens etching words in the dirt of this earth. 

Is it possible that Jesus scrawled across the granules the sins committed by her accusers? Were her accusers cut to the quick with all their own sins as His fingers cut through the dust? 

“Throw a stone,” Jesus said, straightening up. “Just make sure that whoever throws that stone hasn’t ever done anything worthy of having a stone cast at him.” 

Hasn’t it been true across all the ages? The heart always enlarges the sins in another heart while shrinking the sin in its own. 

Without another word, the Word knelt and scrawled more in the sand. And one by one, the woman’s accusers fell away, dominoes of pride and power knocked down. 

The woman looked around. The woman looked down. The tender face of Jesus, His compassionate eyes searching hers, was below her. 

The God of the heavens has lowered Himself to be the floor of love under your shame, the sureness of love under your humiliation, the love that goes lower than your most devastating low. 

Wherever we find ourselves, God goes lower to be the lifter of our chins, the catcher of our tears, the loving arms underneath us, holding us and carrying us through. 

Jesus holds your story in gentle hands because He never stops holding your need for gentleness at the center of His awareness. 

He holds our eyes, holds our chin, and whispers, “Neither do I condemn you . . .” because He will take all your condemnation. 

The stones that should be cast at you—He takes them. 

The arrows that should be turned on you—He takes them. 

The shame, the humiliation, the guilt—He takes them all. Because He takes all of you. 

Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world—so He can take you and love you to life. 

He is your rescue, your shield, your Lamb, your love forever-sealed. He kisses you with grace and says, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” 

Go, and sin no more. 

Entering into the depths of His love is how you leave behind a life of sin. 

What turns the human heart around is not shame, not guilt, not anger, not accusations, not bigger bootstraps, not some self-help plan; what turns the human heart around is simply what the human heart is made for: love. 

Jesus knows it is perfect love that casts out fear, perfect love that casts out cravings, perfect love that casts out hang-ups, perfect love that casts out sin. 

This is the way of the life-giving love of God: Jesus completely embraced people before they completely embraced changing. 

The way of Jesus is to scandalously love people before they change their scandalous ways. 

The pilgrimage to change is always through entering into the passionate love of God.