What Do You See In People?

A Woman Caught in Adultery
8 Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, ² but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. ³ As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.⁴ “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. ⁵ The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”⁶ They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. ⁷ They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” ⁸ Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust⁹ When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. ¹⁰ Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”¹¹ “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

John 8:1-11 NLT

A question for you to ponder over, when you meet a fellow Christian and hear about what they do or believe or listen to a sermon or hear a worship song or see how they dress what is the first thought that comes to your mind? Do we question their doctrine and wonder how or why they believe such things? Do we comment on the way they behave? Do we criticise and tear apart the sermon? Do we comment on the poor lyrics of the song? Do we question their dress sense and criticise about it not being Godly?
If we extend this thought process to people outside of the Body of Christ (fellow believers in Jesus) what is the first set of thoughts that can come to mind? Do we criticise them for being Muslim and naive for not knowing enough about their history and the creation of their religion? Do we exclude ourselves from fellowship with them because of the way they behave and they are “sinners”, therefore, we do not want to be dragged down by their activities? Do we then start commenting on their addictions or idolatry with fashion/cars/alcohol/material items?
The primary point I want to deliver today is the old cliche, “What would Jesus do?”. If we are to believe some key bible verses; 1 John 2:6, Galations 2:20 & 1 John 4:15 we are to understand that by accepting Jesus, the Holy Spirit is in us and we are to walk as Jesus walked. Therefore, if we analyse how we behave towards others we can start to discern if we are “working out our salvation” are we actively stepping forward and representing Christ Jesus our King, our Lord, our God, our Messiah?
In everything we do we should be moving towards representing God our Father in heaven, this means when we look to the Bible we should be checking in and referencing if we are indeed working towards representing Christ Jesus in our life? One extremely important aspect is how do we look at people? Whether they be Christian or not Christian it does not matter. We should look at them in the same way the Jesus sees them. I’m going to take you on a small but very relevant tangent, Jesus was crucified almost 2000 years ago. He was crucified to pay the price of your sins, not just “original sin” but ALL of your sins. He was tortured, mocked, ridiculed and crucified to pay the price of the way you lived your life. Now get this, He went through all of that 2000 years ago. The gift of His salvation is available until He returns again, it wasn’t just for the 120 initial disciples and apostles in the upper room, He put His life down for the people then, the people of the past and the people of the future. Which means when He went through that, He knew every sin you would commit, BUT He know who you truely are and He knows who you would be if you was given grace, mercy and freedom.
If we look at the story in John 8 of the adulteress women, we see what Jesus sees in people. He has the option of looking at the sin, He chooses not to and instead looks to who we can be, in Him. By the Mosaic law, the lady rightfully should have been stoned along side the man she was sleeping with (Levitacus 20:10), but Jesus instead, demonstrated Grace and looked through the sin and saw a child of God. Jesus does not accuse or condemn, but instead He sets her free and says go forth and sin no more.
We see many many examples of where Jesus ignores the sin but chooses to love the sinner. Im going to point you towards looking at the apostle Matthew. It is widely agreed within Christianity and even within Islam, that Matthew ministered and shared the Gospel in Ethiopia where it is believed he died as a Martyr. Ethiopia today is home to some of the oldest Christian sites and has a justified argument for having the oldest denomination of Christianity (the Bible did not bring birth to the Roman Catholic Church, this denomination was birthed 300 years after Jesus died), the growth of the belief in Jesus in to Ethiopia was as a result of Matthew saying yes to following Jesus. But who was Matthew before following Jesus? Turn your Bible to Matthew 9:9-13, we can see that he was a tax collectors. In the time of Jesus, Rome controlled Israel. They promoted Jewish men as tax collectors, their role was to collect the taxes to Rome and they had all authority of the Roman Empire. The salary for these tax collectors, it was up to them, they had the right to collect extra taxes as they deemed correct. These men were typically extremely wealthy at the cost of the people they were taxing. They were not very popular and most certainly were not walking in the Mosaic law of being fair with money and not stealing. But what did Jesus do? Did He comment on all of the things that Matthew was doing wrong? Did He criticise, condemn or attack Matthew? Did He chose to ignore Matthew and not spend time with Him? No! He told Matthew to follow Him and then He went to more sinners and spent time with them. It was through the grace and love that Jesus demonstrated to Matthew was Matthew then able to stop his life of sin and follow Jesus. Jesus knew that through being love and forgiveness would people turn from their ways and follow Him. Now I would like to note that people turned from their sin and chose to follow Jesus BEFORE the Holy Spirit, this was happening BEFORE the offering on the cross. It was not through the Holy Spirit that people chose to turn away from sin, but it was through the act of Jesus choosing to not see the sin, but choosing to look through the dirt and focus on who they are in the eyes of God; a prodigal son/daughter who He is longing to have come home. It was through the act of loving the people who were deemed unworthy that they were able to say Yes and Amen to God.
What does this mean to us? If we are truly to believe that Christ Jesus lives in us and guides us and leads us, this means that we should be walking, talking and acting like He did when He was on the Earth, for His Spirit resides in us. Therefore, we should not criticise others for their belief, we should not reject associating with people because of the sin in their lives, we should not judge people and cast them into punishment because of what they have done, we should be actively going out and spending time with the people who are lost in sin and being the light in the darkness that Jesus calls us to be. We are to step out and be grace and forgiveness, as God has forgiven us, we are to go out and forgive others. We are to be the example of love, to ensure that those around us feel the Love of the Father. By acting from a position of grace and love we are giving people the space to walk out and work out their salvation. We are giving them the grace God gives us to clean up our lives and give ourselves fully to Him. It is a journey that takes time (I will not go into this topic today, but every big anointing took time to develop, they were journeys. If you’re in doubt just compare the time it took for Saul to step into his anointing versus the time it took David and then compare their walks with God) and as His servants we are to shepherd that same grace given to us. Can you imagine a world where Christians do not tear each other apart for their difference in theology, but instead focused on what they all have in common; a love for Jesus because He payed the price. Can you imagine a world where Christians go out into the world and be the difference, by not criticising others, by not going around telling people they are wrong but instead go around demonstrating love and grace? A world where each Christian becomes a lamp in the area that God has placed them? What a different world this would be, I believe this would be a world where we will see nations who have been discipled because whole countries would start demonstrating the love Jesus showed the world. I believe this would be a fulfilment of Jesus’s final prayer in John 17.

I challenge those reading today, to try and work out your salvation to deeper levels by stepping into the position of loving the people around you. Instead of letting thoughts of criticism come in pray to the Holy Spirit to reveal who they are in the eyes of Jesus. Cry out to Jesus to see the world as He sees the world. Get on your knees and pray and ask for Jesus to give you His heart for people. When you have prayed, keep on praying, keep on asking and keep on knocking until you see the manifestation of love start to change the people around you. Keep on praying until the people around you, stop their way of sin and follow Jesus. If we are clothed in Jesus, the sinners around us would stop their ways and follow Him, so let us get on our knees and ask for more of Jesus on us, so that we can be the light and the love that He is.