“The Spirit of Truth will write them in the sands of time and our time is coming when He will write them in the sand and we must walk away from those sins.”

This is in quotes because I ended yesterday’s offering with this statement.  Normally I rebel against being told I must do something. It flies against my desire for free will. At the core of choice we must have free will, so why have I contradicted myself by saying “We must”?

Acts 16:30 English Standard Version (ESV) Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

If the core of choice is free will, then some objective has to be put at risk. 

Example: “I have to be true to myself!”

I agree. Who do you choose to be?

We must walk away from sin, not because we love Jesus more than sin. We must walk away from sin because that is who we are now. We made the choice which put us on a different path than we once walked. We have already made the one choice that matters most of all. We chose to place our faith in Jesus Christ.

We live by faith and we still need to make choices, decisions, informed decisions, based on the Word of God, His promises and His plans. How well informed we are is a matter of the type of person we were and how much we have changed during our walk with Jesus.

We use words like babes, children, young, mature, wise, elder which have nothing to do with age, calling, talent, gifts, titles or beliefs. Growth in Christ is dependent on two things, God’s will and our attention to details. There is nothing we can do to change God’s will but we can pay more attention to detail.

We know that God is at work around us at all times. What He is doing is in the details. We can look at it in panoramic wonder or we can focus on the details. Grand scale is wondrous but we will discover His invitation to get involved in the details. We do not all see God’s handiwork with the same clarity. Clear vision in spiritual insight is not natural, it is developed.

Seeing an opportunity is not always an invitation to get involved. Sometimes it is nothing more than improving our spiritual insight and when we mistake it for an invitation to get involved, God’s will trains us by correction. Results of a test are not a pass/fail grade, but rather the mark upon the door frame indicating growth.

Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules.You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness.

John 8:3-9 English Standard Version

3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 5 Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.

There are two kinds of sin, public and private.

The religiously pious have no problem in doing a public shaming of others. Do they really think that their private sins go unnoticed?

When Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was asked to describe his test for obscenity in 1964, he responded: “I know it when I see it.”

Potter Stewart was appointed as an associate judge to the Supreme Court because of a long history of rulings that were deemed to be accurate in relationship to the law.

What qualifies us to judge?

If we think we are qualified because we have studied the law and know it well, then why are so many Supreme Court decisions 5 to 4? Why don’t they all agree? Perhaps because their laws were written by men not God.

So we study God’s Word and we know the law. The pious said that clearly the law said death and were proud to point it out. On the matter of the accusation, Jesus said nothing, but wrote in the dirt the private sins of each man there. I find it interesting that the oldest left first.

Was that because Jesus was showing them He knew their sins? Maybe they left because He hadn’t gotten around to writing down some of their worst sins yet.

Those men were religious leaders who knew the law and knew that they could not keep it. Yes, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If we are not to judge because we are unjust, what are we to do about our secret sins?

The Spirit of Truth will write them in the sands of time and our time is coming when He will write them in the sand and we must walk away from those sins.