¹⁰ “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ ¹³ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. 

–Luke 18:10-14

To live in grace, we have to set aside our sensibilities to what offends us.  How often have we been offended and mentally cast the first stone?  There are many things that we don’t like and our instinct for each is to reach into our bag of personal judgement and find an appropriate size stone for each offense.  The bag has a variety of stones to make sure that we have an appropriate judgment for every sin, every behavior, every inappropriate action, everything that is an inconvenience to us.

When Jesus told the religious folks who had gathered, to cast the first stone at the woman caught in adultery, He was really saying, “look in the mirror.”  Are your hands clean?  Do you not offend?  Do you have any idea that your self-righteous heart is a detestable stench in my Nostril?  Go ahead, throw a stone, I dare you!  One by one, they dropped their stones and departed.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and Jesus knew the hearts of these men.  They did not care whether or not adultery was an offense to God, they only sought to satisfy their lust for judgment motivated by a desire to trap Jesus with the law.  Jesus heard the accusations, knelt down and wrote something in the sand, then arose with the wisdom to expose the self-righteous hearts of the accusers and grant forgiveness.  The religious had become experts at enforcing the letter of the law while abandoning the spirit of the law.

“You weigh yourselves by your own standards, not by Mine, yet you think you speak for Me!  Do you not know that it is My kindness that leads you to repentance?  Do you not remember that it was I who provided for you in the wilderness?  Have you not read that I took you there to humble you, to test you, to discipline you, to see what was in your hearts, that you would repent and walk in a manner worthy of My calling?  Do you not know that you are a flower who is quickly fading?  Are you not aware that I have restrained My wrath because I recall to mind that you are but flesh?  Who are you, O’man, to answer back to God?  I played the flute for you, but you would not dance!  Oh! How I longed to gather you to Me, but only your lying tongues came before while your cold hearts remained in darkness!  Therefore, I say, “come prostitutes, tax gatherers, thieves, adulterers.  Come all who live in darkness, all who have never been found worthy by the world, you whose tears went unnoticed by the church, come all whose mere existence was a great offense to the righteous!”  “I have seen you from afar, I have heard the sorrow of your hearts and I run out to meet you.  Put off those rags of shame, clothes of despair, though you have lived in scarlet, I am making you as white as snow, though you see with crimson, put on the robe of wool!” Put on this ring for you are family, you have a seat at the table with your name on it.  My wandering sheep, breath, relax, you are home now!”

We all live with our own delusions to some degree, but by the power of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8) and the living and active Word of God, our hearts are exposed and our convictions bear witness of our unclean hearts and impure motives (Hebrews 4:12).  God sees all (Hebrews 4:13), but if we can get honest about who we are, transparent before God, we can come to Him, accepted as we are, and receive the mercy, compassion and grace (Hebrews 4:15-16) that truly frees us to live lives of grace without boundaries (Ephesians 3:14-21).  Jesus said that heaven is entered by the narrow gate, with the faith of five year old.  If you have ever shared the gospel with a child, they love that God loves them, they want to go to heaven and they embrace Jesus.  You never hear a five year old respond to the gospel with, “I am skeptical, let me think about it.”  A child can trust and feel safe in the lap of a parent, not worried about the future, not weighed down with the past, and finds comfort in that safe space when they have a boo-boo!  So as we go along on our faith journey, we must decrease so He can increase because that is the way of growing childlike faith with untethered trust.  There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end there of is the way of death!  If we learn anything from the religious people Jesus rebuked, it is that a wicked heart can easily be cloaked in moral goodness.  God is calling for lives motivated by love that produce moral goodness as a fruit of the love of Christ operating through us.  So what’s the difference?  Well, this one difference is all the difference; it’s the difference between pride and humility; the difference between a haughty spirit and a broken spirit; it’s the difference between the law of sin and death and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ.  To understand the difference and to respond in love is to affirm your eternal home, because one day we will step outside of time and realize that the distance between Heaven and Hell is just a stones throw away!

(Further reading: John 3:30; Isaiah 1:18, 2:12, 6:5-7, 29:13; Matthew 5:3; 7:3, 18:3, 22:3; Matthew 11:17; Romans 2:4, 3:23, 6:23; Psalm 51:17, 73:26, 103:12; Jeremiah 4:22; 9:23-24; 1 Corinthians 13:5; Colossians 3:12-13; James 4:6-10).