If we’re going to be truly Christians, we always have to embrace the sinner. Notice I didn’t say the repentant sinner. We have to embrace the sinner, to love the sinner always, while, with Jesus, hating the sin and trying to sin no more and encourage others to do the same. Let us observe Jesus. When everyone had left, dropping their stones on the ground, Jesus found himself alone with the woman, stood up and said to her, “Woman, has no one condemned you?” “No one sir,” she replied. Then Jesus said with words he so desperately wants to say to each of us when we find ourselves enmeshed n sin, “Then neither do I condemn you.” Jesus came down from heaven to save us, not to condemn us. But he does hate sin, and tells the woman, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus doesn’t pretend that adultery is all right, that these types of sins are fine. He wants all of us to stop sinning, now, and to come to him for forgiveness. If we do, then he will be able to say to us, as he does every single time we go to confession, confess all our mortal sins, with true sorrow and a firm intention to change our lives, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
