What would you say...

...to a divorced woman who was living with her boyfriend?

Let's just say you work with this woman, or she's the cash register worker at the grocery store, or you stopped to help her change a flat tire... or in some other way you came across this woman and talked with her.

Think of what would go through your mind, or even think of ways in which you've encountered situations such as this, or of ways in which you've seen other Christians handle situations such as this.

I'm going to generalize here, but in my history in Christianity, what I've generally seen is that people (including myself in the past) zero in on the woman's sin. The thought processes and the ways of interacting with the woman all focus around ways in which to tell the woman that she is living in sin and that she needs to get out of her situation. People might invite her to church, hoping that she'll hear the "salvation message" and that she'll then feel convicted and she'll move out or kick her boyfriend out. In some cases people might even tell her to get out of her situation and then come to church. I can think of other scenarios and I'm sure you can too.

I was listening to the story of the woman at the well (John 4:1-42) recently. The normal applications that I hear from this story revolve around "worship in Spirit and in truth," and what that means, or "Jesus is the living water." Those are great applications of this story, and there are other great applications too, but I'm not so sure I've ever heard anyone teach or preach about this: Although Jesus knew that this woman had had five husbands, and that the man she was now with was not her husband, He gave her absolutely no directives in regards to getting out of her sinful lifestyle.

Am I saying Jesus condoned her sin? Of course not! Am I saying He was happy to have her go on as normal? Not at all. But in dealing with this woman (and by the way, she didn't tell Him her situation; He told her), Jesus' focus seemed far off from what I generally see in the church today.

The focus in the church today seems to be "stop sinning!" We go around like the moral police of the world, trying to get everyone "cleaned up." But tell me if you see something different here, but as we look at what happened with this woman, it's not as if the message she got from Jesus when He told her her own life story was "clean yourself up and stop sinning." The message she seemed to get from Him was "He told me everything I ever did! How amazing!" And from this, many people came to believe. And the people asked Jesus to stay (He had only been passing through), and Jesus stayed with them for another two days, "and many more believed because of His own word." And get this - Jesus didn't stick around and start a church or some hierarchical system to make sure all these new believers were discipled and stayed out of sin.

Much more is coming to my mind about what Jesus didn't say or do. I'm sure you see other things as well. The main thing that has struck me from this story since having come to see it from a perspective of grace is that Jesus didn't seem to approach sinners from a viewpoint of "How can I get them to stop sinning and start doing what's right?" but rather from a viewpoint of "I am the way, the truth and the life."

"Come to Me."

"I will fill your hunger and thirst."

"You're weary and heavy burdened? I'll give you rest."

Any thoughts?