Cole visited LDSR this spring with a group of Chi Alpha students from his University. Some of his favorite things to do are hiking and camping, listening to worship music, and road trips. His favorite place in the world to be is anywhere he can find mountains. 

“Jesus stood up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No, Lord,’ she said. And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” –John 8:10-11

One time in my elementary school art class, we made tall coffee mugs out of clay and got to customize the way they looked and paint them. I was very proud of mine and brought it home to show my parents. However, at some point in the process of transporting it I dropped it and the mug broke into a bunch of pieces. Disappointed, I took my shattered creation to my father and we luckily were able to piece the whole thing back together with glue and paint back over the cracks. Now it sits on a shelf in my parent’s house looking like it just came out of the kiln! But what if we had stopped halfway through though? What if we only put half the pieces back together and said that was good enough and called it quits? That would be pointless! We might as well not even bother if we are not going to finish restoring it.

The Restorer

Jesus views us the same way. He created us perfect and beautiful and Satan came and shattered Creation.

Jesus’ mission ever since the fall of man has been to piece creation back together. Not partially, not haphazardly, but completely and perfectly.

Jesus restores us, His beautiful and most beloved creation, back to our original state of sinless, spotless beauty. However, I think a lot of times we tend to lose sight of Jesus’ ability to redeem things back to perfection. Many of us Christians do not really believe that we can “go and sin no more” as Jesus commands. I was guilty of this for many years. I knew Jesus paid the price for my sin. I knew He could mend my heart, but I let myself have a little leeway, a little wiggle room to still keep sinning. I did not yet truly believe in my soul that Jesus died so that we could live a life completely free of sin. But I believe that is what He died for and what we should strive for. If Christ died so that we could “go and sin no more” but we still keep on sinning and are ok with it, then we are telling Jesus to His face that His creation is pointless. It would be like if my coffee mug decided not to let me put it back together and just stayed a bunch of broken, useless pieces on the ground. That is what we are in the eyes of God when we do not allow Him to put us back together completely. We become useless.

Creation cannot serve its purpose until it lets its Creator put it back together.

We grant ourselves too many excuses and copouts in the church these days. Each day we should be asking Christ to break off more and more of the chains of sin. We should never stop. We should never become content with the amount of sin we are in. We were not created to live in sin.

Christ did not die so that we could stop half of our sins. He died for all of them.

Do not feel condemned if you still fall today, next week, or two years from now. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1). God pours out endless grace and mercy. But let Jesus’ command to “go and sin no more” motivate us to ask the Lord to never stop shaping our hearts, minds, and bodies to be more like they are meant to be.