the chance to give grace

the chance to give grace
I was thinking about this passage the other day. In John 8, a woman was brought to Jesus who had been caught in the very act of adultery. Clearly she was in the wrong and deserved to be punished for her sin, by way of stoning to death by an awaiting mob of stone throwers....but so did the guy she was committing adultery with.
The men who brought the woman were the scribes and the Pharisees and they could care less what happened to this woman. They just wanted to test Jesus to find some dirt on him to be able to accuse him of blasphemy.
When they brought the woman forward, I love the response of Jesus. He stoops down and looks down at the ground writing in the dirt. Who knows what he was writing. The Scripture goes on to tell us that Jesus questioned the men as to their own 'sinlessness' by saying that was the only qualification to condemn the woman.
It really made me think, how do we respond when someone is before us who is clearly in the wrong. Do we tear them down and condemn them, ready to throw our own stones and murderous words at them....or do we realize that they need grace, just like we do. The Bible says that if we forgive others for the wrong they have done to us, then God will forgive us. But if we don't forgive others, God will not forgive us. It reminds me of the parable that Jesus used when he said a man went to his master and he was in so much debt to him that he knew he could never pay back what he owed. But the master forgave the man of his debt and said you are clear. The man went out and found his servant who owed him a lot of money and could not repay, and took him by the throat. He told him that if he did not pay what he owed he would have him thrown into prison. Man, did this guy really forget how much he owed at one time.
The truth is that the Bible says all of us were in a huge amount of debt to God. What we owed him, we could never repay. So Jesus came, took our debt (sin) and sacrificed himself up on a cross so that our debt could be cleared. Satan demanded that we die because of our sin, but God, in his great mercy, forgave us of that debt and gave us new life.
When we know that others around us have fallen, Galatians 6:1 tells us that 'we who are spiritual should restore them gently' and that is exactly what Jesus did in this passage. He could have condemned the woman but he didn't because that was not what he was about....and as forgiven people...neither should we. We need to remember where we were when the Lord found us and, in turn, show that same mercy and forgiveness to others. Come on, let's all just drop our rocks and hold out our hands!