Fall into the trap of sin

We continue our meditation on God's call to pastoral, merciful, restorative churches in a society in flux and process that needs complexity in the way we treat it.

We have talked about King David, his terrible sin and the nuanced, merciful fatherly and righteous way that God treated him and we said that in the same way we have to treat the people who come to our churches. And that is why it is so important that you always understand that when I speak of the call to grace and mercy I am not speaking of debauchery but I am speaking of a balance.

I ask the Lord that through these meditations our brothers and sisters, our spiritual leaders, our Pastors and Pastors receive this call and that they ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom on how to express that balanced posture of Jesus Christ and be truly restorative churches that They are also going to be evangelistic churches, and they are going to make it possible for many wounded and imprisoned people in all kinds of addictions such as homosexuality, for example, to enter the Church.

Imagine a homosexual person who wants to be touched by God, who wants to receive healing and comes to our churches. If what they receive is condemnation, hostile, suspicious, indirect looks from the Pastor or the people, they will flee immediately and leave, they will leave the Church as the Bible says, doubly made a son of the devil because they will not receive the generous, wide and patient reception that this type of people must receive in order to truly enter the journey of sanctification and treatment of God.

These addictions are terrible and touch the heart of the mind in such a penetrating way and even get to understand their spirit, their emotions, their memories, their attitudes, their way of speaking, their gestures and it is difficult to extract these things from their psychology even with the treatment of the Holy Spirit because what happens is that God works with people in an organic way respecting their freedom, respecting other areas of their life and it is like a surgeon who is trying to remove a tumor but that tumor is covered by strategic veins and arteries that if cut will cause total exsanguination and death of the patient.

So the surgeon has to work around those veins and use a very careful and very subtle process to remove the tumor and leave the other things intact. And so it is much more complex, however, with the treatment of God in the process of the restoration of a believer or a person who is bound by many sins. Along with the bad things there are many good things and then God has to go little by little in the sanctification process, renewing the understanding of this person until he is healed and that can take a lifetime in the best of cases.

And that is why it requires knowledgeable people who can work with these processes until the result we want is produced. Let's go to the New Testament and let's see how Christ deals with all these things, let's think for example of the adulterous woman who is caught as it says here: "If anyone is caught in some fault."

Now by the way surprised means that we can be surprised by our own sinfulness or a trap of the devil or a temptation, or we can be surprised in the act of doing something and someone discovers us but there are many ways to be surprised. There are people who fall into sin not because they are looking for it, not because they are plotting sin, not because they are thinking there with a clear mind and plotting how they are going to do it but because at a given moment they fall into a situation and do not know how. get out of it and then they fall into a trap that lasts a lifetime and then they have to be led out like a sheep that falls into an abyss of their mental or spiritual trap into which they have fallen.

And so many people are sometimes surprised in these things and you have to try to help them in some way. And the Lord Jesus Christ sees this woman who has been surprised in her sin by a group of Pharisaic men and who want Him to give them permission to stone her and who want to attack Him too and put Him in a difficult situation as sometimes there are so many people who wants to put the Pastors: oh look, so and so is doing this and this and this and what are you going to do Pastor?

And then they begin to preach to the poor Pastor who is trying to save that soul and save his marriage, save his children and that they do not go to the world or that this person does not leave the Church and then the devil does not do what he wants with them, this poor Shepherd is trying to be sensitive; and here are people who do not understand that complexity making life more difficult for this person who wants to fulfill the Will of God.

And these men wanted to catch Jesus, they wanted to see what He was doing. So the Lord inspired by the Holy Spirit we know the story, he begins to write there, say some commentators on the Scripture that perhaps He was writing: adultery, bad thoughts, resentment , gossip and that when they saw those sins, they also felt marked by their own sins.

The Bible says that one by one they slipped away because they knew what was inside of them and finally Jesus and she were left alone. And the Lord says to her: woman, he asks her: where are those who accused you? He says: they have all left and the Lord says: you know what? I don't condemn you either.

Now one could stay there right? and there is the part of the mercy, love, patience and goodness of the Lord "I don't condemn you either." Who knows how, why this woman fell into that sin, how she fell into sin, what things brought her to this situation. And the Lord in His mercy says: You know what? I am not going to condemn you, that is to say, I am not going to consign you to the indifference of God and to a life totally separated from God, but let's remember the rest of the Word.

The Lord says: "Go and sin no more" there is the call to holiness, right? Just as he said to the other, I think he went to the paralytic, he said: Your sins are forgiven and to another he said: Go and sin no more so that something worse does not happen to you, because sin is always accompanied by consequences as we have seen before. not?

Then the Lord not only did not condemn her but also told her: Now live a holy life, a righteous life, do not commit the same sin again, that is to say that the Lord did not let go of one thing to grab the other but kept them at the two in balance and it is what we have to do with people who are surprised like us too, perhaps one day we could be or we have been in some kind of fault or sin. People of restoration, people of mercy and people of holiness.

God bless you and I say goodbye to you until our next meditation, I hope this is a blessing for your lives.