November 2000

[Part Thirty-three]

                Final thoughts on STONES and ROCKS must include Jn 8:1-11 as the Pharisees brought a woman caught in the act of adultery to see if Jesus would exact the “Letter of the Law” on her sin and condemn her to be “stoned to death” as per their custom. But as if He didn’t hear them, that “Rock of Salvation” just bent down and began writing with His finger in the dust of the ground! When they pressed Him for a word of condemnation against the woman, He straightened up to say, “Let Him Who is without sin among you cast the first stone!” (Jn 8:7) Then He bent down again and continued writing on the ground. Many glorious things are going on here in this passage, but let us start by revealing the symbolism of the adulteress. In Jas 4:4, the Holy Spirit admonishes us, “YOU adulteress ones, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God, and whoever is a friend of this sinful world order is the sworn enemy of God?!”
                Now if these words fall hard on your ears as “Rocks of offense and Stones of stumbling” (1 Pe 2:8) it is because you are still thinking and living as a child of death clinging to a friendship with this world of death. Not until you grow tired of dodging all the “stones” of condemnation and cruelty that this world flings at your heart, will you be made willing to relinquish all slavish ties to its carnal systems and manmade laws, and embrace the Life and liberty of God’s world of Peace; and joyfully surrender to His Laws of Love!!
               The strange apparition of Christ “writing with His finger on the ground” may seem utterly irrelevant and nonsensical in the midst of such a weighty situation but He knew He was fulfilling Jer 17:13 where the prophet cried, “O Lord, Hope of Israel... all that depart from you will be WRITTEN IN THE EARTH for they have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of Living Waters!” We don’t know for certain, but the Lord was likely scribing this verse in the dust of the ground, for He knew that the Pharisees were well-versed in the Scriptures.
                Then we come to the rather cryptic words that Christ spoke to these pseudo-religious ones. “Let the one without sin among you cast the first stone”. These men knew that none but God was ‘without sin’, and they didn’t dare call themselves God. But Jesus was not referring to them in this statement! Since He always spoke Truth and He was the living manifestation of Truth (Jn 14:6), when He said “Let Him Who is without sin cast the first stone” He was speaking of His Father and Himself! Jesus was the *FIRST STONE (the Precious Chief Cornerstone, the first Living Stone) “cast” by His heavenly Father (Him without sin) into the waters of humanity to create unending circles of Life!

[*FIRST (Gk 4413 protos- from which is derived the word, prototype which the Dict. defines: “An original model on which something is patterned; an archetype; or a standard established.”) and it means: “Foremost (in time, place, order or importance); the beginning, the former, the best, chief (-est), first and before all!” This root is used in Rev 1:8 where Jesus proclaimed, “I am Alpha and Omega, The Beginning and The Ending...Who is and was and is to come!” Then in Rev 1:11 where He said, “I am...The First and the Last!!”]

God has only One Begotten Son, but His Wisdom decreed Him to be a many-membered son; so by our union with Him, we are integral Living Stones of the great Rock of Salvation! Thus each son in the Christ Body must become ALL that is dictated by its Christ Head! Consider what this means: in the same way our flesh body can do nothing except what is ordained by our head of flesh, so our spirit body can do nothing except what is directed by our Christ Head! The Body of Christ must “Glorify God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with one mind and one mouth!” (Ro 15:6)

[TO BE CONTINUED]