Kind mercy wins over harsh judgment every time. James 2:13 (MSG)
Most people know when they’ve done wrong. They don’t need us to rub their faces in it. When the religious leaders brought a woman before Jesus because she had been caught committing adultery, she knew what she had done. She felt the sting of the crowd’s judgmental, condemning looks as she stood helpless before them.
But Jesus didn’t look at her that way. He didn’t rub her face in the fact that she had done wrong, although He also didn’t excuse it. He met her with both grace and truth. By saying, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” (John 8:7, NLT), Jesus was reaching down to her. The religious people had placed her in a gutter of shame and guilt with their judgment, but Jesus placed her on equal ground with every self-righteous person there. They were just as imperfect as she was.
She didn’t need to earn that love, acceptance or forgiveness (she had been given grace) and yet Jesus also spoke truth when He told her to sin no more (v. 11).
Driving home truth without any grace in your heart only causes people to slam their hearts shut to you. Without love and acceptance, there’s no trust and relationships can’t grow. Actually, people have no ability to change if they don’t sense they are in a safe place of love and acceptance.
Instead, we can bring grace before truth, like Jesus did. We can value people just as they are. We can accept them wherever they are on their journey with God. Only with a heart full of grace can we effectively stand for truth.