Neither Should You Condemn Yourself

After the woman taken in adultery tells Jesus that there are none to accuse her, He says to her, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more." I would like to add one more sentence between those two that Christ said to her: "Neither should you condemn yourself." That's why Christ tells her to go and sin no more. He doesn't want her believing that she is condemned, doomed, hopeless, useless, a lost cause. Neither does He ever want us to feel these things. Christ doesn't condemn people; He redeems them. He doesn't lose people; He saves them. When we are commanded not to judge, this means we also shouldn't judge ourselves. We don't have the right to condemn anyone, much less ourselves. Christ will never look on us as gross or repulsive or abhorrent. There is nothing we can do to scare Him off, or cause Him to give up on us or stop loving us. So we need to stop condemning ourselves. We need to let go of our shame and our self loathing and our despair and we need to go and sin no more. Every time our conscience is wracked with guilt and we catch ourselves in the act of sin and drag ourselves to Jesus and beg for forgiveness, He will look us in the eyes and tell us, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more." Every single time. Christ is not a loser and He does not intend to lose us. When we come to Him bloody and bruised and broken, He will tenderly bind up our wounds and ease our hurts and then He will tell us, Pick yourself up. Go back out there and try again. Do better this time. Be a little kinder, a little more patient, a little more courageous, a little more loving. I'll still be here when you need me to patch you up, but I will never give up on you and I will never condemn you, and neither should you ever try to condemn yourself.