God’s Perfect Law Perfectly Fulfilled
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
Colossians 2:13–14
When we consider the account of the woman caught in adultery in John 8, interestingly, the Bible is silent on what Jesus wrote on the ground with His finger in response to the Pharisees on the matter (John 8:6). But I believe that when He stooped down, He was writing the Law of Moses.
I have been to Jerusalem many times. During one of my visits many years ago to the temple precinct where Jesus would have met this woman, the Lord opened my eyes to see that the floor of the temple precinct was made of hard cobblestone. This means Jesus was not writing on soil. He was writing with His finger on stone.
Then, in a flash, I saw that Jesus was writing the law on stone. He was effectively saying to the Pharisees, “You presume to teach Me about the Law of Moses? I am He who wrote the law.” Jesus wrote twice on the ground with His finger, thus completing the typology, as we know that God wrote the Ten Commandments with His finger twice.
The first set of the Ten Commandments was destroyed by Moses when he saw the Israelites worshipping the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. God then wrote another set on stones and gave it to Moses for it to be placed under the mercy seat in the ark of the covenant.
I had never heard anyone preach this before—it was a fresh revelation straight from heaven. I love it when the Lord opens my eyes to see His grace!
Do you know why it’s so exciting to know what Jesus wrote on the ground that day? It’s so significant because it shows us that the very author of God’s perfect law does not use the law to judge and condemn us today. And it’s not because God simply decided to be merciful on us. No!
It’s because Jesus Himself fulfilled all the righteous requirements of the law on our behalf and took upon Himself every curse and stroke of punishment for our sins on His own body at the cross. We are forgiven because He was judged. We are accepted because He was condemned!
Whatever your challenge today, your answer is found in receiving a fresh revelation of how much you are forgiven in Christ.
This devotional is taken from the book 100 Days of Right Believing—Daily Readings from The Power of Right Believing. Joseph Prince