He accepted her with full realization of who she was: an adulteress. He accepted her true self, a woman with sinful desires and actions. He then gives her direction for the future: “Go now and leave your life of sin.” These two ingredients together—acceptance and direction—serve to bring the real self into relationship, the only way that healing ever takes place. Jesus said it in another way in John 4:23–24: “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father