“He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” – John 8:7

It didn’t look good. In fact, it was scandalous. Caught in the very act of adultery, a woman was dragged through the Temple Court into public view to be mocked and judged by pious, cold-faced accusers. She was guilty and their law demanded a single punishment: stoning until she was dead.

It seems barbaric. But even more barbaric was the fact that she was apparently a willing participant to an act which, while sinful, was shared with her willing lover. Yet only she was hauled in front of her self-righteous would-be executioners – her clandestine lover was nowhere to be found.

Standing between the woman and certain death: a lone rabbi squatting silently in front of her, writing curious noodles in the sand.

Two Voices

Scripture clearly identifies two different voices here, two voices that also speak to us through today’s always-on news headlines – the voice of those who condemn and the voice of Christ. The voice of condemners will criticize, destroy, mock, and humiliate to gain achieve their agenda. They use any means available to exploit the weaknesses and failures of their adversaries.

In this passage, John exposes the true nature of their motives. While adultery was indeed a sin, they unconcerned with moral purity. Rather, they used this woman as a pawn in their larger plan to trap Jesus in a situation forcing him to choose between God’s message of forgiveness and obeying the Old Testament laws handed down from Moses.

The real scandal was not the woman’s sin – we all sin. The real scandal was the cynical hypocrisy from those who would destroy the lives of real people to achieve their ultimate aim: to stop a rabbi calling out their charade and challenging their authority while silently drawing in the sand.

One Truth

This encounter from John 8 reveals a truth of the human condition: we all face moments where competing voices scream for our attention. The world blames us. It doesn’t care about us or our flaws except if those flaws can be exploited. We are simply tools to be used and discarded as needed to advance someone’s personal gain.

Pointing out failure seems to be the Reality TV series of modern society. Yet like the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ time, contemporary accusers are uniformly guilty of spotlighting failures others while ignoring their own.

Make no mistake. The woman in this passage was guilty, caught while committing adultery. Black and white. The Law of Moses demanded exacting punishment. Yet the Law also provide forgiveness for those who turned away from their sinful ways.

At the same time, the woman’s failure does not obscure the depravity of her accusers, using her failure to advance their own ends.

Jesus does not ignore the woman’s sin. He does not condone her actions. He doesn’t excuse her behavior because she had a difficult childhood, or an abusive husband, or because she suffered under the oppression of “toxic patriarchy.”

Nor does Jesus does pander to the victimization so dominant in our culture where no one takes responsibility for their sin. He doesn’t care who the man was with whom she was committing adultery, so the punishment would be fair. He doesn’t call what the woman did a personal choice that is just different than what He would prefer.

Jesus calls out her actions for what they were – sin.

Three Lessons

However, rather than playing “gotcha” with a woman who had clearly transgressed God’s seventh commandment, Jesus transforms the encounter into a teaching moment demonstrating the unfathomable power of mercy, grace, and forgiveness while also shaming the men confronting the woman of their hypocritical accusations.

Jesus does this in three ways:

• He shows us that our first response to sin should always be admitting to God our brokenness. As Paul writes in Romans 3:23: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
• Second, he emphasizes the destructive power of sin – for those who commit it, those who observe it in others, and those who are victimized by it. Shame, shattered lives, destroyed reputations … these are all part of what Paul refers to in Romans 6:23 as “the wages of sin.”
• Finally, he demonstrates the transformative power of compassion rather than condemnation. The sole entity in all of creation with the true power and authority to condemn the world declared he would not condemn her, but rather forgave her with the admonition to “go and sin no more.”

“If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us,” John wrote in 1 John 1:8. Yet if we, as the woman in Temple courtyard did, confess our own shortcomings rather than condemn the failings of others, God offers forgiveness, pardon, and eternal life.

We live in an age of cutting-edge judgment filled with hypocrites masquerading as social justice warriors. It surrounds us – on our televisions and smart phones, in our institutions of education and governance, in our churches. Everywhere we turn, the long lines of accusers await their chance to judge and condemn us.

Accept the Grace of Christ, turn away from the hypocrites who condemn you, and “go and sin no more.”

Peace.
Colossians 1:17