John 8:1-11 Caught in the Act!

Jesus did not go back to Galilee after the Feast of Booths. Instead, He went to the Mount of Olives, presumably to pray. Perhaps He stayed up all night praying, as He did on other occasions, in order to prepare Himself, and gain divine power, for the test that would come the next day. The previous day, the Pharisees had said that the multitude that did not know the law was cursed, implicitly because of their ignorance. But everyone knew the Ten Commandments, so the Pharisees set up a situation in which even the ignorant multitude would see that Jesus could not be a prophet or the Messiah. They thought they had Him on the horns of the dilemma. Either He would deny the Law, and thus prove He was not from God, or He would uphold the law and sit in judgment on this woman, and lose support among the people. Very clever, these Pharisees. But they did not consider the possibility that Jesus really was God incarnate and if that was the case, their trap for Him would fail. I Corinthians 1:17 quotes Isaiah 29:14 and Isaiah 5:21, to the effect that no man can outsmart God and no man is wiser than God. And so in this case.

          Jesus wrote in the ground with His finger. The Pharisees and scribes persisted in asking Him what should be done to this woman. Finally they got their answer: John 8:7. And then He stooped down and continued to write in the ground with His finger. What was He writing? Perhaps He was writing the sins of the accusers for all to see. Perhaps He was writing a profound revelation about the grace of God. In any event, He did not directly accuse them. He did not pass judgment on the woman. He did not respond to their question. The Holy Spirit responded, by speaking to each person there, and the accusers began to leave, one by one, starting with the oldest. Perhaps they had also committed adultery with this woman, or with some other woman. Perhaps they had committed other sins that were also egregious violations of the Law of Moses. As St. Paul pointed out, by the works of the Law no one can be justified. (Romans 3:20, Galatians 2:16) Every person has fallen short. (Romans 3:23)

          This is a difficult practical problem. Does the fact that every person has sinned mean that no one is qualified to be a judge of any legal matter? If so, where would human society be?  God appointed Moses as judge and told him to appoint lower level judges. (Exodus 18:13-26) And even when Moses sinned by not treating God as holy in the sight of the people, God did not remove him as being judge. His punishment was that he would not enter the Promised Land but only see it from afar. (Numbers 20:12) But Jesus seemed to imply that no one was qualified to carry out the sentence of the judgment of a person who had clearly violated one of the Ten Commandments. And so we come to one of the fundamental differences between the old and new covenants. Jesus was God incarnate. He came to earth to set things right. And that is the true purpose of judgment - even the final judgment. The right will be established. The wrong will be discarded. One of the reasons that we rightly fear this judgment is that we do not want to let go of what is wrong; we cling to it, and He will eliminate it, to be discarded. The lake of fire will be the city dump for all eternity. But Jesus was not about to discard this woman whose life had taken her to a point where she violated the Law of Moses. Perhaps she was a prostitute, or  she lived with a man who was married to someone else, or she was married to someone else. Interestingly, the Pharisees did not bring the man she was involved with to Jesus for judgment, even though it takes two people to commit adultery. Since this happened immediately on the day after the  Pharisees had been enraged by Jesus' words, they must have known about this woman and where and when to find her in the act. The fundamental difference between Jesus and the Pharisees at this incident is that Jesus came to make things right, the Pharisees wanted to enforce the law. But really, the Pharisees wanted to use this woman as a tool to get at Jesus.

          This has been reflected through church history throughout the time since Christ until now. The church has often been the motivating force behind rescue missions, homes for unwed mothers, and so on. This has been mixed with a history of church legalism, including the severest of punishment in some cases for people judged guilty of violating specific rules. This apparent schizophrenia reflects that reality that the Christian faith has seldom managed to integrate and synthesize a culture and lifestyle that seamlessly includes both love and holiness. Jesus showed us how it is to be done, but it is hard because it runs against the grain of our human nature. It is truly the reflection of the divine nature. If we are fully open to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can seek that He would impart this into our hearts and minds.

          The story winds down with Jesus asking the woman where are those who condemned her, and her recognition that they were gone. She was free. When we think of our own sin and the freedom that Jesus has given us through the cross, do we rejoice in seeing that no one condemns us?

          Jesus' parting words to her, and to us, are: "Go and sin no more." We have to see in this the spiritual reality that holiness is a gift from God to us. It is not for His benefit that He calls us to be holy. He is already holy in every atom (or spiritual equivalent of atom) of His being. His call to us to be holy benefits us in many ways. One of them is that if we are holy, we will enjoy His presence. Another result of holiness is elimination of the consequences of sin from our lives on earth. The Ten Commandments were given because God wanted to explain to the Israelites a simple standard of right behavior that would protect them from some of the worst consequences. Neither Israel nor we, on our own, can keep the Law. Jesus set this woman free from the law, to be what God had called her to be. Were the words "Go and sin no more" a 'thou shalt not' command, or a word of God that carried the power of fulfillment, as per the angel Gabriel's words to Mary recorded in Luke 1:37 - that nothing God declares is impossible? This was before the Holy Spirit was given (John 7:39), yet Jesus spoke these words to her. How much more now that the Holy Spirit has been given should we receive these empowering words from Jesus?