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John 8:2-11
Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
For my money, this is one of the most interesting stories in all of the gospels. It’s a story that’s well known. even among people who don’t count themselves as practicing Christians. And my suspicion is that many people think what Jesus says here is one of the wisest things he ever said. Just about everybody knows what you’re talking about if you say, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” And just about everybody regards it as a profound saying.
But as you might remember, this is also a story that’s the subject of some debate and disagreement among New Testament scholars. Some versions of the Bible don’t include it, or just include it in footnotes or with special notations. The reason this story is questioned is that apparently it did not appear in the first copies of the Gospel of John when Published, somewhere between 90 and 100 AD. However, the Bible scholars say there it seems that the story was added soon after, to the second generation of manuscript copies of the gospel of John.
To explain how this happened, I think it’s important to think about how the gospel of John came to be. The theory that makes the most sense to me is that the Gospel of John was probably compiled by the disciples of John after his death, to record all the things he had passed along to them during his lifetime. John himself would have been very elderly by the time it was published. It seems to me most likely the disciples of the apostle John realized that this story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery had been left out when they compiled their gospel and decided they had made a mistake in omitting it, so they included it in later editions of their gospel.
There are three things about this story that persuade me that it’s the record of an authentic event from the life and ministry of Jesus:
First of all, the first generation of teachers who were leading the church at the time all seem to have believed it was a legitimate story from the life of Jesus. And in those early years, there would probably have been people around to debunk it if it wasn’t legitimate. If there were questions about it, they could have been resolved by asking the apostle John’s disciples whether it really happened or not. If they had any question about the story’s legitimacy it probably would have been left out from that point on.
The second reason I think this story is legitimate is that it includes ‘extraneous information’ – information that could be left out without changing the meaning of the story. In this case, the extraneous information is the part about Jesus writing on the ground with his finger. Bible scholars say that in a text from a predominantly oral culture, that kind of extraneous information is strong evidence that an eyewitness was reporting it exactly as he or she had seen it. The eyewitness didn’t know what Jesus was writing, but reported that he had written something. If someone was making up the story, they wouldn’t include extraneous details.
The third reason I think this story should be accepted — and probably the most important one — is that it seems perfectly consistent with both the style and the content of the rest of Jesus’ teaching. His emphasis on grace and forgiveness and his commandment not to judge others make this story seem authentic.
One aspect of this story that always arrests my attention when I read it is the fact that after Jesus had challenged the mob, the men wandered away one by one, with the oldest leaving first. That strikes me as perfectly consistent with what we understand about human nature. Confronted with the reality of their own sinfulness, it was the older men who had lived longer as sinners in this world, and therefore were the first to acknowledge they had no right to throw the first stone.
But one part of the story that doesn’t always get much attention is the fact that the woman was guilty. And I say it’s a fact because the story reports it as a fact. Leaving all the questions about whether she was being discriminated against by a mob of judgmental men, this account leaves no question whatever about her guilt. It doesn’t say that she was accused of adultery, or that she was suspected of adultery. It says she was caught in adultery. It says she was guilty.
It also seems significant to me that Jesus doesn’t say a word to the woman until all of her accusers have drifted away. Then Jesus asks where all the others have gone, and tells her that he does not condemn her. And then he sets her free, with the command to ‘leave her life of sin.’
It has been my experience that a lot of the most of the ‘religious’ people I’ve known have a problem with a person who had committed such a serious offense being ‘let off scot-free.’ I’ve seen a number of disciplinary cases in church life that have involved sexual misconduct. And there’s no doubt in my mind that if the investigating body in any of the cases had told the offender, “Neither do we condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin,” there would be a furious backlash. People have been forced out of positions of authority in the Christian world because they did not punish that kind of misconduct harshly enough.
But Jesus didn’t punish the woman at all.
It seems to me that this story is meant to be an example of how the followers of Jesus are meant to respond to the sins of others. In the story, as in a number of others, Jesus extends gracious forgiveness. The woman is not asked to earn forgiveness by confessing and repenting or making any of the acts of self-abasement we human beings so often demand of those we think are guilty. Jesus simply releases the woman from the guilty position in which she had placed herself, and tells her not to do it again.
I suppose you might say that having come within a stone’s throw of execution by a mob, the woman might be expected to ‘leave her life of sin’ even without needing to be told to. But that’s speculation on our part. Jesus just offers the woman gracious forgiveness and leaves it at that.
As for us, we can be pretty conditional about extending forgiveness. We want people to demonstrate that they’re really, really sorry before we’ll forgive them. But in this famous story, Jesus demonstrates in a startling way the true depth of God’s gracious love – and the kind of forgiveness that springs from that love.
Let’s pray. Lord, help us to live each day with a greater commitment to living holy lives, but help us also to realize how far we fall short of your standards, and to extend grace and forgiveness to others as you have extended them to us. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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