We come to the end of the workweek and continue our readings thru the New Testament in a year with John 7: 40 – 8:11. After you’ve finished reading the passage, please come back and we’ll connect the dots.
The stories are seemingly disconnected, but if you noticed the beginning verse
in chapter 8, you can see that they happen one after the other. Jesus is at the Feast of Tabernacles and in
the course of the ritual of carrying water, he spoke to the crowd about
believing in Him as “living water for those who believe” (7:37-38). The response of the people is divided. Some call him a “prophet”, and others “the
Christ”. There may not be any distinction
between the two titles, but since they see Jesus as nothing more than a
Galilean, they didn’t know what to think about him. Clearly, they missed Jesus’ point about
believing in him.
The
scene shifts in 7:45 – 52, to the chief priests and Pharisees, who had sent
officers of the Temple to arrest Jesus.
When they ask why they didn’t bring Jesus in – “The officers
answered, ‘No one ever spoke like this man!’” (7:46). The officers were able to see what many could
not – that Jesus was no mere prophet they had arrested before. The Pharisees had nothing more than an accusation,
“have you also been deceived?” (7:47), and they based this on two things
– that both proved to be false. First,
they said, none of the authorities or Pharisees believed in him (7:48). That was proven false two verses later when
Nicodemus, the Pharisee who visited Jesus by night in John 3 spoke up:
“Nicodemus,
who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does
our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he
does?” (7:50-51).
Their
second charge was that “they” alone were the arbiters of what the Law said
(7:49), which meant they had the final say about what the Law taught – and from
their point of view – Jesus was breaking the law. We see how dangerous it is to have church
leaders, pastors, teachers, who do not teach or preach the word of God, but become
ones who “stand over” the word in order to approve what is of God and what is
not. We have pastors who are
story-tellers, entertainers, gifted speakers, but it is not for any good if it
arises from within their own personality that is devoid of faithfulness to
teaching the word of God.
In
many bibles there is a verse 53 that says, “Then they all went home”, and
that is then followed by the beginning of chapter 8 which says, “but Jesus
went to the Mount of Olives” (8:1).
Since this is a devotional commentary, I’ll not get into the debate that
7:53 thru 8:11 is not in most of the early manuscripts and therefore is not
part of the inspired Scripture. It would
take several paragraphs to try to make a case for the passage’s inclusion. The technical words for the study of the
ancient texts to compare them and look for deviations, or inclusions, is called
“Textual Criticism”. The word criticism
shouldn’t necessarily mean there are scholars who try to take the bible apart –
although that has been attempted.
Instead, it is a science of scholarship that studies ancient texts to
compare them. Our problem is that the
earliest manuscripts on which the Scriptures were written by John, Peter, Paul,
Luke, did not survive the first part of the second century. When churches received the letters of the Apostles,
they not only read them but copied them to send out to other churches. Try copying a letter someone has written –
even a famous one – and when you compare the two copies there are likely to be
mistakes in one shape or another. The
original scrolls are gone, and only copies remain. Sometimes the various copies don’t agree, and
that is to be expected. In spite of the best
attempts of Christian Scribes to copy the texts faithfully, some errors occurred. I add in ending this, the vast majority of
differences are very small. Of all the
manuscripts found from the early centuries, estimates are that they agree in
98% of the words written.
This
is where we turned the page of the Pharisees leaving, and Jesus departing to
the Mount of Olives. Is it in the original
text John wrote? Many argue “no”, but I
include it in the text merely because it stands in context, connecting the end of
chapter 7 with the events that occur in chapter 8. My brother Ed makes a legitimate comment “the
story is very Jesus-like”. I couldn’t
agree more. The same Pharisees who left
the Temple, and do not arrest Jesus, come back the next morning determined to “bait”
him into a no-win situation. The morning
opens with Jesus teaching – sitting down, like a Rabbi would – in the Temple,
while the Pharisees seek to set a trap –
“At
dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered
around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and
the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before
the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of
adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do
you say?’” (8:3-5).
We know what is happening here. The Pharisees have accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath laws, and in general, they were failing to make their case to the people. Yet, moral indiscretions, adultery, were serious offenses – such that the Law prescribed as severe a punishment as public stoning (to death) for the man and woman caught in an adulterous affair (cf. Leviticus 20:10). John makes it known, it was just the woman, and not the man, who they dragged before Jesus. They put Jesus on the spot by asking him what should we do if the law says to stone her? If he said, “yes”, the people would see him as nothing more than another religious leader, like the Pharisees. If he said, “no”, he would be proven to be a person who did not obey the Law. Besides these two problems, the unspoken issues is that any offense still fell under Roman law, and the Romans did not allow for any death penalty except under their approval. They were trying to put Jesus in the middle of a no-win situation.
“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 (8:6).
There
have many interpretive comments on why Jesus bent down and wrote on the dirt-covered ground. One interpreter makes
the point that God had written the law on the tablets of stone "by the
finger of God" (Ex. 31:18), and therefore, He is God. Another that Jesus is reminding them of the
warning in Jeremiah 17:13, “they that depart from me shall be written on
earth”. One more was that Jesus was
letting the tension build as they all stood around waiting for his
response. My favorite is from Dr. Sproul,
who once in his teaching said, “my guess is that He looked at one of the
accusers and wrote, “embezzler”, and then he looked at another and wrote “Rachel”,
and at another and wrote “murderer”, and one by one they began to turn and walk
away.”[1]
As Jesus writes, he looks up, then stands up, and speaks to the crowded group
of Pharisees – “And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to
them, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at
her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when
they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and
Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him’” (8:7-9).
The older
ones began to move first, and then the younger ones followed. No one was left. In one move Jesus upheld the
law but more importantly demonstrated the grace of God. Was the woman
guilty? Probably, she offered no
protest. But their hypocrisy and their
willingness to use her as a pawn demonstrated a much greater offense before God
than her sin. My brother Ed’s comment is correct: “he was exposing the darkness in them that
they worked hard to keep hidden”. [2] In
terms of the woman, Jesus isn’t excusing her sin, but he is not going to fall
into their hypocritical trap.
“Jesus
stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go,
and from now on sin no more” (8:10-11).
Dr.
Sproul sums this up beautifully: “We might (have) expected Jesus to look at
the woman and say, ‘Well, I’m still here.” He did not do that. Jesus said to her the sweetest words that any
human being could ever hear from his lips: ‘neither do I condemn you’
(8:11b). If you can’t relate to those
words, then your heart has been hardened, because each one of us comes to God like
this woman, guilty, ashamed, naked, and exposed. But Christ clothes us with the cloak of His righteousness,
covering our nakedness and shame…then what?
Now that Grace has abounded, should sin still abound? (Romans 6:1). No.
Jesus said, ‘go and sin no more’ (8:11c).
In other words, ‘don’t do this anymore. Be done with this kind of
life. Go now in your forgiveness, and do
not do this sin anymore.’ Those who are
forgiven should gladly put aside their sinful ways and walk in the newness of
life.”[3]
Peace
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