LESSONS LEARNED
BY WALKING IN THE ADULTRESS’S SANDALS:
The adulterous woman’s story can be
found in John 8. This first sentence is peculiar because it finishes the story
from chapter 7. It says the Pharisees went to their homes and Jesus went to the
Mount of Olives. It reminded me of Matthew 8:20, “And Jesus replied to him,
Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have lodging places, but the Son of
Man has nowhere to lay His head.” He went to the Mount of Olives because Jesus
had no home, no place to lay his head, and none of the Pharisees had offered
him lodging.
Then the Bible says that Jesus
appeared or went at dawn in the Temple courts and sat down to teach. When does He teach you? When do you sit down
with Jesus and listen?
While Jesus is teaching the
Pharisees and the teachers of the Law brought a woman who they caught in the
act of adultery. First of all, did they catch her in the act because that was
the kind of woman she was or did they catch her because they set a trap for
her? Second, these men were breaking the law because they failed to bring the
adulterer with them. Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22 says both the woman
and the man, the adulterer and adulterous should be put to death. It takes two
to commit adultery, so why leave the man out of this equation?
The teachers of the Law and
Pharisees made the woman stand in the middle while they openly exposed her sin
to everyone who was around. I noticed
they didn’t openly discuss their own sins or short-comings. It is so easy
to point out the sins and short-comings of others, judge them and their sins
being worse than our own making us feel superior, but when it comes to facing
our own sins and confessing them that’s a different animal altogether, isn’t
it?
These men like the one in her bed
were using her. The question the Pharisees posed regarding her sin was a trap
for Jesus. They didn’t need her to be present to ask Jesus about adultery, but
don’t you think they used her presence to try to manipulate Jesus or make the
weight of their questions feel more real?
After they asked the question, Jesus
knelt and began writing in the dirt. These men were relentlessly asking Jesus
what should be done. Keep in mind, she’s standing, and Jesus was kneeling. I’ve
often wondered what He wrote. Personally, I think it would be great if Jesus
was writing their sins down in the dirt at their feet, but that’s the fleshly
side of me.
Jesus’s response is, “Let him who is without sin among you be
the first to throw a stone at her.” I love this. It’s so clever. Matthew 7:3-5
says that we should take the log out of own eye before removing the splinter
from someone else’s. Jesus said it before, and now He’s teaching it again.
These Pharisees and teachers failed to realize is that Jesus came to fulfill
the Law. He taught them that it was more important to exercise forgiveness and
grace and mercy than to think yourself better than you aught. Now let’s bring
that home. Sunday faces, church gossip groups (prayer groups), judging those who
come to church and aren’t as perfect as yourself…yep, that’s how it. Her sin of
adultery put Jesus on the cross just as the same as your sin of gluttony,
gossiping, pride, anger, etc. You are no better. For we have all sinned and
come short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23. Do you want all your dirty laundry
displayed for others to see? Because I assure you, others know what you think
your hiding. They know your sins too.
Another caveat to this situation is
that in Matthew 5:27, Jesus said that if you look and covet another man’s wife
you have committed adultery. Your thought life can be just as convicting as
doing the act, and you know that at least one of these men had to have thought
about having sex outside his marriage. Yes, that’s an assumption on my part,
but I think it’s pretty safe to say. I’ve found that those who bark the loudest
often have the most to hide…just sayin’.
So whiile these men are
contemplating how to respond to Jesus, he stoops again to write in the dirt.
This body language is intriguing to me. Truthfully, Jesus had full authority to
stand up and ask each one of those men to their face about their sins. Even if
Jesus had remained standing and looking into their faces as they pondered his
statement, it could be considered as confrontational. Instead, by squatting
with his face downward, He took a passive approach but shamed them just as
effectively. Sometimes the most effective way of winning an argument isn’t by
using a two by four to the head. Sometimes it’s simply being quiet as they
figure it out in their own heads.
Slowly the men start to leave starting with the oldest. Why
the oldest? Is it because they were wiser or was it because they had more time
in life to accrue more sin? Either way, eventually all of her accusers leave,
and she’s still standing in the same place where she had been forced by her
accusers to stand. She’s standing. Jesus kneeling. What had to be going through
her mind? This whole thing took place without her saying two words. This whole
thing took place without her having the opportunity to say or defend herself,
not that she would have much of a defense since they caught her in the act. But
here she is with this man named Jesus who forced her accusers to leave by the
words he said. Her life that she should have lost under the Law was found in
the form of grace, mercy and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
Jesus stands and speaks to the
woman. His actions here are not confrontational either nor are his words. Woman, where are your accusers? Has no man
condemned you? John 8:10. “Woman” is a term with tenderness. He called his
mother “woman” when she asked him to turn the water to wine as his first
miracle. Woman, where are your accusers?
A rhetorical question asked to make her look and think. They both knew what had
happened. Has no man condemned you?
This is so not how she saw things ending. You realize that, don’t you? Women in
her sandals were stoned, and yet, here she stood without anyone to condemn her
of a sin that she had committed. Jesus told her, Neither do I condemn you. In John 3:17, it says he didn’t come to
condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved. Jesus didn’t
condemn her because he had sinned like those Pharisees that had to leave. He
didn’t condemn her because that was not his role, his purpose for coming to the
world. He told her to Go. Move out of
the place where you were condemned. Step out of the place where you should have
been condemned to death and change. He wanted her to live a life without sin
because he knew the consequences for sin. She knew what the consequence of her
sin should’ve been. It should’ve been death. For the wages of sin is death Romans 6:23. The consequence for sin
is death and separation from God.
She went from a promiscuous behavior and bad choices to being
forgiven; from being used to being redeemed; from having a death sentence to
have a restored life; from being exposed to being covered with grace and mercy;
from being defenseless to being defended in the name of love. She met the
Savior, and I can’t help but think her life was never the same.
For we all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We have all been condemned to death
for our sins. There is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10). We have all worn her sandals. What do you do
after you have been the recipient of grace, found forgiveness, been allowed to
exchange death for eternal life? What have you done with that good news? Are
you sharing it? Are you hiding it because you are too prideful and don’t want
to admit you were a sinner and needed saving? What are you doing with Jesus
Christ? Has your life been transformed? Mine has, a life transformed.
