Is Jesus Consistent with the Law?

John  8:1-11    (CLICK HERE FOR BIBLE VERSES)

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is John 8:1-11.  I encourage you to read the passage yourself first and see what you can glean with the Holy Spirit’s help, then read the GAME sharing below.  Let’s go!

John 8:1-6 (NIV)

¹ but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

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, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

 Is Jesus Consistent with the Law?

John 8:1-6

This passage opens with Jesus going off to teach around the Mount of Olives and the crowds coming to him to learn. During the middle of his teaching he is interrupted by the religious leaders. The Pharisees and Scribes bring a woman caught in the middle of the act of adultery and place her in the midst of the crowd and Jesus to see what he would do and how he’d interpret the Law of Moses. They’re confident that the Law says they should stone her to death, which was execution by the community throwing rocks at her untill she died. The episode is inhuman and humiliating for this woman. Notice, that the man she was committing the act with was not there and she is being used as an object to test Jesus whom the Pharisees and Scribes were trying to catch in an act of blasphemy.

This was not a new thing for the religious leaders. They constantly tried to test Jesus and catch him in some sort of inconsistency. They tested Jesus about paying taxes, what was the greatest commandment, how he’d handle Gentiles and various other ways they thought he was breaking their laws. Yet, here the religious leaders are inconsistent in how they were trying to apply God’s Law. This was not new for the religious leaders. In John 7 we saw Jesus pointed out how they were inconsistent with applying the Law. The example he used was, if a child was born 8 days before the Sabbath, which Law would they keep; the Law saying they shouldn’t work or the one saying they should circumcise the male child 8 days after their birth (John 7:21-24)?

What we see from the Pharisees is legalism and injustice. Legalism being a picking and choosing of which laws apply to you and which apply to others and evaluating someone’s worth and standing based on their outward ability to conform to these laws. Certain laws apply to everyone else but you (see John 7:19). This is also an act of injustice, notice they take the woman in adultery and not the man. The Law would say that both needed to be judged and executed. But power dynamics take effect and the man takes off while the woman is brought before Jesus as the “one caught in sin.”

How would Jesus respond to legalism and injustice? He exposes their universal sinfulness and the overflowing mercy of God towards repentant sinners.

John 8:1-6 (NIV)

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, “Let any one of you who is without sin 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.”

Merciful God

John 8:7-11

When it comes to God’s mercy, Jesus wants us to understand the reality that we all have sinned and are subject to condemnation apart from God’s mercy. In this text, Jesus tells them that anyone who is without sin can begin the execution. Jesus was the only sinless person among them, meaning that justice and mercy were in his hands. Anyone who’d be saved from judgment for their sin would need to look to Jesus’ for compassion and mercy. A.W. Tozer talks about God’s mercy as “the goodness of God confronting human suffering and guilt.”

God seeing our suffering, and responding to our guilt with a covering of his mercy. Jesus’ words feel very much like Paul’s in Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Paul goes on to tell us that we are justified by God’s grace and that God has passed over former sins to show us that Jesus is both the just (completely righteous) and the justifier (the one who forgives sin and gives righteousness). If the religious leaders wanted Jesus to consistently apply God’s Law to all of them, they’d all be at a place of judgement, none of them were spotless.

The religious leaders in John 8 are said to have left one by one, beginning with the oldest. We do not know why that unfolded that way, some speculate that they were more acquainted with their sin than the younger among them. Jesus is left with just the woman and he drew her attention to the empty space around them and how everyone that brought her to his feet was likewise a sinner. Legalism would have us think that others are worse sinners than we are. Injustice would have us unfairly apply God’s Law.

Jesus dismantled both legalism and injustice with her mercy. His parting words to this woman “neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.” The mercy of God is not an excuse to sin, but is a recognition that when we do, we can look to Christ to forgive and cover our guilt.

by David Frederick