The First to Throw a Stone

John 8:1-11

Jesus is back at the temple, and a group surrounds Him as He sits down to teach.

A woman, led by the teachers of the law and Pharisees, is brought to stand in front of Jesus and those He's been teaching. "Teacher," they say, "this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women, now what do You say?" Rather than answer, Jesus bends over and writes on the ground with His finger.

The Pharisees are correct, according to the law, adultery is a sin. In Exodus 20:14 one of the ten commandments given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai states, "You shall not commit adultery." Leviticus 20:10 expounds on this further, "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife - with the wife of his neighbor - both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death."

Perhaps some of these leaders were there when Jesus taught on a hillside one day and stated, "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

The religious leaders kept questioning Jesus until He finally replied, "If any one of you is without sin,let him be the first to throw a stone at her." From the oldest to the youngest the men melt away. If nothing else, they had sinned in not keeping the letter of the law, which stated that the man committing adultery was to be brought with the woman, and both were to die.

Jesus looked at the woman and told her He didn't condemn her, and that she was to leave her life of sin. It reminds me of the words recorded in John 3:17, "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him."

Jesus came to save sinners.

"But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinnners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8