The Gospel of John - Outline Part 21 - Hypocritical Condemnation

TITLE

John 8:1-11 – Hypocritical Condemnation

EXPLANATION

Not content to leave Jesus alone, the scribes and Pharisees continued to hassle Him.  The next day they brought to Him a woman caught in adultery.  Insultingly, they pointed out that the penalty for adultery was death by stoning (as if Jesus would not have known that already).  And, they asked Him what His response was.  Their purpose was to catch the Lord between the rock of conflict with the Law and the hard place of the opinion of the people.  Conveniently, although for the woman to have been caught in adultery there must have been a male partner, he was nowhere to be found.  The intent of the Jewish leaders was not to see justice done, but rather to entrap Jesus.

As He so often did, Jesus sidestepped the petty efforts of the Jews and effortlessly turned the tables on them.  He merely instructed them that the one among them who was without sin should be the first to cast a stone.  Convicted by their own guilt, the accusers melted away in shame.  Finally, and this is a key point, Jesus turned to the woman and admonished her to stop sinning.

APPLICATION

The issue of biblical judgment is often misunderstood by people.  In an attempt to avoid having the lens of truth pointed at their unrighteous deeds they love to carelessly cherry pick Bible verses and throw them around to cover themselves with a veneer of Scripture.  Jesus’s statement in John 8:7 is one such favorite of carnal Christians.  When confronted about their sin, they glibly say “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Such statements are a gross misrepresentation of the Bible. 

In the first place, the context here is about capital punishment.  It is about guilty verdicts being applied by people who stand condemned before God of the same crime.  That is what Jesus’s point was.  What He said has nothing to do with an exhortation from one Christian to another to cease from sinning.  Secondly, Jesus was not condoning the immorality of this woman.  Undoubtedly, she truly was guilty of what she was accused of.  And, Jesus did not let her off the hook.  His final word to her was to “go and sin no more.”

Based on this, we ought to first stop sinning, second rightly assess the sins of both ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Christ, and third not pull Scripture out of context in order to justify our own actions.