He Who Is Without Sin

So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”  John 8:7

This remains one of those stories in the Bible that reads the reader well. How do you see yourself in this story? As He Who Is Without Sin? Probably not. We have all likely played the part of the scribes and Pharisees, slinking away one by one as our sin is written down in the dirt. (This is one guess among scholars as to what Christ wrote on the ground.) Each of us at some point must see ourselves as the one caught in the very act and standing surrounded by our accusers, facing the Judge.

Our first thought might be that it isn't fair. Where is the partner in crime? It is like Eve being judged without Adam. Bathsheba charged before the court and with David nowhere to be seen. The stories in the Bible do not go that way. Adam and Eve received their sentences together as they had sinned together. David was the one confronted by Nathan the prophet as he was the one admitting no sin in the so-called Uriah Affair of murder and adultery. (Yeah, so called by me.) Jesus does not address the absent partner though, how fair is that? He addresses the accusers first, and after each of them turns away without throwing a stone, he turns to you, the one caught in sin. Jesus our Lord and Judge offers no condemnation, only mercy. "Go, and sin no more," He says. 

Do we suppose that the woman after her brush with a painful death managed to sin no more? What matters is whether we made it to the end without sinning after that first charge and the mercy that followed. Like the woman caught in adultery, probably not. Praise God that His mercies are new each morning, and that His Son's death on the cross covered all sin. 

Rejoice this day in the knowledge of Jesus the Christ!

Bucky