ADULTERY EXPOSED 2. FORGIVEN CLEANSED. God’s anger with hypocrisy.

The religious leaders tempted the Son of God. They wanted to  charge Him. (John 8:6).  Satan tempted in the garden of Eden the first man and woman, God’s highest creation, to disobey. The same sinister person subjected our Lord to 40 days and nights of rigourous testing in the wilderness.  He defeated the enemy with the Word of God.  Now the same opponent tempted the King of glory, interrupting His teaching of the common people in the court of the temple.  Watch out for every assault of this adversary in your walk with God. He has not changed in his subtle trickery.

The all-powerful Son of the Most High ‘stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger , as though He did not hear.’  With all His grandeur, the Saviour humbled Himself, a type of His ‘becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’ (Phil 2:8)  He forgot the religious rulers, gloating over their ‘catch’, this poor woman taken in sin’.  Does this refer to the coming of the Son of God as the Angel of His presence in Old Testament days, when He wrote on the stones of clay and gave Moses the greatest moral code and spiritual guide in the Ten Commandments. 

We do not know what the Lord wrote on the dust of the temple court.  Was it directly from the Decalogue (the Commandments)?  For example, ‘You shall not commit adultery’. Or ‘’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart’? Did He write, ‘He who looks on a woman to lust after her in his own heart has committed adultery with her in his heart’?  He disregarded them, apparently not hearing them.    

They pressurised God’s dear Son, as ‘they continued asking Him’, reminding us that the enemy of our souls often oppresses us so that we may faint in the way. Jesus Christ responded by ‘raising Himself up’, symbolic of His raising from the grave.  He had said, “ I, If I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto Me.’ He will soon draw a despised, trodden-down woman to Himself – and remake her in His likeness.

Now our Lord spoke a most powerful truth to the rulers, ‘ He who is without sin among you, let Him first cast a stone at her.’ Possibly their fists were as full of stones as their hearts were of cold judgment.  The searching word was ‘sin of the same kind’. 

The Lord challenged her accusers of sin, not only in the heart, but sexual sin of the same nature as the accused woman.  Christ strongly defended morality and right; and protected the down-trodden and despised.  He hated fraud. He laid bare the sham and hypocrisy in the Jewish, religious rulers.

He repeated His early move as ‘He again stooped down and wrote on the ground.’

(v8) Was this a historical representation of His coming in the form of man and humbling Himself in New Testament days.  Scripture hid the writing of the Son of God.  Only in heaven will we know what was recorded in the dust on this second occasion. He must have spoken for the record says, ‘Then those who heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one,  beginning with the oldest, even to the last. (v9)

They heard His speech. The fire of God’s Spirit scorched their hearts, and they were aware of their very own sin. They had pretended that the woman was the only sinner, and, therefore, deserved to die.  God created the first man without conscience.  Adam and Eve sinned, activating their conscience, when ‘they hid from their Creator’. Their consciousness of all the events of their lives rose to witness against them. Notice that the religious leaders led the retreat, thus admitting they were adulterers, masking their sin, which the white-hot holiness of the Lord brought to light. They let the stones fall, which clattered on the tiled surface of the temple court. The stones rose up against them.

She was privileged for ‘Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.’ Purity alongside of impurity; right against unrighteousness; morality against immorality; loftiness near degradation; holiness versus lust. Nothing could besmirch the character of the sinless Son of God. How He loved the needy – even to death.

What followed symbolised the resurrection for ‘Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman.’ (v10)  Did He smiled the comforting, reassuring smile that only the Lord Jesus could give?  How her throbbing heart would have quietened and her pulse slowed at the tenderness of Him Who loves righteousness and hates iniquity.’ We must meet our Lord face to face.

‘Woman, where are your accusers, He said?’ ‘Has no one condemned you?’

Men used  every degrading expression, even though they sought her body for sexual satisfaction. Now God’s Son call her ‘Woman’, exactly as He did on the cross when He provided a home and a son for Mary His mother. ‘Woman, behold your son.  Son, behold your mother.’ Christ came to save and to redeem.  He displayed those virtues clearly in this dramatic moment.  Praise the Lord!

The accusers had slunk away from the temple court, their unjust condemnation fading with them.  They were sinners in the presence of the Holy One of Israel, and could not bear the flaming fire of His wrath.  Gentle Jesus! Yes, but the angry God, too.

When this woman responded to Jesus’ question, she called HIM Lord.  Such a dignified, noble answer.  ‘No One, Lord.’ Scripture tells us that ‘No man calls Him Lord except by the Holy Spirit.’ God’s gracious Spirit had begun to work redemptively in her life.  Do you allow God’s glorious Spirit to guide, teach and enlighten you? 

‘And Jesus said to her, ‘ Neither do I condemn you.  Go and sin no more.’ ( v11)

The Lord had earlier explained that ‘He did not come to condemn the world, but that through HIM the world might be saved.’ How this relieved the heart of this dear woman  to know that the Pure and lofty One did not censure her for her sinful, degraded life-style, but that rather pardoned, forgave , purified and restored the beauty of noble womanhood to her.  That’s why He came to die, and to offer Himself a sacrifice .   ‘The Son of Man offered Himself as a ransom for us.’  

The Son of God commissioned her to return as a free woman,’ Go and sin no more!’

He had set her free from the damning, degrading sexual style that had bound her for years.  Now free!  Free to live as her Lord longed for her.  Scripture does not record what further discussion was held with the needy woman. Paul later wrote, ‘ therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. ( 2 Cor 7:1)  We can cleanse ourselves only by coming to the fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins.

I trust that this woman went home, wedded a man who loved his God and her, and established a beautiful home life in purity and holiness: bringing up her children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.   Heaven will recount the full story.  I know of restored womanhood whose saintly lives blessed their families – and many others.

This incident closed with the unprecedented revealing of the source of spiritual light,  

‘Jesus spoke to them again, ‘I AM the Light of the world.  He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. ( v12)   The Son of God gave His children the sexual instinct  to be exercised during the hallowed married oneness. He is the Light that shines in every Man and woman, sanctifying our family tie and hallowing it with His gracious presence. He hates sexual debasement, and offers release and purity. While sexual looseness is rampant, only Jesus Christ, the Light of the world can illumine us.