JOHN 8: THE SETUP

LIBERTY AND LOVE #118

“Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say? They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone! Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you? No, Lord, she said. And Jesus said, Neither do I. Go and sin no more” (John‬ ‭8:1-11‬ ‭NLT‬‬).

This was a trap if ever there was one. All the Pharisees were interested in doing was discrediting Jesus so that people would not listen to him. They hated him, they were jealous of him, and they knew what kind of threat he represented to their false, man-made religious system. They wanted to put him out of business.

Everytime they saw crowds gathered around him, listening to him—such as was the case here—they were looking for a way to put a stop to it. If they could have, they would have stoned him right there at the temple. It wasn’t the woman that they were interested in. She was just the bait. Jesus was the fish they were after.

Notice that he is teaching when they interrupt him with this situation that they think will put him on the horns of a dilemma. Why not leave the man alone and let the people listen to him? Because to them, Jesus was nothing but trash. He did not have the credentials, the authority, to teach. They were the religious leaders. They were the scribes and teachers of the law. The people were supposed to be listening to them. This renegade, itinerant rabbi was not supposed to have the ears of the people. Later, when they delivered him to Pilate, we are told that Pilate knew what the real problem was. The religious leaders were jealous of him.

So they thought they had Jesus dead to rights here. There was no way he could get out of this one. We aren’t told how long they worked on thinking this up, but we may be certain that there was a meeting. Don’t think for a minute that they just happened by a couple committing adultery and said, “Oh, let’s take her to Jesus.” This was planned. The whole situation was planned. It was designed to put Jesus in a quandary. If he had said let her go, that would have been a controversial move, knowing that the Law of Moses was specific about adulterers being stoned.

But if he had said stone her, then here the man known as the “friend of sinners” would have had a sinner killed. Can’t you see the logic here? He only has two options, the way they see it. He has to make a choice, and either choice he makes will cause him to lose respect in the eyes of some who have faith in him. It was a game, but it was one they did not know how to play.

When Jesus cleansed the temple, driving out the money-changers and the crooks (Matt. 21:23-27), the Pharisees asked him, ”By what authority are you doing these things?” He asked them a question and said, “If you answer it, I will answer your question.” And here was the question he asked them: “The baptism of John the Baptist—was it from heaven or from men?” They didn’t know what to say. So they huddled up and basically said “He’s got us in a trap. If we say it was from man, then the people might stone us because everybody around here thinks John was a prophet. But if we say it was from heaven, he’s going to ask, Why then didn’t you submit to it?” So they came back and said, “We don’t know.” Jesus said, “Then I won’t answer your question, either.”

Jesus asked them a question that they could not answer without getting themselves into trouble. And that’s exactly what they were trying to do to Jesus in John 8. But it did not work. Because you cannot trap the Lord and ruler of the universe.

So what was Jesus’ response? He stooped down and wrote on the ground. What did he write? No doubt he wrote Leviticus 20:10: “The man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, he who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress, shall surely be put to death.”

The Law of Moses said you stone the man and the woman that commit adultery. If this woman was caught “in the very act,” where was the man? You could not obey the Law of Moses if you did not have the man. Moses didn’t say stone the woman, he said stone the man and the woman. How did the man get away?

It was a setup. The man was probably one of them. So their little trick did not work. “He raised himself up and said to them, Let the one who is without sin among you throw a stone at her first. And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard what he said, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last.” The reason they went away, convicted by their conscience, is because they were guilty of adultery themselves.

When Jesus said, “Let the one who is without sin stone her first,” he was not talking about sin in general. If it required the person doing the stoning to be guilty of no sins at all, then that law back in Leviticus could never have been practiced and it would have been one of the most useless laws ever given. The Pharisees knew what he was saying: Let him among you who is without the sin of adultery cast the first stone. They were guilty, and they knew they were guilty, and that’s the reason that they dropped the rocks and went away.

The Pharisees are still around, and they are still up to their same old tricks. They had sex before they got married, they have lusted in their heart like everybody else has at some point, they have married women who had children outside of “marriage,” yet they maintain that they are the “husband of one wife” and have never committed adultery because they have only had one man-made “wedding ceremony..” Then they turn around and want to “stone,” in their own way, the ones who have had more than one “ceremony.” Ignore these wolves. They are hypocrites. Always have been, always will be.

Dewayne Dunaway