“Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.” John 8: 7.
These words, spoken by Jesus, when some religious leaders demanded that a woman be stoned to death because she was caught in the act of adultery had a significant impact. One by one they left. Guilty because they had been exposed as hypocrites, and ashamed because they knew that they were no less sinners that the women they accused. They had been unable to condemn her to death because of their own sin. They left her with the only man who could have thrown the first stone; the very one who had said of himself, “I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world.”
John had a singular purpose for writing this book: to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. In what way does Jesus outwitting the Pharisees prove that he is the Messiah? Does it not only prove he was smarter than them?
On the contrary, this is a pivotal story in substantiating Jesus claim to be the Messiah. He was the only one who could have answered in this way. He existed before the law. He had come to fulfill the law by winning the right for all who believe in him to become the children of God. He had not come to judge the world but to save it, and now he demonstrates how that truth will define the way judgement and forgiveness will be understood.
What Jesus is saying, is that if the woman, according to the Jewish law had committed a sin deserving of death, then only one who was completely righteous has the right to exact that penalty. And there is only one who is righteous: God. If in his holiness and unlimited love he chooses to forgive her and restore her and every other sinner on earth, then his sovereign decision is final.
I am deeply challenged by this story. It does not simply speak about the morality or immorality of the death penalty, but it puts the spotlight on humankinds right to condemn even a guilty person and take a life. I am sure that Jesus knew what manner of woman she was, and the back story that had led to the act for which she was being condemned. He would have also been aware of her position of powerlessness in a world that often abused women. But he did not speak as he did for those reasons. As the Messiah, he voiced the holiness and love of God into a judgmental mindset.
No prophet in the past had ever spoken the mind of God so clearly and so boldly. Only one who was indeed the Son of God, the eternal Word who was with God and was God, could enunciate the breadth and depth of the mercy of God as he did.
It is time for God’s children everywhere to live righteously and non-judgmentally in a world that makes a pretence and a mockery out of tolerance. What Jesus calls for in us is much deeper, more costly and infinitely more healing than tolerance. It is mercy! It is compassion! It is acceptance!