Who is Without Sin

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn't open his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is mute, so he didn't open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the disobedience of my people to whom the stroke was due? They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53:5-9)

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman taken in adultery. Having set her in the midst, they told him, "Teacher, we found this woman in adultery, in the very act. Now in our law, Moses commanded us to stone such. What then do you say about her?" They said this testing him, that they might have something to accuse him of.

But Jesus stooped down, and wrote on the ground with his finger as though he did not hear. But when they continued asking him, he looked up and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her." Again he stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground. They, when they heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning from the oldest, even to the last. Jesus was left alone with the woman where she was, in the middle. Jesus, standing up, saw her and said, "Woman, where are your accusers? Did no one condemn you?" She said, "No one, Lord." Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way. From now on, sin no more." (John 8:3-11)

What did Jesus write on the dust of the temple floor? Was it the sins of each man there causing them to feel condemned and afraid of being exposed as so many people like to imagine?

[Love] is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, [love] keeps no record of wrongs.

(1 Corinthians 13:5 NIV)

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17 NRSV)

How does God deal with sin? That is really one of the core issues at stake in not only this chapter, but in the entire war between good and evil. What is the effective way of dealing with sin and rebellion? Our beliefs about this affect how we view God and how we relate to those we believe are wrong.

Therefore you are without excuse, O man, whoever you are who judge. For in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge practice the same things. We know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. (Romans 2:1-2)

Were not these religious leaders intent on judging this woman as a sinner deserving of punishment? But what kind of judgment were they using? Was it not the spirit of accusation and condemnation? Jesus came that all the world might be saved through Him, not to condemn. Their chief desire was like that of the devil, to accuse, shame, humiliate, to steal, kill and destroy as Jesus put it. This was the sin that made them just as guilty as the woman they wanted Jesus to condemn.

Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath, revelation, and of the righteous judgment of God; (Romans 2:4-5)

Judging and condemning people has never induced real righteousness in anyone. It is however, quite effective in producing such fruit as depression, despair, desperation, addictions and recidivism. I believe this is why God refused to allow Lucifer to integrate his proposed ideas of reform into God's government, for any element of fear, force or compulsion destroys capacity to respond to or thrive in agape love. God's kingdom is free of all condemning, accusation, pride and shame.

The issue of how to effectively achieve and maintain an orderly society free of harm lies at the very root of the contest over allegiance as to whose methods we will embrace and with which system we will identify. Jesus confronted head-on Satan's false system of obedience through intimidation relying on reward and punishment. In essence, the Tree of Life had returned to earth in the person of Jesus Christ to reconnect with God's children lost in lies that infected our thinking from exposure to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Love came to not only confront, but to expose and displace the methods, disposition and lies about how reality is designed for God's original purpose.

And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (John 12:32)

God methods and approach never rely on condemning or guilting people into compliance to His will, for that only damages the delicate fabric of the heart. God's design as revealed in Jesus relies only on methods of kindness, goodness and love. While it is true that He often needs to give warnings of what will happen if we continue in evil, God is never the direct source of the ill effects of evil that come into our lives. God never resorts to using Satan's methods of compulsion or fear, because love alone will be to overcome all evil through attraction of goodness and mercy alone.

I took them by his arms; but they didn't know that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with ties of love; and I was to them like those who lift up the yoke on their necks; and I bent down to him and I fed him. (Hosea 11:3-4)

And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all [people] to myself. (John 12:32)

This Jesus who wrote in the dust with His finger things so effective that powerful men slunk away for fear of being exposed, was the very same one who centuries earlier used His finger to write on tablets of stone the very law these mere humans now demanded He enforce without mercy against a fellow sinner. And that original law was shorthand for the love designed for the universe to function properly.

He gave to Moses, when he finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, stone tablets, written with God's finger. (Exodus 31:18)

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahweh: I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people: (Jeremiah 31:33)

Notice that Jesus actually invited these men to carry out their plan to execute this woman on the spot, so long as they complied with His precondition. Was this something He just made up as a way to prevent Himself from getting ensnared in their jealous plan to discredit Him? Or was it an amplification of a principle that can be found even in Old Testament Scripture but was not yet clear?

I believe it is safe to assume that what these self-righteous men had in mind was not merely law-enforcement for the improvement of society, it was the spirit of vengeance. It would be well then to examine carefully the true meaning of vengeance to discover the difference between how God takes vengeance in contrast to what we usually have in mind when we seek revenge.

Some might assume there is a significant difference between revenge and vengeance, so consider the dictionary definition for these two words that I find reasonably accurate in this case.

Revenge: (1) to exact punishment or expiation for a wrong on behalf of, especially in a resentful or vindictive spirit: (2) to take vengeance for; inflict punishment for; avenge.

Vengeance: infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or the like, on a person by another who has been harmed by that person; violent revenge.

These are directly in harmony with the spirit of commerce which is all about earning rewards or deserving punishments. Both of these definitions describe the attitude and intentions of these men who brought this woman to corner Jesus. If He agreed with their harsh view of justice He would be contradicting His own teachings. Yet if He refused to go along with their plan to condemn her, they believed He would discredit Himself by 'breaking the law' and its plain demand for capital punishment.

They demanded from Jesus a judgment against a woman caught red-handed committing adultery. To honor the law of Moses (and given from God from their perspective) meant Jesus would have to execute the clear mandate of that law by exacting punishment by stoning for this woman. Anything short of this, they believed, would make it unavoidably clear that He was not a true teacher from God as He claimed to be and thus undermine His growing influence among the masses.

Yet Jesus, rather than entering into a debate over the nuances of the laws of Moses, gave them an answer that appeared to agree with their intent to carry out the law's demand. This must have struck terror to the heart of this woman cowering on the pavement as she heard these words of Jesus. She may have been hoping Jesus might find challenge the way in which her case had been misrepresented to Him, but instead she heard Him seem to agree with her accusers. This likely would have led her to feel abandoned and helpless. At that point she may have given up all hope and simply braced herself for the first sharp pains of rocks striking her body until she would finally lose her life to the callous fury of vicious religious bigots using her as a pawn in their rabid desire to attack Jesus.

It is important to know that from the perspective of the watching crowd, these religious men were the closest to being righteous, pious and sinless as anyone could possibly come. It was the stated goal of these men to achieve perfection, and they spared no pains or expense to strive for sinless perfection every day. In fact it was a popular belief that if they could just get enough people to live sinlessly for one day, then God would reward them by sending the promised Messiah to deliver them from their oppressors and make their nation great again like it was in the glory days of Solomon. This was the national obsession of the Jews and especially of the religious elite. Now it appeared that Jesus was offering an even less strenuous goal by consenting that only one sinless person was needed from these professionally righteous men for this woman's execution to be carried out without hesitation.

The Mosaic law required that the witnesses who brought about the conviction of a person were to be the first to cast the stones of punishment to execute them. That implied that if the primary witnesses were unwilling to carry out that grisly task, the execution could not take place at all.

Yet we must be cautious in trying to analyze the legal angles of this story as it is all too easy to be drawn into arguing the technical aspects this case or the guilt of the men involved. In doing so we also may be sucked into the very trap these men had set for Jesus. He refused to argue points of law with men who were experts of the law but rather used this opportunity to lead everyone to look beyond the law to a much higher perspective, where relationships are more important that legal infractions. Until we appreciate this change of focus we might muck around in vain attempts to figure out what Jesus was saying and still remain trapped in thinking that striving to keep the law is equal to service from love.

How do we imagine Jesus defined sin when He invited any sinless man to cast the first stone? And were His words on the pavement an accounting of their sins as a deterrent to prevent their carrying out the execution while yet giving them permission to execute their plans? Was Jesus thinking sinlessness as merely keeping the written laws of God, or was there something far deeper that could not be avoided by men whose conscience condemned them as they left one by one?

This brings up another troublesome point. If we take this story at face value it could be construed by some that no one has a right to point out anyone else's sins until they themselves are completely sinless. This seems attractive to those who resent anyone approaching them about their life of sin, but is this what Jesus was saying here? Was He suggesting that when we finally get our act together enough to declare we are without fault, we are then free to execute vengeance on others? Much more to the point, is this what we think about God – that because God is without sin, then He is qualified and eager to unleash harsh punishment on all who refuse to repent and turn away from their sins?

What is important here is that in fact there was a man right there who was without sin. Jesus was the first and only human being to ever live on this earth without sin, so according to the instructions of Jesus Himself, He should be the first to lead out in stoning this woman. We know the outcome of this story and we know Jesus was not like that but was in fact just the opposite. So in suggesting that a perfect person can execute condemnation, we are saying that God will execute sinners in the end while Jesus was unwilling to do so in this situation, thus making a distinction between Father and Son.

If Jesus was the explicit revelation of God and the only reliable witness for declaring the truth about God to all created beings, then it is impossible to cling to the discrepancies in popular beliefs that make God out to be an enforcer of punishments while Jesus is all about forgiveness, kindness and humility. The grace and truth that came through Christ is grace and truth that comes through Him from the Father, not in opposition to or neutralizing the Father's 'justice' (that looks suspiciously more like our version of justice). Either Jesus represents the Father or He doesn't; it cannot be both ways.

In this story we see that the only man present without sin was acting like God, the true God rather than the stern, harsh god that religious men had made Him out to be. This truth about God that Jesus revealed in this arbitrary scene of judgment was the God full of compassion, grace and love that contradicted everything the religious leaders claimed about Him in their reading of the law.

How was it that the Son of God aroused such conviction in the hearts of callous men claiming to represent God, yet without writing out their sins as we often imagine He did? I believe it is because the light of truth does not dwell on the darkness of sin in order to expose it, for that light is inherently divisive by nature. What I mean is that it is not necessary for us to figure out who is right or wrong or who has the best arguments or the greatest weight of evidence proving their case so as to know what is good. What is most important far transcends rule-keeping and is so potent that it needs no proving to be effective. The light of love flowing from the heart of God produces an atmosphere of true judgment based on the definition given by Jesus, and it was this true judgment that neutralized the spiteful form of judgment these men thought to bring on this woman as well as to Jesus.

This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn't come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

These accusers slunk away, not because the woman was not guilty as charged, but also not because Jesus was accusing them in His writings on the pavement. Rather, the light of love that ever flows through Jesus from the true God of heaven became so uncomfortable that they could no longer stand to remain in His presence without either repenting and being won over by His love, or running back into darkness because they preferred dark legal living rather than resting in the light God's love for them.

All we like sheep have gone astray; everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53:6,9)

In this arranged judgment scene, Jesus chose the nonviolent option. But in doing so He drew the fury of these religious zealots to Himself which will be seen in the rest of this chapter. That is why this story is really a microcosm of the entire plan of salvation as seen in Isaiah 53, for by diverting the consequences of our sins onto Himself, He substituted Himself to be the fall guy to accept all that would have fallen on us. But that is for another study.