John 8:7-11 - Leave your life of sin

8:7,8

The teachers of the Law persisted with their questioning, so eventually Jesus says His famous words “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. Then He resumed His doodling in the sand. Now the “without sin” is very general. Some think He may have been hinting that the accusers were guilty of adultery. Given the size of the crowd, no doubt some of them were, but surely not all of them. If they had heard the sermon on the mount and Jesus’ words on committing adultery in our hearts then this could include all of them, but this would be crediting the crowd with an unreasonable degree of spiritual maturity. It is best to take these words as referring to sin in general.

These words, along with Jesus words on not judging others (Matt 7:1) are greatly misinterpreted, misused and abused. Stephen Fry in his viral interview on RTE mentioned these words, saying they were nonsense because it means the courts could not work. It is Stephen Fry’s (lack of) interpretation that is nonsense. Then there are multitudes of Christians and atheists who use Matt 7:1 as an excuse for condoning sin.

What Jesus is doing is getting the people to look at their own lives. The teachers of the Law were fixated with finding some way of trapping Jesus, they thought this was the most important thing in life and if they succeeded then their problems would be over. What they really needed to do was to admit the sin in their own lives, then they could turn to Jesus and receive the true solution to the real problem. The same applies to all of us. It is all too easy to focus on someone else's sin, when our first concern should be dealing with our own sin. Matt 7:3-5 is the lesson that Jesus is teaching, which interestingly comes after 7:1.

8:9-11

The people then drifted away, the older ones first. The older ones had lived longer and knew more of their own failings, younger people tend to be more full of themselves. Notice how Jesus words had authority. If one of the Pharisees had said this then many would have quickly been able to find fault with the Pharisee and then reject his words. They could not do this with Jesus.

Jesus then turns to the woman and tells her that He does not condemn her either, and, crucially, warns her to leave her life of sin. This is how God deals with sin. He is willing to forgive the sin of those who come to Him (though the woman here was brought to Him), but He does not condone our sin. So many people use Jesus’ forgiveness as an excuse for continuing sinning or not taking it seriously. Sin is so serious that the only solution was for Jesus to go to the cross and take upon Himself the judgement that should have been ours.