John 8:6-8 - Let him who is without sin

8:6

So it is likely that the Pharisees are not actually interested in seeing the woman stoned, they are only interested in trapping Jesus. If Jesus said she should be stoned then they could accuse Him of rebelling against the Roman authorities, something they tried to do in the end anyway, but without any evidence. If Jesus said no then they would accuse Jesus of going against the Law of Moses, and so He would lose credibility in the eyes of the people. Jesus did not reply immediately but bent down and wrote with His finger in the dust of ground. There is all sorts of speculation as to what He wrote. This speculation is essentially worthless. The Bible does not tell us what He wrote, so presumably we do not need to know!

8:7,8

Jesus then gives His famous challenge “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” The religious leaders were focused on dealing with the “problem” of Jesus, whom they saw as a threat to their position, of, if one wanted to be more generous, as a threat to the Law in Israel. However, they faced a much bigger problem, their own guilt. All of us need to confront the issue of our own guilt first before worrying about anybody else’s guilt. The parable of taking the plank out of our own eye first addresses this issue. Jesus then continued to write in the ground.