God’s Writing 5: Forgiveness
So far in this series we have seen God writing in creation,
in providence, in revelation and in judgement.
God’s standard of justice is written in our hearts, it was written on
tablets of stone and it is written in the books that record our actions, just
as God’s verdict was written on the wall in Belshazzar’s feast. If this was the whole story of the Bible,
there would be no good news and no hope.
Yet to understand the message of the gospel we must understand the
justice of God and His righteous wrath because of human sin. God will not and cannot ignore our sin – it is
not only a violation of the laws of morality; it is a personal offence against
God. When we measure ourselves against
the standard of perfection described in the Ten Commandments, we inevitably
find ourselves, like Belshazzar, seriously lacking. What hope is there, then, for us?
As we come to the next occasion of God’s writing in the Scriptures,
a word of caution is in order. John 7:53-8:11
is not contained in the earliest available manuscripts of John’s Gospel, suggesting
that it isn’t original and was added at a later date. For this reason, we must treat this passage
with some caution. It would be unwise to
rest any doctrine on it alone. Yet the
Jesus we read about in these verses is identical to the person who is revealed
throughout John and in the other Gospels.
This glimpse into the person of Christ from an early Christian author is
the only time when we read of Jesus writing.
As mentioned in Part 3 of this series, Jesus Himself did not write any
of the books of the New Testament.
Instead he commissioned apostles who would write down his teaching and
explain it as the Spirit guided them into all truth (John 16:13). The New Testament is trustworthy, but it is
not written by Jesus. Here in John 8,
though, we see Jesus writing. The frustrating
thing (at least for someone like me, who struggles with unsolved mysteries) is
that we don’t know what he wrote.
The story told in this passage is beautiful in its depiction
of Christ. The setting is the Temple, rebuilt
by the Jews who returned under Cyrus of Persia and being beautified by Herod
(still under construction at the time).
This was the centre of Jewish worship.
It was a physical parable of God’s relationship with His people. It spoke both of God’s closeness and His
distance, of judgement and of forgiveness.
It showed God’s desire to live with His people, but reminded them that
their sin separated them from His presence.
Its sacrifices enacted the realities of death as a just result of sin
and of the substitution of an innocent as the only solution to sin. In this sacred place the scribes and
Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. The
details are scarce – we don’t know her name or whether she had just been caught
or was discovered some time before – but we can imagine how this woman feels –
her shame and fear. They remind Jesus
that the Law given through Moses demands death by stoning (Leviticus 20:10;
Deuteronomy 22:22-24), but, as usual, they are setting a trap for Him. If Jesus disagrees with their verdict He can
be accused justly of rejecting the Law.
If, on the other hand, he demands capital punishment, they might be able
to report Him to the Romans for undermining the authority to exercise the death
penalty which they insisted should be theirs alone.
Faced with this dilemma, Jesus doesn’t speak at first. Instead, He bends down and writes something
in the dusty ground. They continue
repeating their accusation and he simply says (John 8:7):
“Let him who is
without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Then He writes something additional on the ground and the
result is amazing – one by one they turn and leave until He is left face to
face with the accused woman. What was it
that Jesus wrote? Various suggestions
have been made. Some say that he was
simply doodling in order to cover up His embarrassment at the predicament and presentation
of the woman, but this hardly fits with the person of Jesus as we read of Him
throughout the Gospels. He is always
master of every situation. Others
suggest that He wrote the names and some of the sins of the men who stood before
Him. This seems more plausible. Certainly Jesus had insight into the hearts
of people and perhaps He is exposing these men as the sinners that they are, reminding
them that they too are in need of mercy. It is even possible that the whole
sequence of events is a ‘set up’, that the men deliberately spied on a known
adulterer in order to create a trap for Jesus.
If this is the case, then these men are actually complicit in the
crime. A third possibility is that Jesus
wrote out the text of Leviticus or Deuteronomy that refers to this
punishment. If so, perhaps He is drawing
their attention to an inconsistency in the events – both texts say that the man
and woman should both be executed, but here we only have the woman. Where is the man she was sleeping with? Did they allow him to escape? Was he known to them? Did Jesus write his name too? Did they fade away because they didn’t want
to implicate him or because they realised they hypocrisy in only condemning the
weaker of the two wrongdoers. A fourth
possibility is that the point of Jesus’ writing was not what He wrote, but the fact that the act of writing reminded them
of God’s writing in the Old Testament.
We cannot know what was written, but we do know that these men, so full
of self-righteousness as they brought their accusation, were exposed and left
ashamed in the face of Jesus’ true righteousness. He alone, the sinless One, can ask such a
question with absolute authority, setting Himself up as their judge.
We must be careful not to misinterpret this episode in Jesus’
life. He is not ‘soft’ on sin – when he
speaks to the woman, there is amazing grace in the forgiveness He offers, but
He also charges her not to continue sinning.
Jesus always upheld the standard of righteousness revealed in the Old
Testament Law, and the New Testament epistles are remarkably consistent with it
in the kind of behaviour they expect of Christians. What is remarkable, here, though is Jesus’
statement that he does not condemn the woman.
God incarnate, the righteous judge of all mankind, looks at a broken,
ashamed woman and pronounces deliverance.
The judge has become the Saviour.
Jesus did not come into the world to condemn it, but to save it (John
3:17). Jesus’s statement of acquittal
only makes sense in the context of the whole story of the Gospels. This Jesus is the Lamb of God who has come to
take away the world’s sin (John 1:29).
He is the one those temple sacrifices had spoken of – the perfect
sacrifice that can really deal with sin – the ultimate sinless substitute. The story told by John leads on to the cross,
where Jesus will die for the sin of that woman and for my sin. Through His death I have forgiveness. There is now no condemnation for those who
are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) and if He does not condemn me, then no one
else has a right to bring any accusation against me – He is risen and living to
keep me secure (Romans 8:33-34).
God has written justice into the fabric of the universe and
He has revealed justice in His Word. His
justice reflects His nature. Yet, in
grace God has entered into a world of injustice to rescue people who are
unjust. Through the death of Christ He
justifies the unjust (makes them right with Him)without acting unjustly (i.e., ignoring sin or presiding over a miscarriage of justice by failing to condemn those who deserve it) – it is the only way that He
can maintain His justice and also rescue us (see Romans 3:26). This is the heart of the gospel and why it is
truly good news. When we look into the
face of Jesus we will see both our judge and our Saviour. For now, He sends us out with the good news
of salvation and charges us as He did that woman, not to live lives of sin, but
to live as a response to grace in the freedom of serving Him.
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