The First Stone

Before we go any further this morning, you should know something about today’s passage. The account of the woman caught in adultery isn’t in the oldest copies of John we have. Some later copies put it in other places, a few even in Luke. Most modern Bibles set it off in brackets or add a footnote. It was most likely added to John’s Gospel later. The story itself is old, though. Eusebius reports that Papias, a church leader of the early 100s, told of a woman accused of many sins before the Lord (Church History 3.39, early 300s).

So we’ll handle it the way we’d handle any old story from the church’s early memory. It isn’t the place we go to settle doctrine. But we can learn from it the same way we learn from any good teaching, as long as we test it by Scripture (Acts 17:11) (1 Thessalonians 5:21). And as it happens, every lesson in this story is taught plainly somewhere else in the Bible. That’s where we’ll stand.

John 7:53-8:6 — A woman used as bait

In the story, everyone goes home, and Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives (John 7:53, 8:1). At dawn He’s back in the temple teaching, and a crowd gathers around Him (John 8:2). Then the scribes and Pharisees push their way in with a woman. They stand her in front of everybody and announce that she was caught in the very act of adultery (John 8:3-4). Moses commanded that a woman like this be stoned, they say. What does He say (John 8:5)?

The story tells us exactly why they asked. They didn’t care about her, and they didn’t care about Moses. They wanted something they could accuse Him with (John 8:6). That fits what the Gospels say plainly elsewhere. His enemies kept laying traps, hoping to catch Him in His words (Matthew 22:15) (Luke 11:53-54).

Look at what’s missing. If she was caught in the act, there was a man in the room. The Law didn’t stone one partner and wave the other through. It said both the man and the woman were to die (Leviticus 20:10) (Deuteronomy 22:22). These men had brought half the case and called it zeal for the Law.

That’s what religious men do when they want to win more than they want righteousness. They use people. They pick the sins that make them look clean, and they skip the ones that would cost them. God calls a scale like that an abomination (Proverbs 20:10).

John 8:6-9 — Let the sinless go first

Jesus doesn’t answer them. He bends down and writes on the ground with His finger (John 8:6). People have been guessing for centuries what He wrote. The story doesn’t say, so we won’t either.

They keep pressing Him. So He stands up and tells them that whichever of them is without sin should be the one to throw the first stone (John 8:7). Then He bends down and writes again (John 8:8).

He didn’t tell them adultery was fine. He didn’t tell them the Law was cruel. Under the Law, the witnesses had to throw the first stones, and false witnesses would get the punishment they’d tried to bring on someone else (Deuteronomy 17:6-7, 19:16-19). He simply turned the question around and pointed it at the men holding the rocks.

One by one they walk away, starting with the oldest (John 8:9). Maybe the old men had more years of sin to remember. Whatever the reason, the story makes a point the rest of Scripture makes over and over. A man who judges someone else for what he does himself condemns himself (Romans 2:1-3). Get the log out of your own eye, and then you’ll see clearly enough to help your brother with his speck (Matthew 7:1-5). If God kept a record of sins, nobody could stand (Psalm 130:3).

That doesn’t mean Christians should keep quiet about sin. Scripture tells churches to judge sin among their own members (1 Corinthians 5:12-13). It tells the man who corrects a brother to do it gently, watching himself, because he can be tempted too (Galatians 6:1). The Pharisee in Christ’s parable thanked God he wasn’t like other men, and he went home unjustified (Luke 18:11-14). The difference isn’t whether you name sin. It’s whether you stand under God’s judgment yourself while you name it.

John 8:10-11 — Go, and leave your sin

Eventually it’s just Jesus and the woman. He asks her where her accusers went. Hadn’t anyone condemned her (John 8:10)? She says no one had. Then He tells her He doesn’t condemn her either, and He sends her off to leave her life of sin behind (John 8:11).

Both halves of that matter, and the clear Scriptures back both up.

The first half is mercy. Christ didn’t come into the world to condemn it but to save it (John 3:17). There’s no condemnation for those who are in Him (Romans 8:1). But that mercy isn’t God shrugging at sin. It’s mercy because Someone else took the stones. God made His Son to be sin for His people so they’d be made righteous in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21) (Isaiah 53:5). The only One in the story who was truly without sin was the only One with the right to throw a stone. At the cross, He took the punishment instead.

The second half is a command. Grace never leaves a sinner where it found him. The same grace that saves teaches us to say no to ungodliness (Titus 2:11-12). Paul’s answer to anyone who wants to keep sinning so grace can keep flowing is a flat no (Romans 6:1-2). Paul told the Corinthian church that some of them had been adulterers, and that they’d been washed (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). The man who confesses and turns from his sin finds mercy. The man who covers it doesn’t (Proverbs 28:13) (1 John 1:9).

Whatever the history of this story, the Bible’s teaching is plain. Christ receives sinners, and Christ changes them.