What Then Sayest Thou?

And the scribes and the Pharisees bring a woman taken in adultery; and having set her in the midst, they say unto him, Teacher, this woman hath been taken in adultery, in the very act. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such: what then sayest thou of her? [John 8: 3-5] NASB

As Jesus was teaching in the temple he was stopped by the Scribes and Pharisees. If you stop and think about that statement you will probably realize the same thing as I did: That is what formal religion does! It interrupts the real message and power of The Word of God.  These Scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a women taken in the very act of adultery. Their thought was to get Jesus to say the wrong thing so in his answer so they could trap Him. The people would be down on Him. What ever decision He made would put him in a bad position, or so the scribes and Pharisees thought. They were just like the church word is today. They, as well as most of the church today, never really seem to get it, as to who Jesus really was, because Jesus was and is so far ahead of formal religion in every way. The Bible gives very little doubt about the guilt of the women who was taken in adultery. That is the way The church of that day saw it (The Scribes and The Pharisees) and it is still the same today. But how did the Lord see it? Was He thinking this:

 Here stands this small, trembling women, dying in her shame for what she has done, thinking she is going to be stoned any minute, but yet were is the man that was caught with her? Why did they not bring him? The law of Moses said they were both to be stoned, so where is the man? 

The crowd was waiting for the Lord's answer and the Scribes and Pharisees (the church) was demanding an answer from him "What then sayest thou?"  Jesus stooped and wrote in the dust of the temple. Oh how I was with all my heart I knew what He had written! Jesus did not excuse or deny this women's guilt, or the plain fact that the law condemned her to death. But what did He say? You who are with out sin cast the first stone. Some Bible scholars say that what Jesus was really saying was this: "You without her sin cast the first stone."  How could people  who themselves were breaking the same law stone someone else for the same sin? Is it not the same with most of the church world today? Always casting stones, always forgetting the beam in their eyes while trying to get the mote out of another persons eye. "Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more!"  That was the greatest words the woman ever heard.


Think about this, Jesus justified his decision about the women the same way He does for us and for all who ever believed in Him. He went to the cross and paid a debt that He did not owe, paying a price that the woman   should have paid and he has paid that debt for us who believe!The Lord did not condemn this woman, but rather said the greatest words that the woman ever heard.! 


It seems, perhaps, that Jesus Christ wasn't the only one who was "set up" that day. While they used the woman caught in adultery as the means to try to entrap Him through His answer, the woman herself may have been partly entrapped - the man that she was "taken in adultery, in the very act" with (by definition, if she was "caught in the act," the man had to have been caught too) was not brought to Him with her. Whoever he was, he was just as guilty and just as subject to "the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death" (Leviticus 20:10 KJV) that the scribes and Pharisees quoted in condemning the woman. Letting him go was more hypocrisy on the part of the themselves-adulterous scribes and Pharisees.