A woman stands, shaking in fear. The religious leaders who have dragged her there demand her death, a crowd begins to form, looking on, in curiosity and shock. She has become a tool in their argument, her very life an afterthought to their schemes.
The religious elite have brought here here. They stand facing their rival, a teacher that threatens their power and their religious system. He claims authority He doesn't have; He breaks rules put in to place to keep the people in line with God's will. They can't let Him lead the people astray. They won't.
And Jesus stands before her, confronted by both their trickery and her pain, and He is concerned with what is happening in the hearts of everyone there. Jesus sees past the seemingly pious and righteous words of the Pharisees. He sees past the sin of the woman. He is the only one that sees the situation clearly.
There are a lot of things in the Bible that confuse me. Events that I cannot explain and situations that I don't fully understand. But one thing that rings true throughout Scripture is that God takes it seriously when people harm one another—especially when they do it in His name.
This is the part of the story that should make us all pause.
The story warns us that it is possible to become so committed to being right that another person's life becomes collateral damage.
It is possible to use truth as a weapon, righteousness as a shield, and religion as justification for treating people in ways that God never intended.
And perhaps the most frightening part is that the religious leaders don't see themselves as villains.
As Blaise Pascal famously wrote, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." They believe they are protecting God's people, defending truth, standing on the right side.
They are the heroes in the story they're telling. But Jesus exposes something deeper.
Being right about God is not the same thing as having the heart of God.
When I read the Bible I often identify with the hero of the story. I want to put myself in David's position, Rahab's, Abraham's, Ruth's, Esther's. And here, in John 8, I'm tempted to identify with Jesus. It's easy to see ourselves as the ones standing for truth.
But what if, sometimes, we are closer to the Pharisees than we want to admit?
What if our desire to correct, expose, defend, or prove ourselves right has caused us to forget that God does not need us to harm people in order to defend Him or ourselves?
That is one of the great warnings of this story:
Before we ask whether we are right, we should ask whether we are becoming like Jesus.
Because God is not only concerned with what we believe, He is concerned with what our beliefs are making us into.
The question this story asks us isn't simply, “Who is guilty?”
It is: “Who sees clearly?”
Jesus saw into the hearts of the Pharisees, and He sees ours as well. He is the only one who sees clearly.
This week, let's pray for the humility to surrender our will to His. Because sometimes the person who most needs to encounter Jesus isn't standing in front of us, sometimes it's the one looking back at us in the mirror.
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