(Jn 7:53; 8:1-12)

This event happened at the end of 7 days of the feast of Tabernacles. Jesus has just declared Himself to be the Messiah, the Fountain of Living Water (Jn 7:37,38). The feast for that year was now over. Everyone was tired. The people that came from all over Isreal, went away. “And everyone went to his own house. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives”. As all the people in Jerusalem went to their homes to rest, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. The King of kings had no house of His own. He possibly went to the house of Martha and Mary, at Bethany, the village at the foot of Mount of Olives. Or He went to rest in the open air in the cool of the night, on Mount of Olives. This shows the wonderful humility of Jesus. The next morning Jesus was back to Jerusalem. He came quietly without any advertisement. He went back to the temple. People came to listen to Him. Why did He teach these people? He knew that they didn’t understand what He was saying. He knew that soon they would shout: Crucify Him! Why did He teach these sinners for hours? Because He loved them! What Humility! What Grace! What Love! Lesson: Love is the greatest teacher! Ministry has no vacation! Trust God for added Grace!

Suddenly, the open-air classroom is disturbed by loud noises. The Pharisees brought to Him a screaming woman. They accused her of being ‘caught in adultery; in the very act’, they claim. The truth is that these religious rulers are trying to trap Jesus in something He may say. If they can catch Him saying something wrong, His reputation among the people will be ruined. These men are religious hypocrites and faultfinders. The people do not know that. But Jesus always knows what is in man. There were two options: If Jesus agrees with their verdict, that the woman has committed adultery, according to the Law of Moses she must be stoned to death. Then Jesus is not as merciful and loving as He claims to be. If Jesus does not agree to stone her to death, it proves that He is not a true teacher of the Law because He does not obey the Law. Therefore, He is not the Messiah. Their evil minds planned that whatever Jesus says will be against Him. Even in the Old Testament, the death penalty was rare. Adultery, breaking the Sabath, continuous disobedience to the parents, and blasphemy, were crimes punishable by death. But if death was applied in each case, no Jew would be alive, because they were all guilty of breaking the law.

These Pharisees ignored the law too. If the woman is found guilty of adultery, and must be stoned to death, that act cannot be done immediately in the temple courts. There were conditions. The adulteress, her husband, and the man who committed adultery with her, must stand before the Religious tribunal. If her husband shows her mercy, and forgives her, she is free. If her husband does not forgive her, she is guilty. In that case, the unmerciful husband must be the first to throw a stone at her. The witnesses who saw the act of adultery must be at least two or three. They too have the option to show mercy and to forgive the woman. God is a merciful God. “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy” (Ps 103:8). But if the witnesses refused to forgive, they would be the first to stone her. They could not just stand by and watch. Even the people in the crowd must join them in the stoning. No passive spectators were allowed during judgment. If later, the witnesses proved to be liars, they could be stoned to death. In the Old Testament, mercy was almost always applied in the cases of death penalty. In this case, there is no mention of a husband, or the man involved in the act of adultery. They only bought the woman. But the accusation was not fair. These are the three options: the woman has committed adultery, the woman was raped, or the woman was innocent and falsely accused. Whatever the situation, this woman is not receiving a fair trial according to the Law. The Pharisees did not present all the facts. The people around did not know the truth. Only Jesus knew exactly what the truth was.

The response of Jesus teaches us a powerful lesson of Justice, Mercy and Love. As the accusers were shouting, Jesus stooped down and wrote something on the ground. Please observe that Jesus did not answer immediately. His silence was loud!!! Nobody knows what He wrote. But one thing is sure, the same finger that wrote the Ten Commandments was writing on the dust, on the stony courtyard in the Temple. He who wrote the Law is the Best Interpreter of the Law. We read that two times “Jesus stooped down” (Jn 8:6,8). In Greek, the words ‘stoop down’ mean to bend forward and bowing the head. This is a picture of the Cross. “So, when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit” (Jn 19:30). No Jew would bow down in the presence of a woman, especially a sinful woman. But Jesus did that. You see the extraordinary humility of Jesus and the display of His Love on the Cross. As Christ crucified, who died for this woman, He freely justified her. At the same time, the Cross condemns unrepentant sinners. The accusers are now condemned of sin. This is the power of the Cross! What an amazing love!

Please observe: Jesus does not accuse the woman. He does not even ask her questions or tell her to defend herself. The Pharisees pressed Jesus for an answer. They were sure of winning their wicked game of fault finding. Suddenly, Jesus stood and said these powerful words: “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first!” Jesus is exposing the wickedness and hypocrisy of the Pharisees. What He meant was this: ‘If you are witnesses of this sinful act, and you are sure that you are totally innocent, then be the first to cast the stone at her.’ Jesus exposed the evil minds of these religious men. They don’t care if the woman lives or dies. All they wanted is to trap Jesus in what He would say. But none was innocent. All were guilty of the sin. Shocked that Jesus knew their hearts, one by one, the men are leaving. No one is willing to cast a stone at the woman. The crowd leaves too. The confusion is over. The place is now quiet.

The woman is still trembling waiting for the judgment. She is alone with her Savior, who alone is without sin. Jesus is the only One who has the right to throw the stone at her because He is innocent of sin. But He does not throw the stone. He exercises mercy. This is Love! When we read the story, we assume that what the Pharisees said is true. We generally call this ‘the story of the woman caught in adultery’. But please observe that Jesus does not accuse the woman of adultery. He alone knows the truth about this woman. What if is she was raped?  He only says: “go and sin no more”. This is the moment when the woman was justified by Grace. She became born-again! She had faith that Jesus is her Savior and her Lord! “Go and sin no more!” But this command applies not only to the woman. Jesus could have said these words to any one of us. This is the Light of the World speaking love, shining mercy!

“And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” (Col 2:13-15). This story reveals clearly how Jesus took away the accusation against the woman and nailed it on His Cross. He disarmed and disgraced her wicked accusers. Praise the Lord!

Let us examine ourselves… Sometime, we are like the Pharisees, too quick to accuse people. Other times we are like the crowd, interested in free entertainment at the expense of another’s pain. Or we can be like the woman, lonely, afraid, unfairly accused and in desperate need of Love. Jesus is our best example. He who alone was without sin and had the right to stone the sinner, choose to show Mercy and Love. We should do the same. Listen to Our Lord: “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. 37 “Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven!” (Lk 6:36,37). Instead of gossiping, let us encourage others. Instead of slander, pray for one another. Instead of oppression, help another. These are fruits of Love none can deny! These same Pharisees continue to accuse Jesus. They finally succeeded in crucifying the Savior. The Father in heaven did not show mercy to His Son hanging on the Cross. Christ died on our behalf. Only “Love is as strong as death” (SS 8:6). Love always has the last word.

Why is so important to believe that God Loves you forever? God’s gracious love is the basis of our relationship with Him, in Christ. If you are not sure of God’s love for you, then you will have no peace, no joy, no assurance of going to heaven. You will always try to impress God by your good deeds. You cannot relax in His Love. True Christian life is a life of peace, joy, hope and strength. When you come to God, you will discover that He loves you always. He is not like a judge or like a police man who always looks for your trouble. God smiles on His children. You discover that God loves you, teaches you, disciplines you, embraces you, carries you on His shoulders until you go to heaven!

Finally, you may be rich or poor, educated or illiterate, you may be white, black or brown, a slave or a master, you may be young, old, or at the point of death, all this does not matter. Only one thing matters: you cannot save yourself! You cannot go to heaven by your own wisdom or power. Give your life to Christ! You must be born again! You must be born again! You must be born again! Worship the Lord!

“Therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. 2 For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, 3 how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, 4 God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will?” (Heb 2:1-4).

This is a reminder that we have an enemy who hates us. The devil wants you to be ignorant of God’s love for you! The real danger is that if we neglect so great a salvation, we will drift away from our first love. To Give heed it means to pay closer attention, to be cautious about, to be on guard, to beware of danger ahead, careful not to take unnecessary risks. It also means to listen and to follow!!! The command applies to the ears and to the feet. If we do not listen to God’s Word and ignore the leading of the Holy Spirit, we become spiritually lazy, or passive. From that position of weakness, the strong currents of the powers of darkness will carry us away from Christ’s love. It is like falling asleep in a boat that is not tied down to the shore. The river will eventually carry the boat away by its gentle currents. By the time we wake up, we see that we are in a different area we never planned to go before. The gentle river has now become fast and rough, and we wake up in a strange place of danger. To neglect it means to be careless, to fail to give attention or to respect the things that are your responsibility to keep and protect. Neglect is worse than ignoring. You can ignore to clean your house. That is not sinful. But child neglect is sinful. For a doctor to neglect his patients, that is criminal. To neglect God’s Word is like holding a treasure in your hand, but your fingers are not tight on it. The gold falls from your hand, and you are not aware that you have lost it. It means that you failed to value the revelation of God’s Word that you have received in the past! Because of your negligence, you are now becoming poorer. Neglecting the supernatural ministry of the Holy Spirit is a sign of drifting from your first love! Selah!

These are some of the common situations that can lead to the sin of neglect of God’s Word. These are like strong currents of a river:

*The anxiety of life, the cares of this world. They prevent God’s Word from taking roots and producing fruits in your spirit. “The cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mk 4:19). These produce weakness of the mind and of the body. You become spiritually weak and discouraged. As our Lord was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, drops of blood falling from His brow. But the disciples became so grieved that they fell asleep. “Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? 41 Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt 26:40,41). Medical science has proven that the brain shuts down during times of great stress. To watch and to pray takes a lot of energy. This spiritual warfare is done only by the power of the Holy Spirit. But if you ignore watching and praying, you will fall asleep spiritually and you will drift away from the safety of truth. Selah!

*Pleasures of life. It’s easy to forget God and His Love when you seek only for pleasures. To always look for fun is the world’s mentality. “The heart of the wise [learns when it] is in the house of mourning, But the heart of fools is [senseless] in the house of pleasure” (Ecc 7:4; AMP).  Seeking the pleasures of life can become an idol. “Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play” (1Cor 10:7). Seek God and His Kingdom! Let God chose what pleasures and the level of pleasures you may have in this life. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt 6:33).

*Overfamiliarity with God and the Bible. To be overfamiliar with someone means to be extremely close, or intimate. You feel that you know that person too well. You have seen him and heard him so many times that the person now becomes boring to you. Other similar words with overfamiliarity are ‘being bold, forward, presumptuous, or disrespectful’. To be overfamiliar with God is always a sin. Its root is pride and Presumption. Presumption means to take someone for granted, to jump to conclusions without knowing the whole truth. It means to disrespect. God punishes it. “The prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die” (Deut 18:20). It is true that we are one with Christ. But we must still fear God! No one knows God totally. “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable” (Ps 145:3). Whatever we know about God is what God has revealed to us, in Christ, by the Holy Spirit. That is all! Love always honors the Lover!

*Getting older. As we grow older, we change. The body gets weaker. The mind starts forgetting things. People close to us die. We become lonely. The strength we had as young people is replaced by a gradual weakness of body and mind. The zeal to study God’s Word, to pray or to serve God is less. We feel we know everything, and we don’t need to learn new things. To love others requires too much sacrifice. We give up on ourselves. Reading the Bible, praying, attending church services becomes routine and boring. “Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor Him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not pleasant anymore” (Ecc 12:1;NLT). Old men may experience apathy, a lack of mental energy, emotion, passion, or excitement. To some old people, Love becomes burdensome. This apathy may lead to depression and to drifting away from the truth. The cure is to come back to your First Love!!!

Jesus commands the believers to love even the enemies. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? 48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:43-48).

These are the eternal words of our King. Jesus makes a clear difference between the way the Pharisees understood the law and the way the Law of God must be interpreted. The religious leaders said: “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy”. First, we must say that there is no place in the Old Testament where you find these exact words. The Pharisees invented that law. Possibly, they were inspired to say this because in the Old Testament, God commanded His people to kill the Canaanites and take over the Promised Land (Deut 20:16-18). Why did God say that? God is the owner of the whole world. He gave the Canaanites 400 years to repent of their sins. He told Abraham that the sins of the Amorites are not yet complete; their cup of wickedness is not yet full (Gen 15:13-16). God could have killed them with a plague. But God chose Isreal to kill the Canaanites and to take over their land.

Some of the Psalms have strong words to curse Isreal’s enemies. These are called ‘imprecatory’ Psalms. For example, read what David prayed to God about his enemies: “Let their table become a snare before them, and their well-being a trap. 23 Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see; And make their loins shake continually. 24 Pour out Your indignation upon them, and let Your wrathful anger take hold of them. 25 Let their dwelling place be desolate; Let no one live in their tents” (Ps 69:22-25). Reading these words, you can imagine why the Pharisees said that they should hate their enemies. But if you read these psalms, David prayed to God not because he was wicked, or because of selfish ambition, but he asked God to vindicate him when his enemies wanted to kill him. David refused to kill King Saul even when Saul was in his power. This psalm is not an invitation to personal hatred against human enemies. It is the appeal of an oppressed person that God should help him. David trusts God for justice and vindication. He wants the glory of God to be revealed in his life! Amen!

In the Book of Matthew, chapter 23, our Lord speaks curses upon the religious leaders, the hypocrites. Reading those lines is painful. The word ‘woe’ is a curse word, mixed with grief and sadness. The religious leaders did not know God. They mispresented God. They were proud and wicked. They led the people astray. Here we clearly see that God (Jesus) cares for the people, that they should know God. There is a greater condemnation upon the religious leaders and teachers of God’s Word who are considered shepherds to God’s flock! These are the very people who plotted the arrest and the death of the Son of God! Selah!

The Pharisees said that a Jew should love and help only another Jew. Every other person should be considered an enemy to be hated and even killed. The Jews hated all the Gentiles and called them ‘dogs’. The problem with their interpretation is that they did not understand the purpose of God’s Law. God commanded that the Canaanites should be killed as an act of divine justice. It was not because of personal hatred against them as individuals. But the Pharisees used God’s divine justice to apply it to their personal relationships with people. Any man they did not like, even if that man was a neighbor, they hated him. They justified their hatred, lack of love and wickedness by saying that it is God’s Law. Hatred of people is always wrong. You can hate the devil, sin and evil in evil men. But you should not hate people!!!

How can a Christian replace the sinful selfish hatred in his heart with the Love of God? Jesus commanded us to do three things: Bless, do good and pray for others! He commanded us to “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you”. You replace hatred with loving words. Love has a language. You bless people with your words. Saying to someone: “God bless you!” even when you don’t feel like it, is a powerful manifestation of Agape Love. Love is never rude. Love never curses a human being. Another way to show Love to others is by doing good to them. Righteousness means ‘be good and do good’ for Christ’ sake. You do good by greeting, shaking hands, hugging, helping others, and by giving gifts without waiting for appreciation from men. Doing good is a great form of evangelism. Many sinners came to Christ because Christians chose to help them especially in their time of need. Doing good never fails. Please examine your motives: You don’t do good because you want to convert the person. You don’t do good because you are religious, but because love is your nature as a child of God and a citizen of God’s Kingdom. You trust God to bless your ministry and life. No matter what people say to you, God blesses righteous deeds. Finally, choose to pray for people, even for those you dislike and persecute you. Prayer is a responsibility and a mighty blessing. The greatest example of prayer for the wicked was heard on the Cross. Jesus said: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Lk 23:34). When Steven was dying as a martyr, he prayed for the men who were stoning him. “Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep” (Ac 7:60). This is Agape Love praying! May prayer and worship never cease from our lips! Amen!

There is a great difference between loving and liking a person. To like someone is more natural. There are attitudes you observe in a person that connects with you. Love is different. Love is spiritual. You love because God loves you. You extend Love to others, even to the unlovely, because God loves you and He has saved your soul. Like is instant. It is effortless. Love is deep. It takes time and effort to develop. You may have to go to battle to win and protect love. When you like someone, you must agree with that one. His negative ideas may provoke you. But you can love someone unconditionally, even when you don’t totally agree with him. To like someone, you must stay close to that one. Love endures even if the person is far away. The closer you get to someone, the less you may like the person. But love, increases as you get closer to that person. You like only friends. You love both friends and enemies!

Please note: Only Agape love can love even the enemies. Why? This is because if you love someone, you see him thru the eyes of Christ. You see him the way God sees him. You know that he is a victim of the devil, and he is blind to God’s way of salvation. If Agape Love is in your heart, you can help another even if you dislike him. How do you do that? Treat another person like you like him, even if you don’t. Don’t complain again about your enemies. If you don’t have enemies, how can you love your enemies? The Law of Love is stronger than the law of sin, hatred and death. There is always grace available to treat others with kindness and love. They may not deserve kindness, but kindness is your attitude to all. You don’t pay evil with evil. You don’t react with evil when you are provoked. That is the way of the world. You don’t react. You chose to act. With wisdom, peace, love and respect.

Why do we need to behave well, to show love and kindness to all? It’s a visible proof that God is your father, and that you are a citizen of His Kingdom. God sends rain and sunshine to all men. It is not only the Christian farmer that enjoys rain on his field. That rain goes to the wicked too. We must treat others with respect, kindness and love because we are God’s children, Christ’ ambassadors and citizens of His Kingdom. Love is the atmosphere of the Kingdom of God. As God never fails, as love never fails, so the Christians who walk in love will never fail to fulfill God’s purposes for their lives. This love is the engine of revival in the church and outside the church! May God help us!