Reflective Bible Study

As we continue moving through John’s gospel, we come to one of the most fascinating events in the entire Bible record. This event is fascinating not just because of what is described that happened, but because there is controversy over whether this event was actually included in the original copies of John’s gospel or not.

If you pick up any modern translation of the Bible and look up our passage for this event, you will likely find a footnote, or perhaps a more visible note about many or most of the oldest manuscripts not including this event.

However, that is only part of the story. As I researched this event not too long ago, I discovered that while this event likely wasn’t included in the original copy of John’s gospel, there is no doubt that it is a very old story. Sometimes, this event is written in the margin of John’s gospel, while other times this event is included at the end of John’s gospel as one additional event that happened during Jesus’ life.

As I have studied the origins of this event, I am left to conclude that either what we are about to read happened, and that God preserved it even though John didn’t include it in His original, or that this event didn’t happen, but perhaps something similar did happen and that is how this story came to be.

Regardless of the origins of this event, when we open our Bibles and read this event, there is no escaping the clear picture of Jesus’ love for sinners. This theme is one that is included in so many of the gospels that we can easily assume that even if this event didn’t happen the way we are about to read, if a situation like this did happen, Jesus would have responded in an equally loving way!

With that said, let’s read our passage for this episode, and discover what we can learn from this event. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, at the beginning of chapter 8, however we will begin by looking at the last verse in chapter 7. Reading from the Contemporary English Version, John tells us that:

⁵³ Everyone else went home, ^8:1 but Jesus walked out to the Mount of Olives. ² Then early the next morning he went to the temple. The people came to him, and he sat down and started teaching them.

³ The Pharisees and the teachers of the Law of Moses brought in a woman who had been caught in bed with a man who wasn’t her husband. They made her stand in the middle of the crowd. ⁴ Then they said, “Teacher, this woman was caught sleeping with a man who isn’t her husband. ⁵ The Law of Moses teaches that a woman like this should be stoned to death! What do you say?”

⁶ They asked Jesus this question, because they wanted to test him and bring some charge against him. But Jesus simply bent over and started writing on the ground with his finger.

⁷ They kept on asking Jesus about the woman. Finally, he stood up and said, “If any of you have never sinned, then go ahead and throw the first stone at her!” ⁸ Once again he bent over and began writing on the ground. ⁹ The people left one by one, beginning with the oldest. Finally, Jesus and the woman were there alone.

¹⁰ Jesus stood up and asked her, “Where is everyone? Isn’t there anyone left to accuse you?”

¹¹ “No sir,” the woman answered.

Then Jesus told her, “I am not going to accuse you either. You may go now, but don’t sin anymore.”

In this event, I am always amazed at how Jesus takes the focus off of the sinner and on to those judging. While some traditions say that Jesus was writing the sins of the woman’s accusers in the sand, nothing I see in this event prompts me to think this directly. Part of me suspects that Jesus simply chose a portion of the law that emphasized mercy, or some other relevant topic to this situation, and began writing it.

With Jesus emphasizing the demands of the law, mixed with the heart of the law, then His statement about those lacking any sin should be the first to throw the stones makes sense. I doubt that Jesus would clearly expose the religious leaders’ exact list of sins, because I don’t believe this happens anywhere else in the scripture. If you can think of a place in the gospels where one person is exposed for specific sins and specific events, then definitely let me know in the comments. It’s possible I’m forgetting an event that would set a precedent.

Instead, in other cases, it seemed like Jesus preferred challenging the religious leaders with parables that describe their behavior without calling out specific instances of sin.

With this framework, Jesus could have been writing a parable in the sand that hit at the heart of this situation. However, a story or a parable written in the sand, would likely have been remembered, copied, and ultimately preserved.

The most probable conclusion in my mind would be that Jesus began writing some Old Testament scripture, prophecy, or law, and this served as a reminder to all the accusers how their lives, attitudes, and actions were unfit to cast judgment on this woman, even if they began this event feeling fully justified.

Also, I find this event fascinating because if I’m not mistaken, this is the only time anywhere in the gospel record where I see Jesus writing anything. Jesus quotes what is written, and Jesus taught scriptures on a regular basis, but I don’t see anything recorded about Jesus personally writing anything outside of this event.

If this was the only time Jesus wrote in His entire ministry, and Jesus wrote it in the sand, making it easily removable or erasable, because Jesus chose this as His medium, we can understand several huge truths in the Bible: God’s love covers a multitude of sins. Jesus forgives us when we repent and turn to Him after we have sinned. We are invited to come to Jesus, let Him wash us, and make us as white as snow!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to accept the gift Jesus offers to us through what He accomplished for us on the cross. Accept Jesus’ forgiveness and His offer to wash us and make us as white as snow.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Through the pages of the Bible, discover a God who loves us more than we can even imagine, and a God who was willing to be tortured by those He loved in order to redeem those who choose to accept His gift of redemption.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or doubt yourself out of where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As Jesus begins to wrap up sharing a short series of parables about the Kingdom of heaven, He decides to share one more example. However, too often we focus on only the two preceding parables, and we stop before diving into the third one. Unfortunately, if we stop short of reading this third parable, we run the risk of misunderstanding where Jesus was going in what He was sharing with the disciples. While this third parable has some less than ideal details, and it is not all that appealing to think of you and I as fish, this parable is a fascinating conclusion to this set of parables Jesus shared while He was alone with the disciples.

Let’s dive into what this parable teaches, and unpack what we can learn from Jesus’ concluding illustration. Our parable is found in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will be reading it from the Good News Translation. Jumping into Jesus’ sequence of parables in verse 47, Jesus starts another parable by saying:

⁴⁷ “Also, the Kingdom of heaven is like this. Some fishermen throw their net out in the lake and catch all kinds of fish. ⁴⁸ When the net is full, they pull it to shore and sit down to divide the fish: the good ones go into the buckets, the worthless ones are thrown away. ⁴⁹ It will be like this at the end of the age: the angels will go out and gather up the evil people from among the good ⁵⁰ and will throw them into the fiery furnace, where they will cry and gnash their teeth.

After reading this parable, I can easily see why many people would rather ignore its presence. This parable isn’t all that pleasant because Jesus explains and describes the fate of evil people. It is much nicer to focus on those who are welcomed in to God’s kingdom and to intentionally not think about those who will ultimately be lost.

However, it is worth paying attention to this parable, especially its challenging theme, because if we focus in on this parable and theme, we can catch the lessons aimed at helping us avoid the fate being described.

As I read Jesus’ words in this parable, one word stood out to me more than the rest. The word that jumped out at me was the word “worthless”. This is the way this translation describes the fish that are thrown away. When randomly looking at a few different translations, we find that worthless and bad are the most common descriptive words used to describe these fish.

While it might seem obvious to throw the worthless fish away, remember that this is a parable, and Jesus immediately explains this parable in no uncertain terms. The fish represent people and at the end of the age, angels will sort the good and evil people and those who are evil will be separated and cast into the fiery furnace.

This leads us to a question: What makes someone worthless in God’s eyes?

Our parable gives us a solid clue. The fish which are described as worthless represent people who are described as evil. So sin and evil actions make us worthless – or at least that is one logical conclusion we could draw from this. While it is true that sin does cheapen our worth, what Jesus ultimately did defied all of this logic.

When we as a race were bound up in sin, through our nature, our choices, our desires, and our hearts, Jesus came to give us a choice. Jesus did not have to come, but from before anyone else had even thought of you, the Godhead decided together that Jesus would come. This is illogical because Jesus died for a worthless, sin-filled race of created beings, and only because Jesus did this do we have worth in God’s eyes.

Through Jesus, the Godhead reattached worth into humanity, and because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we have the choice of accepting Jesus’ gift of worth into our lives, or stay living worthlessly in sin. Sin does make us worthless, but Jesus came to remind us that our value is not in what we currently are, but in what God sees we can be. We are a race of sinners, but God sees us as His children!

Just like we are given value that we might not realize in the parable of the merchant that we looked at in our last episode, this parable teaches us that we have worth in God’s eyes when we are moving away from evil and growing towards Him. It isn’t pleasant to look at the fate of those who have chosen evil, but it is a reminder that our lives are a chance for us to decide whether we will be redeemed by Jesus, or whether we will prefer a life of worthless sin.

We have all been given the gift of life, and the most important decision we can make in this life is deciding to place our faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus. The decisions made in this life have eternal results.

In the past, some preachers and Christian leaders pressured people with a fear of hell approach to accepting the gospel. However, choosing Jesus because you are scared of burning is not the best reason to choose Christ.

The best reason to choose Jesus is because of what God has done for us through Jesus, and because you want a future life without any of the sin, pain, disease, death, and suffering in this life. Jesus is the way out of this life and the spiritual gate into a perfect sinless future life. While our lives with Jesus can begin today, as Christians, we know that the lives we are currently living are nothing when compared with the life God has planned to bless us with when Jesus returns!

We become more valuable than we realize when we place our faith, our hope, our trust, and our belief in Jesus, and when we turn away from sin, we become a fish that is worth saving for eternity!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, continue seeking God first and placing Him first in your life. Choose to keep making the intentional choice to place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Him each and every day, and also intentionally choose to grow towards God and away from sin.

Also, keep praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn firsthand what God wants to teach you through His Word. While learning from others is good, always take what others teach and compare it with what the Bible teaches, because the Bible has stood the test of time and it is the most reliable guide we have to help us live for God in a sinful world.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or deviate away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!