Every so often a famous person’s secret becomes public. It might be a sport star’s drug problem, the politician’s corruption or the celebrity’s sex life. Everybody, it seems, has a past, a history, a skeleton in the closet. We all have things that we are ashamed of, that we would not want to be brought to light. It may be a problem related to sex, drink or drugs; it may be the time we stole something, or cheated in our taxes. It might be a one-time thing, or a long-term or even ongoing situation.
The woman who was brought to Jesus, who was caught in adultery, had her shame well and truly exposed. However, her accusers were not really concerned with her. All they wanted was to put Jesus to the test, and hopefully damage his popularity in some way. However, Jesus looked beyond the situation and the politics and simply saw a person in need. He saw a woman who had, in her
own eyes and in the eyes of everyone who was important to her, cut herself off from her family, her God, and therefore from her entire community.
Jesus took time to think. The issue here wasn’t the woman’s sin, but rather, our human attitude to sin. Sin does to each of us the very things that it did to that woman. Sin isolates us from God, our community, and from our very selves. It prevents us from becoming the real person we are called to be; the person God wants us to be. Sin blocks that as it cuts off all of our relationships and leaves us desperately alone and isolated. Therefore, if we condemn others, we must also condemn our own sinfulness.
Jesus broke right through the barriers that sin sets up. He did this not by condemning or punishing, but simply by offering forgiveness! Jesus avoided the trap set for him by pointing out that in order to enforce the law in this case the rest of them had to be completely observant of the law in their own lives. Before the holiness of Jesus, none could claim such righteousness. Could you?