John 8:7 Commentary and Bible Study

His reply is very brief, very calm, but it’s cutting, it’s electrifying. If this was not inspired Scripture, and we were viewing this just as a piece of literature, we would still say this reply is brilliant! You cannot really fault it in anyway. It is only 15 words, in the English translation, yet, their entire scheme is torpedoed, and collapsed, and they are utterly put to shame. He has unexpectedly raised a principle that they have completely forgotten; they have left it entirely out of the reckoning – the accusers must have clean hands. When Moses was told by God to appoint the first assistant judges, he was told in Exodus 18 that they must be ‘such as fear God, men of truth’, and that applied to all accusers and all judges. He says to them, ‘Can’t you see that if the purpose of the punishment was to cleanse the community, how is it possible that guilty people would be involved in that work.’ So obsessed were they with keeping the details of the ritual law and the sentences exactly as they were, they had forgotten about mercy, they had forgotten about forgiveness, and they had forgotten about the necessity of clean hands on the part of the accusers and the witnesses.Now if you have ever done debating, you know this is the most difficult thing to do in debating. To refute the argument of your opponent, and at the same time to swing the attention of all the hearers round to what you want to talk about, not what he wants to talk about. And that is what Christ does: he both refutes them and he swings the whole matter from whether or not this adulterous person should be stoned, to his subject, repentance and remission of sin. Christ does not contradict or discredit the law, nor does he contradict Roman law. Christ did not excuse her sin in all this. They didn’t catch him out. He didn’t take this awful sin and lessen its seriousness, in fact, he upheld the law. But at the same time he proclaimed available mercy, in this response. He says absolutely nothing offensive, but he capsizes the whole scheme with the principle that they had completely forgotten. Not only that, at the same time he turns the whole issue round to the subject that he wants to speak about. The light of the world exposed hypocrisy, and an amazing, a remarkable thing happened.