Keep it simple!

² At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. ³ The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group ⁴ and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. ⁵ In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” ⁶ They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. ⁷ When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

⁹ At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. ¹⁰ Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

¹¹ “No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

John 8:2-11

It’s striking how sometimes you read a Bible passage which you have read many times before - and it strikes you as if for the first time. This happened to me recently when our pastor preached from this passage:  “the woman taken in adultery”. I’m sure you know the story…

The religious leaders have made a decision that Jesus, to them a dangerous trouble-maker, must be got rid of. They wait for a moment when he is surrounded by a crowd of people in the temple courtyard in Jerusalem, and then seek to catch him out with a trick question. They have got hold of this woman and they drag her before him. Can you picture it? – I wonder if she put up a fight?

Quoting the Old Testament law (presumably Deuteronomy 22:13-30), they put Jesus on the spot by asking for his reaction to the requirement that she should be stoned to death. Their aim is simple: they expect him to pronounce forgiveness over her, thus in effect condoning sin and showing himself to be in opposition to God’s word. At first it seems he tries to ignore them - he bends down and writes in the sand with his finger. But “they kept on questioning him”, so he decides that he must answer them.

I think the answer he comes out with is simply wonderful: “Let anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”.

In other words, he doesn’t try to defend her. He could have done just that, of course – he could have pointed out that their use of the Deuteronomy passage was selective, to say the least; and, even more, he could have politely inquired where was the man in the case (adultery, after all, is not a sin a person commits on their own). But no; he keeps it simple, as if to say “All right, no doubt you are quite right in what you say. Go ahead and stone her by all means – oh, but before you start, you will make sure that the first stone-thrower is sinless, won’t you?...”

And what happens? – the questions stop coming, the fingers stop pointing, and one by one his opponents shuffle off, no doubt with their eyes fixed firmly on the ground…

I suspect that while this dramatic scene was playing out, Jesus, outwardly calm and polite, was inwardly seething with fury. The hypocrisy of these people!

And it makes you wonder if in our day there are times God looks down on us – all spiritual correctness and respectability, of course – and is grieved that in principle we are no better.

A truly challenging thought. But what particularly struck me in a new way as I listened to that sermon was something rather different: the marvellous simplicity of the good news we call “the gospel”.

Jesus didn’t condone that woman’s sin. He simply took it as a fact, but then he gently made it clear that he had no interest in condemning her. Yes, she must clean up her life, no question about that – “Go now and leave your life of sin” – but he lifted her burden from her. How much she understood of the law and the character of an all-holy God, whether she did indeed embark that day on a new, pure life, we have no way of knowing; but I’m pretty sure that if she walked away with tears rolling down her face they will have been tears of joy more than sorrow.

And I found myself thinking, how complicated we Christians tend to make the gospel! We have divided ourselves into camps, often with labels, and look down on other Christians who identify themselves with other labels, or emphasise different aspects of the truth. We pronounce on which camps may be “sound” and which “unsound”. We invent various rules, perhaps unconsciously – and perhaps even condemn ourselves when we ourselves fail to measure up.

I remember an evangelistic outreach event where one of the “counsellors” (people on hand to advise new converts) was adamant that a conversion wasn’t complete until the person in question had manifested certain specific spiritual gifts. For him it seemed as if simple, humble faith in Jesus wasn’t enough. And then I think of this woman, or of the thief dying on the cross, to whom Jesus said “Today you will be with me in paradise”. So uncomplicated!

I think of the word of Paul to the Philippian jailer who was scared at what might happen to him as his prison crumbled about his ears: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”. So uncomplicated! I find myself wondering cynically if there are churches which require would-be members to take a written entrance exam in order to qualify. O Lord, forgive our folly!

Thinking like this does, of course, raise real questions. If it’s all so wonderfully simple, why then has God given us in his word such demanding passages as we find in Paul’s letters or in Hebrews or Revelation or Jude, not to mention large swathes of the Old Testament? Is there no place for the study of detailed “doctrine” or for getting stuck into all those obscure biblical names and events which seem to have no relevance to us?

No! To say that would be wrong. God has given us his word as it is, perhaps particularly to get us to understand the deep Jewish roots of our faith, or for some other reason that we will only grasp after serious and possibly difficult study.

Certainly, the Bible contains a whole lot more than beautiful stories of God’s overflowing mercy and love towards sinners: but the point that hit me that Sunday morning with new freshness as I saw that woman walking away with her head held high was… let us never lose sight of that wonderful, infinitely comforting, simplicity.

Father, your truth is profound and often beyond our understanding. Help us, especially as we wrestle with your word in scripture, to call on the Holy Spirit to give us light. But help us also never to forget the sheer simplicity which is at the heart of the gospel. Amen.