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WRETCHEDNESS AND PITY

John 7:53–8:11 (contd)

FURTHER, this incident tells us a great deal about Jesus and his attitude to the sinner.

(1) It was a first principle of Jesus that only those who are themselves without fault have the right to express judgment on the fault of others. ‘Do not judge,’ said Jesus, ‘so that you may not be judged’ (Matthew 7:1). He said that the man who attempted to judge his brother was like a man with a log in his own eye trying to take a speck of dust out of someone else’s eye (Matthew 7:3–5). One of the commonest faults in life is that so many of us demand standards from others that we never even try to meet ourselves; and so many of us condemn faults in others which are glaringly obvious in our own lives. The qualification for judging is not knowledge – we all possess that; it is achievement in goodness – none of us is perfect there. The very facts of the human situation mean that only God has the right to judge, for the simple reason that not one of us is good enough to judge any other.

(2) It was also a first principle with Jesus that our first emotion towards anyone who has made a mistake should be pity. It has been said that the duty of the doctor is ‘sometimes to heal, often to afford relief and always to bring consolation’. When a person suffering from some ailment is brought to a doctor, the doctor does not regard that patient with loathing even if the ailment turns out to be a loathsome disease. In fact, the physical revulsion which is sometimes inevitable is swallowed up by the great desire to help and to heal. When we are confronted with someone who has made a mistake, our first feeling ought to be, not, ‘I’ll have nothing more to do with someone who could act like that’, but, ‘What can I do to help? What can I do to undo the consequences of this mistake?’ Quite simply, we must always extend to others the same compassionate pity we would wish to be extended to ourselves if we were involved in a similar situation.

(3) It is very important that we should understand just how Jesus did treat this woman. It is easy to draw the wrong lesson altogether and to gain the impression that Jesus forgave lightly and easily, as if the sin did not matter. What he said was: ‘I am not going to condemn you just now; go, and sin no more.’ In effect, what he was doing was not to abandon judgment and say: ‘Don’t worry; it’s quite all right.’ What he did was, as it were, to defer sentence. He said: ‘I am not going to pass a final judgment now; go and prove that you can do better. You have sinned; go and sin no more and I’ll help you all the time. At the end of the day we will see how you have lived.’ Jesus’ attitude to the sinner involved a number of things.

(a) It involved the second chance. It is as if Jesus said to the woman: ‘I know you have made a mess of things; but life is not finished yet; I am giving you another chance, the chance to redeem yourself.’ Louisa Fletcher put it like this:

How I wish that there was some wonderful place

Called the Land of Beginning Again,

Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches

And all our poor selfish grief

Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door,

And never put on again.

In Jesus, there is the gospel of the second chance. He was always intensely interested, not only in what a person had been, but also in what a person could be. He did not say that what they had done did not matter; broken laws and broken hearts always matter; but he was sure that everyone has a future as well as a past.

(b) It involved pity. The basic difference between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees was that they wished to condemn; he wished to forgive. If we read between the lines of this story, it is quite clear that they wished to stone this woman to death and were going to take pleasure in doing so. They knew the thrill of exercising the power to condemn; Jesus knew the thrill of exercising the power to forgive. Jesus regarded sinners with pity born of love; the scribes and Pharisees regarded them with disgust born of self-righteousness.

(c) It involved challenge. Jesus confronted this woman with the challenge of the sinless life. He did not say: ‘It’s all right; don’t worry; just go on as you are doing.’ He said: ‘It’s all wrong; go out and fight; change your life from top to bottom; go, and sin no more.’ Here was no easy forgiveness; here was a challenge which pointed a sinner to heights of goodness of which she had never dreamed. Jesus confronts the bad life with the challenge of the good.

(d) It involved belief in human nature. When we come to think of it, it is a staggering thing that Jesus should say to a woman of loose morals: ‘Go, and sin no more.’ The amazing, heart-uplifting thing about him was his belief in men and women. When he was confronted with someone who had gone wrong, he did not say: ‘You are a wretched and a hopeless creature.’ He said: ‘Go, and sin no more.’ He believed that with his help sinners have it in them to become saints. His method was not to blast men and women with the knowledge – which they already possessed – that they were miserable sinners, but to inspire them with the unglimpsed discovery that they were potential saints.

(e) It involved warning, clearly unspoken but implied. Here we are face to face with the eternal choice. Jesus confronted the woman with a choice that day – either to go back to her old ways or to reach out to the new way with him. This story is unfinished, for every life is unfinished until it stands before God.

(As we noted at the beginning, this story does not appear in all the ancient manuscripts. A discussion of the textual questions involved will be found at the end of this book.)