The Problem with Religious Lawyers

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR John 8:2–8 ESV Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. CONSIDER The sun was hardly up and the Pharisees were holding court. Let’s try to make sense out of this trial. For starters, we have the law. The Pharisees and teachers of the law came as the prosecutors. They brought a woman, the accused, whom they intended to bring to judgment. Or did they? “Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. No, these lawyers cared nothing for this woman, a mere pawn in their chess game. They were going for the Lawgiver. Whose side would he take? Would he set the law aside and grant her immunity from prosecution, or would he permit them to throw the book at her? If ever he had a chance to win points with the powerful, this was it. Let’s be clear: Jesus gained nothing by taking her case. In this classic no-win situation, Jesus searched for the third way and chose to compromise. Are you kidding me? Jesus called a play no one knew was in the playbook. He turned the lawyers into the accused, put them on trial, and compelled them to testify against themselves: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” So how can there ever be any sense of justice in this high court? Why not just throw open the prison doors and let them all go free? Isn’t that what the gospel does? The gospel does not do away with justice and judgment; rather, it crushes condemnation. Watch this: Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. (vv. 10–11 NIV). There’s guilt and then there’s shame. Guilt can be punished or pardoned. Shame must be crushed—yes, even crucified. Shaming is our twisted sense of justice whereby we hide from our own unresolved guilt while projecting it onto another person and then condemn them for it. In doing so, we heap condemnation on ourselves, and the cycle endlessly repeats itself. Remember, in the garden, Adam and Eve knew they were guilty, and, rather than abandon themselves to the mercy of God, they covered themselves, hid from God, and prepared their defense (see Genesis 3:7–13). See how it works? Rather than confessing their guilt, they concealed it, and in concealing it, they condemned themselves, swallowing their shame. Those who have swallowed shame cannot help but to throw it up onto others. A person who feels condemnation will unwittingly do anything to transfer it to someone else.  That’s why we did it. That’s why we crucified Jesus. We were there. In fact, we are there. And that is the problem with religious lawyers. Even though they lose, they never stop coming.  Now, about the matter of Jesus’s words to the woman. Everyone likes to make such a big deal of this, noting that Jesus didn’t let her off the hook without a parting, stinging rebuke—to show that he was still a hard-liner against sin. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (v.11 NIV) Maybe so. But note this: Jesus was not talking to us; he said this to her. No one else was even around to hear it. Our tendency is to take what Jesus said to her and make it our moralistic message to the masses. I must stand before Jesus, pardon in hand, and hear these merciful words spoken directly to me and no one else but me. I’m the murderer. I’m the adulterer. I’m the thief. I’m the idolater. I see another truth hiding in this last phrase: “Go now and leave your life of sin.” Jesus sets us free from the penalty of sin, and, even better, he sets us free from the power of sin. So often that power shows up as shame—that you are forgiven for doing bad, but let's face it, you are yourself inescapably bad, forever defective, and damaged goods. It's this residual stain that keeps us bound in a life of secret sin. It's what makes Jesus's words to her so powerful. She doesn't leave wearing the scarlet letter. She leaves loved—so forgiven it's forgotten—even she can forget it. Her sin is as dead as those rocks lying all over the ground. But those religious lawyers . . . don't think for a minute they will leave her alone. And they will chase Jesus down all the way to the cross.  And that's the deeper meaning of the story. Don't be a religious lawyer. You are the woman caught in adultery. I am too. Jesus doesn't need lawyers.* He needs witnesses.  *You real lawyers (like me) know what I mean here.  PRAY Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Amen.