“Go and Sin No More” in John 8:1-11.
I think John included this incident in his Gospel just a few chapters after the “grievous sin of bedroll-carrying incident” because unlike the carrying of the bedroll on the Sabbath, the woman in this event was truly sinning. She was caught in the act of adultery.
The religious leaders are about to stone her to death when Jesus shows up, scribbles in the sand, and when no one is left to condemn her, tells her to “Go and sin no more.”
Most commentators note the connection here with the Levitical law that the punishment for adultery was death by stoning (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22). Most commentators also point that the Levitical law required that both the man and the woman are to be stoned, but in John 8, only the woman is present. This was not because the religious leaders didn’t know who the man was, for they had caught the woman in the very act of adultery. Where is the man? We do not know.
There is some speculation that this woman was simply the innocent bystander in a malevolent plan by the religious leaders to accuse and attack Jesus (John 8:6). Since John 5:1-18, the religious leaders had been looking for ways to discredit and kill Jesus, and they had now found (or created?) a way in this poor woman. Could it be that her guilty partner was involved in the scheme himself?
It is likely that the woman was actually a prostitute, and the religious leaders saw this situation as a “win-win” opportunity for them. If Jesus did not defend her, then they got to stone a prostitute. Yay! If Jesus did defend her, then they could stone Him too as a bonus.
The plan, of course, didn’t go as expected, and Jesus wrote something in the sand which caused all the men to slink away. We don’t know what He wrote, though there is endless speculation about it might have been.
Anyway, once they have all left, Jesus tells the woman that He does not condemn her (and He is the only one present who could have!), and that she should “Go and sin no more.”
Why? For the same reason Jesus told the man in John 5 to go and sin no more: because the religious leaders were out to get her. Now that they had been rebuffed by Jesus and their righteous activity of stoning a prostitute had been denied them for the day, they would doubtless begin looking for a way to kill her again.
Basically, Jesus is saying, “My beautiful lady, I am sorry you got caught up in this. They were after me; not you. They framed you to get at me. I want to protect you from them, so please, consider leaving your current profession. They are likely going to seek to frame you again, and the next time, they won’t bring you to me. They’ll just kill you. Neither one of us want that, so go … do something different with your life.”
Clearly, Jesus did not mean that the woman should never sin again in any way whatsoever. He knew, and we know, that this is impossible. He was simply warning her about the danger of continuing in her current lifestyle. |
