In John 8, Jesus was questioned about a woman about to be stoned and turned around to the Pharisees and made a profound and penetrating statement: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." The lesson learned is that there was nobody among the leaders of the Jewish people who was willing to deem themself a sinless judge before Jesus. Christians read John 8 and often feel a sense of victory when the Pharisees turn skulking away. Then we read other passages of Scriptures and in our heart we look for a stone to throw.
Quite often when we read certain passages of Scripture, we are confronted with people grievously sinning who are supposed to be faithful to God. We ourselves can too easily come to the Scriptures with a judgmental attitude that cannot recognize that we are no better than those we are reading about. There are many examples of this, but none more prominent to me than the account of Abraham. Abraham is supposed to be the father of faith and as we read about his life we have an expectation. Our expectation is to see this man who is recorded as having great faith acting in a perfectly faithful way - he doesn't. What do we do with that? We can too easily become Abraham's judge without realizing that we are too called to the same faith as Abraham and fail.
In Genesis 16 we see a whole chapter of failure. Abraham fails, Sarah fails and Hagar (Sarah's maidservant) fails. As we read through that chapter, our little hearts full of self-righteous justice are outraged and we want to pound our gavels with all our might. Abraham and Sarah used Hagar in an unwholesome way as they manipulate circumstances in what seems to be an attempt to make God's plan happen. It's easy for us to sympathize with Hagar and completely fail to see that she too sinned in her response to the sinful scheme. We wonder how Hagar can ever return to Abraham and Sarah until we see that Hagar herself accepts that God has uncovered her own sinfulness and has still heard her cries. Genesis 16 is a passage that uncovers our own self-righteous hearts as we look to pick up a stone.
The way Jesus speaks to the Pharisees in John 8, and the way we see God deal with Hagar in Genesis 16, teaches us that we are so often too quick to judge. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made this point very clear. Matthew 7:1-2 "Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Be careful when you point fingers because you can't even measure up to your own standards.
On another occasion Jesus also made this principle clear to the Pharisees. Matthew 23:25-26 25 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. You might try to look holy on the outside, but you need to remember that you are dirty on the inside. It's time to look within.
There are many Scriptures that give the exact same message as John 8 and even if the woman caught in adultery passage should not be in the New Testament, we are not lacking the same teaching elsewhere. We are all sinners and when we think we are justified to point fingers, we need the reminder that we are not.
Jesus is the only sinless judge and Jesus came not to point his finger but to die on a cross to bear the punishment for our sin. The horizontal effect of that in the church is seen when we are able to love and forgive each other because we are all guilty sinners who have been saved by the guiltless Savior. We can read passages like John 8 and Genesis 16 and remind ourselves that we are no better than pharisees, women in adultery, those who devise sinful schemes and those who respond sinfully to them.
We all need Jesus.