Have you ever been asked a tricky question and thought to yourself ‘How come Jesus never had to deal with this one!’? Thankfully, even though the questions of the first century are different to ours, there is at least one passage of the Bible where we see Jesus beautifully model how to respond to a tough question connected to sexuality. It’s in John 8:2-11:
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 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. 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.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. 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. 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. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
This is quite a well-known passage, and one everyone loves because Jesus ‘stands up to the bullies’, the moralistic religious men picking on this poor isolated woman. But there’s more to it. Why do the Pharisees bring her before Jesus? They already want to stone her. The only reason they bring her to Jesus is to see what he will say. Will Jesus go along with the law, in the way they understand it, or will he suggest that they show her compassion, and prove himself to be a woolly liberal? It’s all a trap. The pressure is on.
I love this story because it’s the sort of situation that Christians can be tangled up in today: pressed to comment, do we condemn or condone? Will we say the right thing? It’s good to know that Jesus was put in a similar position. But it’s even better to see how he deals with it.
The key verse is the famous one, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
We need to be really clear about this. Jesus does not support adultery. He does not advocate avoiding value judgements about anything. He effectively says, ‘Don't make moral judgements, whether on sexuality or not, where you think you’re better than someone else.’ This challenge evidently brought instant conviction, because everyone slowly skulks away, oldest to youngest. This is the bit everyone loves! Hurray, Jesus outwitted the bullies!
Jesus effectively says, ‘Don't make moral judgements, whether on sexuality or not, where you think you’re better than someone else.’
But there’s more, because Jesus says two more things.
Firstly, ‘Neither do I condemn you’, and secondly, ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’ There’s so much in that. Jesus has effectively just saved her life, so he’s got the opportunity to say whatever he likes. When someone saves your life, they can get away with saying some tough things, can’t they?
Jesus’ first thought with this big opportunity is to say, incredibly, ‘You’re free from condemnation’ – and he has the authority to say it. But he follows it immediately by saying, ‘You’ve got to stop this life pattern.’ Note, he doesn’t say ‘Stop the adultery’, though that’s probably implied. He says ‘Leave this life of sin’. A much bigger ask! And, it’s a much better way to contextualise sexual stuff – it matters, but Jesus doesn’t make it the biggest issue. Sin is the big issue – setting yourself against God.
I don’t know about you, but I find it’s much easier to condemn something I haven’t done. I have never been attracted to another man once in my life, and so I definitely haven’t committed any homosexual sins. But, like most people, maybe everyone, I have sinned sexually in my life. So, like the Pharisees, I have no right to throw any rocks. Apart from Jesus, none of us do.
What then is the Jesus model? Pushed to condemn or condone this woman, he instead risked his own life – getting between her and an armed mob – in order to set her free. He saves her, and then, out of love, he talks about how to live.
Remarkably, the same Jesus who put his life on the line for the woman ultimately died for each and every one of us, so he can with integrity tell all of us how to live. He purchases us and sets us free, and then tells us how to use that freedom.
He purchases us and sets us free, and then tells us how to use that freedom.
When we face tricky questions that ask us to condemn or condone, it might not be that we literally need to save a gay friend from death, but those friends need to know that we would be the first person to put ourselves on the line and stand up to any sort of bullying, violence, hateful words or any other nasty behaviour. It is only then, when people know that we love them enough that we’d die for them, that we can speak helpfully with integrity.
At heart, despite the pressures we may face to comment, God doesn’t call us to go round preaching about our views on sexuality to unbelievers, even if they’re his views. Should we condemn or condone those caught in sin? Neither. We’re called to walk the middle way of Jesus, loving sacrificially and inviting people to experience the freedom from condemnation and freedom from sin that only he offers.
