He Gets Us: Questions Jesus Asked | Plan 3Sample

Where Are Your Accusers?

The stories of what happened to people who met Jesus along the way tell us a lot about him. Even if they only spent a few minutes with Jesus, the trajectory of their lives shifted their entire universe.

On a day when Jesus was teaching in the temple, the leaders who pretended to be religious threw a woman at his feet—she was half-dressed, wholly humiliated, and torn from a bed that wasn’t her own.

Clearly, this scene was less about her and more about baiting Jesus. She was just a pawn in the game to trap Jesus. What will you do with her? Jesus saw right through their taunts. They accused her so they could accuse him. They picked up rocks, ready to throw—at her? At Jesus? All they wanted was to catch him breaking either Roman or Moses’ law.

But to their unanswerable question, Jesus bent down and wrote something with his finger in the sand. Then he looked around. “Let him who is without sin among you, be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Their eyes dropped at his words. Then the thud of rocks followed in the dirt.

What did Jesus scribble in the sand? Maybe a list of names from the crowd who were also guilty. Maybe a list of secret sins and every person saw theirs plain as day. We don’t know.

That’s when Jesus told the woman to look up. They stood there alone. Where are your accusers? he asked her. No one condemns you. Neither do I.

Jesus isn’t going soft on adultery; he’s giving her a chance to change her life. He cared less about her past and more about her future.

Maybe it was the first time she had ever seen mercy or been shown kindness.

You can be sure it was the moment her entire universe changed.

That’s what meeting Jesus did to people.