John 8:1-11 — Facets of Forgiveness
Facets of Forgiveness - A Difficult Choice
Forgiveness is a difficult choice that demands we release others from the penalty of their sin, just as Jesus did. Only by remembering our own weakness and sin can we find the humility to forgive.
The Weight of Unforgiveness
Two people sit across from each other, clearly upset. They’ve spent the last ten minutes accusing one another, expressing anger in a variety of ways. Neither wants to admit that they bear any responsibility. It’s all about the other person. Both blame each other for the problems. The pattern has been clearly established: if you admit that you made a mistake, it gets used like a club to beat you with.
They talk about expectations not being met. Good feelings about each other have been lost. They no longer discuss how they might fit together. The only thing that matters is being right and making sure that the other one is wrong. Both claim to love God, to love Jesus, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, yet all their words are unholy, filled with venom. They’re not interested in building relationship. They’re only interested in winning. They want to destroy the other, thinking that in that destruction, they’ll somehow recreate a relationship.
After ten or fifteen minutes of listening to their accusations, it becomes obvious that forgiveness is not what they’ve come for. The whole idea of forgiving each other or looking for a way to find forgiveness is lost in their anger and bitterness and resentment. Both start talking about divorce. Neither wants to heal. This scene has been played out in counseling offices over and over again. It’s not a new scene, nor is it something that happens rarely. It happens too often.
Why is it so hard to forgive? What is it that makes forgiveness such a personal thing that we find it difficult to take a step back and acknowledge that forgiveness is necessary and needed? What is really required in order for forgiveness to take place?
The Woman Caught in Adultery
The story of the woman caught in adultery, recorded in John chapter eight, shows us both the difficulty and the essential nature of forgiveness for those who follow Jesus. The shame of being caught in a sexual sin is heightened by the very act itself when the person catching you is there to witness it. She wasn’t just caught—she was witnessed. The Bible tells us that she was caught in the very act of adultery.
When we read that “the teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery,” the word brought here is used in an active way—the way it’s used to describe animals being brought to slaughter. She is being dragged before the crowd. This is not a place she wants to be. This is a place where only her shame is going to be heightened and highlighted. The people who have brought her in don’t care about her. She is not a person to them. She is an object for their test. Her feelings do not matter. The perception of others about her doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether they can use her to make Jesus look bad and proclaim that he’s not worthy to be followed.
Jesus responds in a way that demonstrates presence of mind and wisdom. He bends down and starts writing on the ground. If he had immediately answered their trap, it probably wouldn’t have been as well received or as much heard as what needs to happen. Instead, by stooping down and writing, he gives time for them to anticipate his response. The tension builds. And then those words that move her out of the limelight. She’s still standing there—everyone can see her—but his words take the spotlight from her and move it to them.
Jesus doesn’t mention the law. He doesn’t say the accusers are right about the law. Instead, he says: “Let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” In this statement, he is tacitly agreeing with the law. Stoning is the required punishment. But let’s start with the standard, shall we? Which one of you is perfect? Whoever that is, go ahead and pick up the stone and start.
The accusers had been trying to dehumanize this woman, but Jesus makes their attempt very subjective for them. They are no longer the judges; they are now on the witness stand. They have to answer. And one by one, they begin to leave. The older ones go first. We don’t know if this indicates wisdom or simply recognition of the weight of hypocrisy. But they shuffle away, their sandaled feet pointing away from him instead of at the woman.
Then it’s just the two of them. She sees all the accusers leave. Do you think for a moment she’s calm? Certainly she feels relief. But perhaps she’s also anticipating what Jesus will say. There’s relief, but there’s also anticipation. Do I leave too? Do I stick around? What am I supposed to do?
The silence is broken when Jesus straightens up and asks: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” He already knows the answer. He’s asking so she can say it herself. “Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.”
The Call to Forgive
Just as we see Jesus on the cross forgiving those who nailed him to that cross, we’re left asking: How does Jesus do this? The perfect one who knows what the law requires and is not in objection to what the law requires—how does he forgive? How does he say to this woman, there is no condemnation? Surely she deserves at least a reprimand. Surely she deserves some kind of punishment. Yet he says: “I don’t condemn you. Go home. Stop sinning.”
We have no idea what happened to this woman after that moment. We’re not told. Because Jesus knows something about the pain of sin, and his refusal to use it as a club to beat us up with it. He knows it and does not use it to condemn us. That is the nature of God.
But we’re still left with this dilemma: How do we forgive? God is God. He’s got things that he does that we can’t do. He’s got ways of thinking that we can’t think. We can read this great story and see the words and actions of Jesus, but we also experience the pain when someone hurts us. How do we forgive when we are hurt?
Here’s the tension we face: If you are the one who has been hurt, you want justice. If you are the one who has hurt someone, when it’s our sin that’s on display, we want everyone to give us a break. We would like everyone to say: I understand. We want everyone to admit: I could have had that problem too. We want someone to come alongside and put their arm around us and say: I forgive you.
But if you’re the one who hurts me, I want you to know how much you’ve hurt me. I demand better. I expect better. In the process of my being hurt, I want you to not only know the depth of my hurt, but I would like in some measure for you to hurt too. At least get a flavor for it.
Forgiveness is about recognizing that there is no perfection and that we all, one time or another, need the forgiveness of others. When we hurt someone, we need to be reminded that we’re imperfect too. Someone will say, “I would never do what they did to me. I would never do that.” And the response to that is: good for you. I’m glad you would never do that. So maybe you don’t have a problem with whatever that is. Maybe you’ve got a different problem. And let’s call it what it is: pride. Maybe there’s a part of you that as soon as you say, “I would never do that,” another part of you says, “I’m better. I’m better than that person.”
Finding the Grace to Forgive
Several years ago, I was sitting with a client. After three sessions, I was pretty confident I didn’t know what we were talking about. I had exhausted trying to pick through the defensive walls. I had exhausted my capabilities and my competency. And when I work with individuals, I don’t charge for counseling. I’ve done that for free for over thirty years. But I also, since I don’t charge, decide at some point when we’re not making progress that I’m tired and we need to find someone else.
I was right on the verge of saying that to her. This was the fourth session. We were about twenty minutes in, and it was still spinning wheels with no traction. And I said to her, “It’s time for you to go somewhere else.” And she looked at me and she said, “Can I trust you?”
My first inclination was to think: What have I been doing for three and a half sessions? Did I persuade you I can’t be trusted? But I just said to her, “I don’t know. You have to decide.”
Because I knew at that point that question told me there was something more that she wanted to tell me. Tears began to roll down her cheeks. Both eyes just rolling down her cheeks. She said, “I got to tell you, but I’m afraid you’ll hate me.”
Isn’t that the way it is? We don’t want our sin exposed. We think everybody will hate us. We think if they knew the truth about us, everybody would despise us, would pull away from us, would say you don’t measure up. What we need in those moments, when people need to expose their sin, is somebody to come alongside and say: you know what? I struggle too. I’m just like you. I have need of somebody saying, you’re forgiven.
I told that lady that if she would cross the line and trust me, I would not reject her. As she poured out her heart, she understood why she was afraid.
What makes forgiveness so hard when we’ve been hurt is that we have a hard time putting ourselves in another person’s place. We begin within our own minds thinking: this is not right. I’ve been mistreated in some way. I don’t deserve this. I ought to get something different. And all of that may be true, but it inhibits our ability to move toward forgiveness.
All you have to do is remember the depth of your own sin to be reminded of the importance of forgiveness. As followers of God, this is the difficult choice. Don’t hear me say that whatever one does that’s sin ought to be ignored. That’s not what I’m saying. Jesus didn’t say that either. I am saying, however, that when sin is exposed, instead of recoiling in horror, remember your own first. Remember how weak and vulnerable you felt when your sin was exposed.
The emotions are what make sin so difficult. I can talk to you all day about forgiveness—last week, this week. I’m talking to your head. But here’s the problem: it’s my heart that gets in the way. You can hear all the words and agree with everything being said, but then there’s the heart problem. And the heart problem says: how do I get rid of the hurt? Even when you think about your own sin, it’s not as bad as how somebody has treated you.
When Jesus said on the cross, “Father, forgive them,” what did he say? “They don’t know what they’re doing.” And what does that word forgive mean? To set them free. Free from what? Free from the penalty of the sin. Free from the penalty of their sin.
Do you think Jesus at that moment felt good about that? Sometimes we think about forgiveness this way: I realize that what I need to do is forgive this person, and if I forgive them, then I’ll be released. I will discover what forgiveness means. As one person put it: forgiveness means discovering that there’s a monster, and when you forgive, the monster was you. Set yourself free.
But do you think for a moment that Jesus was saying, “Set them free from the penalty of their sin so that I’m released too”? No. Here’s the thing: as soon as we’re demanding justice, we have to start rating our injustice in line with other injustices so that we find out we deserve better than someone else. The whole idea of demanding justice is to put it into the category of comparing. Someone comes up to you and says, “Do you know what so-and-so did to me?” And you don’t feel what they feel. So you don’t think their injustice is that significant. But when you do feel it, when you do feel it, you want everybody to feel it with you.
This is why forgiveness is so hard. No one can match the intensity of what you feel.
But when Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, set them free from the penalty of their sin,” I would submit that Jesus was revealing his identity. Who he was as a person and as God. And I would submit that when you forgive, you are releasing the other person to know who you are as a person. You are revealing your identity. You are releasing yourself to be known.
Jesus called on the accusers to clarify their identity. The one who is perfect, take up the stone. They saw themselves until they were put on the witness stand and then they understood: I have to tell the truth. I’m not any better than she is.
This is easier said than done. The emotions involved are real and powerful. But we must start by speaking to our heads first, laying a foundation, and then we can begin to deal with the emotions themselves—or at least get closer to understanding how to move through them.
This is the difficult choice that Jesus calls us to make.
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