“Jesus stooped down and with his finger, He wrote on the ground.”
John 8:6

The Pharisees had just brought an adulteress before Jesus and demanded, “Jesus, what do you say?”

Silence. Just writing in the sand.

The Bible doesn’t tell us what Jesus wrote in the sand that day.

• Maybe He wrote Scripture.
• Perhaps He was writing, “Where is the man? Doesn’t adultery involve two?”
• He could have been writing the sins of the Pharisees who were accusing this woman.
• Maybe Jesus just needed time to collect His thoughts because they were humiliating this woman to get at Him.

I have no idea what He wrote, but I’ll tell you what I believe was taking place.

I believe that Jesus’ heart was absolutely breaking as He knelt in the sand. When He looked at this woman, His passion for the lost caused His heart to break at how she was being treated as an object, unworthy of life. His heart was also breaking because He looked at the Pharisees and realized they just didn’t get it. Jesus would have been totally justified to get in the Pharisees’ faces and say, “You guys don’t get it! (my paraphrase) I came not to judge but to save.” John 3:17

But Jesus didn’t say that. He didn’t blow His top and blast them. In an amazing display of self-control and compassion for this woman, He finally stood and said,

“Whoever is without sin, you throw the first stone.”
John 8:7

They slowly drifted away, dropping their stones as they left. Jesus, in a single moment, transferred the humiliation from the woman to the religious men.

What wisdom.

What a man, this Jesus.

You gotta love Him. I surely do.

How about you?

Written by Bryant Wright, Founder, RFTH

DIG DEEPER
Read “What Was Jesus Writing in the Dirt/Sand When the Pharisees Brought to Him a Woman Caught in Adultery?” at GotQuestions.org