44 - Saving Guilty People

To the priests, Jesus was a political problem. They just wanted Him out of the way. But to the Pharisees, Jesus was a biblical problem. He kept putting the needs of people ahead of the rules in the Law of Moses. Yet the God who wrote those rules didn’t seem to be angry with Him. Jesus was performing miracles that were very hard to ignore. If God was angry with Him, it didn’t show. But up until now most of their complaints were about the way He interpreted the ceremonial portions of the Law: things that had to do with what was “clean” or “unclean” or what it meant to “rest” on the sabbath. They were upset because He ate with sinners, touched lepers and dead bodies and ministered on the wrong day. But would He ignore the moral portions of the Law as well? What would He do if He were confronted with someone who had unquestionably violated another of the Ten Commandments, besides keeping the sabbath day holy? If He publicly rejected one of those holy standards, people would turn against Him, and they, the Pharisees, would have grounds and witnesses to accuse Him of being a false prophet (Dt 13:1-5). So on a day when all Jerusalem was celebrating the giving of the Law, they placed a woman caught in the act of committing adultery in front of Him and dared Him to ignore that rule.