John 8:1-11
but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
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.”
What if the Pharisees had instead brought someone like Jodi Arias before Jesus?
Jodi Arias killed her ex-boyfriend, she stabbed him repeatedly, shot and nearly decapitated him. She has been found guilty and may be sentenced to death. What would Jesus response have been had the pharisees said to him “in the Law Moses commanded us to kill such women. Now what do you say?”
Would Jesus have said “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” or would he have said, as Moses instructed, “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life”?