‘One on one with Jesus’ series: Jesus and the woman trapped and set free.
An Indian man who had come to faith in Jesus was once asked by a missionary how his conversion had happened. The Indian gathered several twigs and laid them on the ground in a circle, took a caterpillar, put it in the centre of the circle, then set the twigs alight. As soon as the caterpillar began to feel the heat of the flames, it crawled to one side of the circle, then to the other, trying to escape. Instinctively it returned to the centre and curled into a ball, ready to die. At that moment the man reached out and lifted the caterpillar to safety. “This is how it was with my salvation” the Indian said. “When all around me I beheld nothing but the flames of God’s wrath, I tried to save myself, but all my efforts were useless and brought me no peace. Then the Lord Jesus caught me with his merciful hand and rescued me.”
The caterpillar could do nothing to save itself. It was trapped, and as good as dead. It was only because the man reached out with compassion that the caterpillar was freed.
In today’s Gospel reading, rescue from entrapment is a key theme. A woman has been trapped by the religious leaders. She had first been trapped by the act of adultery. We don’t know the circumstances behind this—whether it was a mistake and a first and last time, or a longstanding affair. We don’t know if she had lived in an abusive, controlling marriage, and fell for a man who actually loved her, or if she was being exploited and blackmailed. We can’t often know the motives for why people do certain things. And its likely the Pharisees didn’t really know either. But whatever the circumstances are, the woman is trapped, long before the Pharisees have seized her.
She is trapped by the law—God’s law. No matter what her circumstances are, she has broken the Commandment that says: “You shall not commit adultery.” When confronted with wrongdoing, a common human response is to point to our circumstances to justify ourselves: ‘I was tired’, or ‘I was upset’, or ‘I needed it’, or ‘I had a bad day’ or ‘I was just trying to help’ or ‘I couldn’t help it’. Or: “I know I shouldn’t have done it…but….”
But the woman’s circumstances cannot be used to justify breaking God’s law, and neither can ours.
So as she is seized in the tight grasp of the Pharisees’ hands, and brought to stand before Jesus and the people in the Temple grounds—humiliated and shamed—she is silent. Nothing she could say would justify her actions. She is trapped. With the dawning of the morning there is not a bright day ahead, only a path leading to a dark, desperately dire outcome. She has been caught. She is guilty. There is no escape.
The Teachers of the law and the Pharisees 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?”
The Teachers of the law and the Pharisees take great pleasure in this, because…they are correct! Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22 state that if a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, they are both to be put to death.” Stoning was the usual way the death penalty was administered. This penalty is jarring to our modern ears, but comes from the place of God wanting to protect his people from themselves. God’s design for marriage is that husband and wife are protected with honour and dignity so that in a safe space they can be physically, sexually, psychologically, and emotionally vulnerable, and children can be raised in a home with peace and a sense of secure belonging. One decision, one moment of pleasure can destroy all this. Unfaithfulness deeply hurts those whose marriage has been violated. It destroys people. These hardline laws were actually designed to protect all in the family, and especially women who were seen as commodities to be used and thrown away.
I’m not sure the Pharisees are overly concerned about that. If they were…where’s the male offender in this? Did he manage to escape before being caught? Is his identity unknown? If they were only concerned with preserving the morality of the religious community, and upholding God’s gift of marriage, they would be pursuing him too.
But instead of this they bring the woman before Jesus. They come seeking to trap him too. They know Jesus’ compassion for people, how he welcomes sinners and eats with them. How he associates with the unclean; the unholy, the unrighteous. So they have Jesus right where they want him. If he answers according to the law, he will go against himself and not show compassion to this woman. If, as they expect, he does show compassion to her, he will be breaking the law. They wait with eager expectation.
When the religious leaders came to Jesus with the woman caught in adultery, he is in the temple grounds teaching the people. This is quite deliberate by them. They want to trick Jesus into giving an answer that would undermine his credibility before the gathering. They want to cast doubt on his teaching, and for his audience to distrust him. They don’t only bring the woman before the crowd to shame her, but also that there might be the testimony of two or three witnesses against Jesus, so that his standing as a rabbi is shredded as a law-breaker, and they have a reason to put him to death.
And so, the opposition to Jesus that began with Satan in the wilderness continues through the religious leaders. By opposing Jesus and his word, they are doing the Devil’s own work. They want Jesus done away with too. This is their opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Initially, Jesus didn’t give them an answer, but 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, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. What was Jesus writing?
We’re not told, but because it’s mentioned twice, it’s significant. It reminds us of God giving the commandments: “When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.” (Exodus 31:18). Is the finger of God here inscribing the commandments on the ground before the Pharisees? I think so, for their leaving in silence also fits with this. Romans 3 says: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.”
The Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees are accountable to God too. When might they have committed adultery, if not literally, in their hearts? When might they have secretly snuck around to the harlots and prostitutes, or talked seductively with the barmaid? What thoughts might have occupied their imaginations and fantasies about their neighbour’s wife, spilling forth in sleazy jokes? Or when and how might they have broken other commandments, deceiving others, rather than speaking the truth, stealing by taking advantage of others, coveting what they do not have a right to have? The Teachers of the Law and the Pharisees have trapped themselves. There’s nothing they can say. If one demands a strict account of the law, they must die too. So one by one, the accusers disperse, leaving only Jesus and the woman in view.
What would God want us to see in today’s text about ourselves? At the deepest and most subtle level, when do we set our expectations as the benchmark and judge who is righteous and unrighteous against those? What are the occasions in which we to point the finger and have an accusatory heart towards others?
The more we blame others, the more we are like the teachers of the law and the Pharisees. Blaming others is self-medicating against the pain of our sin. It’s a self-protective strategy, usually to deflect attention from our own shortcomings, mistakes and sin, so as to maintain the approval of others. Pointing towards others are attempts to free ourselves from giving an account. For a moment, point with your index finger. Which way are the other three fingers pointing? Back to ourselves. In accusing others, we end up accusing ourselves.
When everyone had gone, Jesus 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.”
Jesus freed the woman who was trapped and gives her a completely new future: “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
This is a snapshot of precisely why Jesus came into the world: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:16-18).
The location of today’s text, the Mount of Olives, reminds us of Jesus praying there before his arrest, on the night that he was betrayed. Just as the woman, defenceless, is brought before Jesus before she is about to go to trial, we are reminded of Jesus, defenceless, brought before Caiaphas and Pilate. As the woman is silent before her accusers, Jesus was silent before his own accusers: “he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).
Although Jesus never did any wrong—even at Pilate’s own admission—he would be put to death. It was our sin, our secrets in our hearts, our finger-pointing, our turning from God’s word, that crucified Jesus. He is put to death to pay the penalty for the woman in adultery. Put to death to pay the penalty for all of those who have adulterous lustful thoughts in their heart. Put to death for all those who accuse and finger point, and blame and condemn.
And so there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. For Jesus has paid the death penalty for us and has freed us from the spiritual adultery that is a part of our natural humanness—our unfaithfulness towards God. He has freed us from our entrapment to sin, death and the devil, having ransomed the world from the Kingdom of Darkness by his precious blood and reconciling us to God.
That is why the Pharisees trapped themselves: they did not believe in the name of God’s one and only Son. But for the woman, and for us who believe, we have received grace that goes beyond a concept or philosophy. It is grace given to make us a new creation in Christ, changing the shape of our heart from a clenched fist to a Cross, so that we open our hands to drop our stones, and no longer point our fingers but fold them in prayer to our Father.
Christ has freed us to live in true freedom, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). Christ says to you: “No, I do not pin your past, your faults, your sin to you, because they have been nailed to the Cross.” Freedom is risky, because freedom means we can do whatever we want. We can lapse into the works of the flesh and follow after the things of the world. Instead of daily drowning the sinful nature we can just drown in whatever lifestyle we choose.
But true freedom is expressed in Jesus’ exhortation: to go and leave your life of sin. We have been freed for a completely new future. You have been rescued from the death we all deserve and given life in Christ’s own death and resurrection, to love God’s word and keep his law: Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it (Luke 11:28). This is at the heart at our confession this morning: “Do you intend to strive daily to live a holy life, even as Christ has made you holy?”
We cannot become holy by keeping the law. But you have been made holy by Christ alone and freed by him to lead holy lives, as people he stands beside and advocates for before your Father in heaven; and so you are the Father’s own dear children whom he approves of and blesses, rather than condemns. Amen.
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Third Sunday in Lent, 2026
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
“the grace we have been given is to make us a new creation in Christ, changing the shape of our heart from a clenched fist to a Cross.”
- How do God’s strict rules and strong penalties actually show his heart for his people?
- As you look back on life, is there a pattern of justifications that you use when you know you shouldn’t have said or done particular things?
- Why might people find it easier to point the finger at others and not self? What lies underneath this?
- Although there is no justifications we can use, how can this text give you hope and peace?
- How does this text show that grace is more than just a concept? According to this text, what is true freedom for?
- When we are condemned by our conscience, others, the law, and the devil, what is the comfort in this text? How is Jesus’ freeing of a woman trapped a picture of what he has done for you?
- What might the completely new future Jesus has freed you for look like? Where is Jesus in that picture?
