Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. John 8
There are as many theories about what Jesus was doing here as there are people who have read this passage. Jesus clearly perceived that a trap had been set for Him. What did He do about it? No one knows for sure what Jesus wrote in the dirt and how it was related to His present predicament. I have my own theory. I think He was doodling. I don't think what He wrote had anything to do with the Pharisees, unless it was a caricature of them that He drew. I think He was biding His time.
So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last.
His words to the Pharisees confirm this interpretation. He simply tells them to do what they were already planning to do, execute her according to the Law. They were convicted, but note that it wasn't Christ or anything He said or did that convicted them, it was their own consciences. Christ didn't see that this situation called for any action on His part. He simply waited for His Father to take care of it so that He could resume His mission.
And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”
His mission is to preach the Gospel to the poor, the cast down, those whose sin has caught up to them. And when the time came to do this He was completely ready. But His pattern of doing nothing, of waiting, is one of the most significant in His life. It is seen in the first miracle John records, the turning of water to wine, when He saw that it was not time to act. It is seen over and over again in His reluctance to perform signs and wonders, His refusal to judge. Perhaps it is seen best when He stood before Pilate. A single denial of the charges would have sufficed to set Him free, an appeal to any sense of justice would have put a stop to the proceedings. And He just stood there like an idiot.
Two possible explanations for this occur to me. Perhaps the most obvious answer is that He was what He appeared to be, an idiot. He became just like us except for sin, and stupidity is no sin. Could it be one of our infirmities that He took on Himself? We can believe that He set aside omniscience but somehow we assume that He left Himself enough wisdom to be the wisest of men. Perhaps He really was the lowest most outcast of men, a retard. Perhaps this is one way in which we must become like children. And that brings me to the second possible explanation, which I believe is in harmony with the first.
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4
The question of why He wouldn't make the stones into bread is a significant one and I know that I cannot answer it so well as a previous Steward of the Mysteries has:
If we regard the answer he gave the devil, we shall see the root of the matter at once: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Yea even by the word which made that stone that stone. Everything is all right. It is life indeed for him to leave that a stone, which the Father had made a stone. It would be death to him to alter one word that He had spoken."Man shall not live by bread alone." There are other ways of living besides that which comes by bread. A man will live by the word of God, by what God says to him, by what God means between Him and him, by the truths of being which the Father alone can reveal to his child, by the communion of love between them. Without the bread he will die, as men say; but he will not find that he dies. He will only find that the tent which hid the stars from him is gone, and that he can see the heavens; or rather, the earthly house will melt away from around him, and he will find that he has a palace-home about him, another and loftier word of God clothing upon him. So the man lives by the word of God even in refusing the bread which God does not give him, for, instead of dying because he does not eat, he rises into a higher life even of the same kind. George MacDonald Unspoken Sermons Series I., II., and III.
He would not do His own thing but only work the work which His Father gave Him. He wouldn't change anything, even the simplest thing, because to do so would be to be someone other than Himself, who had made it what it was to begin with.
Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”
It was a temptation to shew the powers of the world that he was the Son of God; that to him the elements were subject; that he was above the laws of Nature, because he was the Eternal Son; and thus stop the raging of the heathen, and the vain imaginations of the people. It would be but to shew them the truth. But he was the Son of God: what was his Father's will? Such was not the divine way of convincing the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment. If the Father told him to cast himself down, that moment the pinnacle pointed naked to the sky. If the devil threw him down, let God send his angels; or, if better, allow him to be dashed to pieces in the valley below. But never will he forestall the divine will. The Father shall order what comes next. The Son will obey. In the path of his work he will turn aside for no stone. There let the angels bear him in their hands if need be. But he will not choose the path because there is a stone in it. He will not choose at all. He will go where the Spirit leads him. George MacDonald
Christ's reason for acting or for inaction was trust in His Father. He was acting the part of a SON. He was following His Father. Which is exactly what we are convinced will be the denial of the faith, and will lead the church into unimaginable calamities. And maybe it will. But better to go through anything united with our Head than to be in any circumstance, however pleasant, apart from Him.
Let me then ask, do you believe in the Incarnation? And if you do, let me ask further, Was Jesus ever less divine than God? I answer for you, Never. He was lower, but never less divine. Was he not a child then? You answer, "Yes, but not like other children." I ask, "Did he not look like other children?" If he looked like them and was not like them, the whole was a deception, a masquerade at best. I say he was a child, whatever more he might be. God is man, and infinitely more. Our Lord became flesh, but did not become man. He took on him the form of man: he was man already. And he was, is, and ever shall be divinely childlike. He could never have been a child if he would ever have ceased to be a child, for in him the transient found nothing. Childhood belongs to the divine nature. Obedience, then, is as divine as Will, Service as divine as Rule. How? Because they are one in their nature; they are both a doing of the truth. The love in them is the same. The Fatherhood and the Sonship are one, save that the Fatherhood looks down lovingly, and the Sonship looks up lovingly. Love is all. And God is all in all. He is ever seeking to get down to us—to be the divine man to us. And we are ever saying, "That be far from thee, Lord!" We are careful, in our unbelief, over the divine dignity, of which he is too grand to think. Better pleasing to God, it needs little daring to say, is the audacity of Job, who, rushing into his presence, and flinging the door of his presence-chamber to the wall, like a troubled, it may be angry, but yet faithful child, calls aloud in the ear of him whose perfect Fatherhood he has yet to learn: "Am I a sea or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?" George MacDonald
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