Have you ever been caught in a sin? Oh my, haven’t we all? And don’t you just hate it when that happens? There you sit on the side of the road (always a road with LOTS of traffic), with that blue light announcing to all the world that you, A CHRISTIAN (see that little fish on my bumper?), have been caught speeding or whatever. You wish you could become invisible. You wish you hadn’t put that fish on your bumper. You wish you hadn’t been in such a hurry to get where you were going!

Or I remember once when I was about 16, new driver’s license in my pocket, I decided to take all my church friends for a joyride during the Sunday School hour. Thinking that my parents were safely tucked away in their own Sunday School class, I secretly drove the family car full of friends down to the local drive-in called “The Honeycone”. As we sat there drinking our sodas and having a great time skipping church, a little toot-toot from a car horn caught my attention. I looked up to see my dad smiling and waving at me as he drove past in our other car. Oh how he loved events that made his children think they had no secrets from him! And oh how I dreaded going home that day!

Speeding tickets and having car keys temporarily confiscated are a level of consequences for being “caught in the act” that most of us have experienced at one time or another. But all of us dread even the thought of being the woman caught in the act of adultery whose story is recounted in John 8. Whether we are adulterers ourselves or not, we feel for her embarrassment at getting caught, we understand her dread of being judged and her fear of punishment, and we certainly identify with her shame. We have been embarrassed, fearful, and ashamed too.

The people who caught the adulterous woman in her sin were quite pleased with themselves. Catching her in blatant sin apparently made them feel better about themselves. (“I may not be perfect, but I least I haven’t done that!”) It also gave them an opportunity to confront Jesus, a Man they did not like because He was not impressed with all their good works and sacrifices. So they brought the caught woman to Jesus where He was sitting and teaching in the temple, and they confronted HIM with HER sin.

I’ve always wondered why Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust of the temple floor with His finger when they confronted Him with the woman’s sin. I always figured He didn’t want to condemn her but He also knew that the law required stoning her. His compassion was at war with the demands of righteousness on the inside of Him, I thought. And haven’t we all experienced that? He didn’t want to condemn her but she WAS guilty!

I’ve always applauded the wisdom of Jesus’ response to the crowd of accusers when they pressed their case with Him. “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Wow! That hurts so good, I’ve said to myself as I contemplated my own judgmental attitudes from time to time, and sometimes even found a place of repentance for that. If you are a Christian, it ultimately feels good to get rid of bad attitudes!

But why did Jesus stoop down and write in the dust of the temple floor? I don’t think Jesus ever did or said a vain thing. I believe every tiny detail of His life here on earth has significance. So why did He write in the dust with His finger?

In the Old Testament law that God gave to Moses, when a woman was accused of adultery, she was brought before the priest in the temple for judgment. The priest would take some holy water in an earthenware bowl and mix it with dust from the floor of the temple. (Dust has been a symbol of the curses that are the deserved consequence of sin ever since God cursed the ground in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve sinned. Genesis 3:17) Then the priest would write onto a scroll the accusations against the woman and wash them off into the water along with the dirt. He would stir them all together and the mixture was called the “water of bitterness that brings a curse.” The priest would then pray that if the woman was not guilty the water would have no effect on her but if she was guilty the water would cause her belly to swell and her thighs to waste away. Then the woman was made to drink the water. (All of this is found in Numbers 5:11-31)

So this woman, caught in the very act of adultery, is brought before Jesus. He is a priest, yes, but not the kind of priest those people were expecting. He IS the holy water in an earthenware bowl talked about in the law of Moses. He is the Living Holy Water of Life contained in a human, earthly body. He stoops down, much as the Old Testament priest would have done, but He does not gather up the dust of curses. Instead He writes upon the dust, writes upon it with the same finger of God that wrote the law on the tablets of stone and gave them to Moses (Exodus 31:18). Later, on the cross, He would take those curses into Himself, redeeming us from the curse of the law, “becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). And He wrote in the dust, wrote over those curses, His Holiness, His Purity, His redemption, He cleansing. And He said to the crowd, “Let he who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”

The crowd was undone by His words. In shame, they went away. The adulterous woman was left standing before Jesus, alone. “Woman, where are your accusers? Does no one condemn you?” Jesus says to her.

“No one, Lord,” she says.

“Neither do I condemn you; go your way; from now on, sin no more.”

Was she guilty? Oh yes! Caught in the very act, she was guilty beyond all denial or excuses. But Jesus did not condemn her. Instead, He forgave her and set her free to walk out of sin.

Jesus has written in the dirt and curses of my life, too. He has taken into Himself my shame and condemnation, my guilt and much deserved punishment, and He has imparted to me His Holiness, His Purity, His redemption, His cleansing so that I am able to walk out of sin too.

We are all caught, caught in the very act of sin. We are all familiar with the shame and embarrassment of being caught, the fear of punishment, the dread of judgment. Are we guilty? YES! Are we caught in the very act? YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT! “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” (Hebrews 4:13). God knows EVERYTHING about us, even the things we have hidden from others, even the things we have buried from our own eyes. But are we condemned? NOT IF WE HAVE PLACED OUR HOPE IN JESUS! He is the One Who stooped down and substituted Himself for us. He is the One who has written with His Own Sovereign finger on the curses of our lives: Holiness to the Lord. He is the One who says to us now: “go and sin no more.”