John 8:7,8

The admirable, yet at the same time very simple, art of the answer of Jesus in John 8:7 consists in bringing back the question from the judicial domain, where His adversaries were placing it, to the moral ground, beyond which Jesus does not dream for a moment of extending His authority; comp. Luke 12:14. A judge in his official function may certainly pass judgment and condemn, though being himself a sinner. But such is not, at this moment, the position of Jesus, who is not invested with the official function of a judge. It is also quite as little the position of those who submit the question to Him. In order to have the right to make themselves of their own motion the representatives and executors of the justice of God, it would be necessary therefore, that at least they should themselves have been exempt from every sin which was fitted to provoke a like judgment against themselves. Undoubtedly it might be objected that in former times the entire people was called to condemn such criminals by stoning them. But the time when God committed to the people the function of judges in the case of similar crimes had long since passed. Jesus takes the theocracy, not as being in its ideal form, but such as He finds it, providentially deprived of its ancient constitution and subjected to the foreign yoke. The interpreters who, like Lucke, Meyer, and so many others, restrict the application of the term without sin to adultery or, in general, to impurity, misconstrue the thought of Jesus. In His eyes “he who has offended in the matter of one commandment, is guilty of all” (Jam 2:10). The skill of this answer consists in disarming the improvised judges of this woman, without however infringing in the least upon the ordinance of Moses. On one side, the words: let him cast the stone, sustain the code, but on the other, the words: without sin, disarm any one who would desire to apply it.