I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 8-9.

    The story of the woman caught in adultery is not in the earliest, most reliable manuscripts of the Gospel of John, which means that it was unlikely to have been in the original. However, since God allowed it to remain in the Bible for as long as He did before this was discovered I believe that it provides material we can learn from. At the end, when all of her accusers had left, Jesus told the woman that He would not condemn her either and she should go and sin no more. Thus the passage provides us with a model for dealing with sinners. It is not our place to condemn them for their sins, but we should encourage them to stop sinning.

    In the next section Jesus’ interactions with people remind me of a friend of mine who is sometimes a jerk. Reading this it seems to me as if Jesus is intentionally antagonizing his audience. It is worth noting that John introduces the exchange by saying that Jesus told those who believed in Him that the truth would set them free and that they responded by saying that they had never been slaves. From there, Jesus starts a process where He says that they are not the children of Abraham, but are rather the children of the devil. He antagonizes them to the point where they want to stone Him. My point here is that there are times when it is appropriate to antagonize those who think they are righteous by attacking their assumptions about themselves.