Our Lord begins action in John 8 by sovereign power and a new grace which is continued in the four following chapters. This new action is consequent upon His return from "the mount of Olives," with which the first seven chapters ended.
It is dispensationally in keeping (and will be morally so, too, in His future dealings with Israel) to find Him "early in the morning" in the temple, sitting down to teach the people. Equally in character with this position on His part was the act of the scribes and Pharisees, who brought before Him the "woman taken in adultery," that He who alone could pass judgment on the sin should take this place, and in righteousness condemn her. This scene not merely opens out the trespass to which their thoughts and intentions were limited, but has a far wider and more serious application to the nation and its rulers, under the guilt of whoredom and adultery, which should have lain heavily upon their consciences in the presence of their Jehovah-Jesus! Is not this the iniquity which has first to be judged and tried by the bitter water of jealousy, according to "the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled"? Numb. 5:29. Prophet after prophet had been sent unto them, mentioning this sin: "Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with Me, 0 house of Israel, saith the Lord." Jer. 3:20.
The scribes and. Pharisees, who brought the woman and accused her, declared that "Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned," but they are not in the current of His own thoughts about the deeper trespass which had been brought to light by His own presence in their midst. How could He judge or condemn the woman, and not in righteous jealousy curse them?
They had set her "in the midst," and demanded, "What sayest Thou?" To His eye they had by their own act set themselves in the midst with her. Passing beyond the laws of Moses (see Num. 5:31) into the depths of His own feelings about them, He refused to accept their accusation. Long ago, He had sent Jeremiah, saying, "Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was nol. sown" (chap. 2:2); now one greater than a prophet had come to win their hearts back to Himself by His own grace. If He applied the law of Moses to the nation, as the accusers wished Him to do toward the adulteress, He must have taken "holy water in an earthly vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor... and put it into the water," (Num. 5:17) and as a priest of the tabernacle bring up the question before the Lord. This He refuses to do.
He passes into His own heights and depths of love (cost what it may in the end) to justify Himself in not condemning either the woman in her sin or the nation in its greater trespass. "Jesus stooped down, and with His finger wrote on the ground, as though He heard them not," for in the love which had brought Him among them, and in which He was come to work, the sin of her who was taken in the act, and the sin of Israel, though equally deserving of righteous judgment, were written on His heart in grace. He who came out from God, came not to put her away, but to put away her sin, and to cleanse her and make her whiter than snow. Viewed in this light, how significant of their state, and of His own purpose in love, are the words which He spoke to them: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again He stooped down, and wrote on the ground." He rolls the sins and the accusers away from the floor, and thus purges it; nor will He gather up the dust thereof in any earthen vessel, or prepare the bitter water of jealousy between Him and them. He walks in a higher path of His own, which only He could take, and so goes out of the midst and away from all their accusations, and questionings saying to them, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." He was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. "When Jesus had lifted up Himself, and saw none but the woman, He said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."
As "the light of life," He has thus purged His floor cleaner than by the law of stoning! Blessed One, who had come to make the sin His own and eventually pass into the ground and take the curse Himself, and die the death, that what He wrote upon the ground in the day of His grace may (whenever gathered up in jealousy) be pardoned and obliterated by the blood of atonement, through the depths of His own sufferings.
Chapter 8 introduces the national charge of Israel's departure and estrangement from Him who had espoused her to Himself, and had come after her. Chapter 9 is equally significant as showing their individual state and national blindness. As the former is portrayed, by the woman taken in adultery, so the latter is by "a man which was blind from his birth." The state of the nation was not in either case beyond the typical virtue of the balm of Gilead, or the skill of the great Physician, and this instance only calls forth the power and grace of Him whose prerogative it is to give sight to the blind.
It is remarkable that Jesus refuses to take up the blind man's case in the form in which the disciples viewed it when they asked, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" He will not look at it in this light any more than He will judge the treacherousness of the nation by the woman. In the governmental ways and dealings of God with men upon the earth, such a question might fairly arise as this, for He did visit "the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." Taken outside the responsibility of man, however, and viewed in connection with the counsels of the Father and the Son, "Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."
In the pathway of the Word made flesh we follow Jesus thus showing "forth His glory"; and so the man that was born blind as well as the woman taken in adultery serve as vessels for its display; yes, to the condemnation of those who stood around in unbelief and said they saw. As "the light of the world," He passed out from the temple and from the midst of the woman and her accusers. In His true greatness, He refused to use that light in which He walked for condemnation, though He commanded it to shine in upon the consciences of each, so that all were convicted and made their escape from its searching power, "beginning at the eldest, even unto the last."
There was yet another use of the light, and that is what we are now considering in the case of the man born blind: "He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
Jesus not merely opens the eyes of the blind by sovereign power, but gives Himself as the object of sight to the man and to the nation, if they will accept Him. Also He was the light without which the eye, though opened, could not behold Him! In view of this, Jesus said: "I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work." Day and night obtain new meaning when they are looked at in reference to Christ's continuance and work upon earth. "As long as 1 am in the world, I am the light of the world.
When He had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay." The dust of the floor, the water, and the earthen vessel which would have made up the compound in the hand of the priest for the infliction of the curse and the rot, upon the trial of jealousy and unfaithfulness, had been refused. (Numbers 5). Instead, we learn the virtues of the spittle, the ground, and the mystic clay in the hand of Him that is come to work the works of God. Jesus said to the man, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing." The dust of the ground, out of which the first man was made in the image of God, had been cursed because of transgression and Satan; now, under the power of Christ, it is reclaimed and made available by the "sent" One through His spittle by bestowing an eye of faith to behold Him who came to bear away every curse, and turn the curse into a blessing.
The light which had filled the temple and emptied it of every accuser (how could they abide in its searching power?), leaving the woman alone with Jesus, does the same thing among the scribes and Pharisees when the man who "was born blind" is brought into their midst. "If this man were not of God," he says to them, "He could do nothing. They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And, they cast him out."
Jesus and the woman had been left alone. Now the man who had walked in darkness all his days receives the light of life from Christ, confessed His sovereign power, is turned out of the synagogue and follows Him. "Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when He had found him, He said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him?" Two precious assurances flow from the lips of Jesus upon this inquiry, as He unveils Himself to the outcast one; "Thou hast both seen Him [the new object to the opened eye], and it is He that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped Him."
Thus new relationships are formed which lead the Lord to take (in chapter 10) the place of the Shepherd to this outcast sheep, and to declare His love for the flock as well as His protecting care against every foe. He reveals the secret of the interest which the Father's love, as well as His own, have over the sheep. "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father's hand. I and My Father are one."
We cannot fail to notice in these narratives how Jesus comes into the world, accepting it in the condition it was in through Adam's sin and Satan's power in death, to show Himself equal to every claim which the misery and wants of those in it daily brought across His path. More than this we see how He passes through the world with the Father, in another and higher character as Creator, the heavens and the earth and all that they contain were made by Him. Earlier in this gospel Jesus said to the Jews, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," introducing thus a power which could turn everything to His own glory and the development of the hidden purposes of divine love. "The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." In this equality with God, there cannot be any uncertainty as to the nature of this new power, or of its exercise. "For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will" is its scope, and we are the blessed objects in whom it is made good.