It’s a poignant and beautiful story in John 8:1-11. While Jesus was teaching, a woman was brought before Him who was caught in adultery. According to the custom and religious law of that day, the woman should be stoned to death for being caught in adultery. The people challenged Jesus and said, “What do you think we should do?”

Jesus did not respond in the way any of us would have thought. Jesus knelt down and began to write in the sand. That’s right. He wrote in the sand. He looked up and said, “Whoever has never sinned, cast the first stone.” Then He wrote more in the sand.

The men had rocks in their hands, ready to stone the woman to death. But when Jesus said, “Whoever has never sinned, cast the first stone,” one by one, from the oldest to the youngest, the men dropped their rocks and walked away.

Finally, Jesus was the only one remaining. Jesus says, “Where are your accusers?”

For the first time, the woman looked up. And when she did, she realized they were all gone!

“There are none, Lord,” she said.

Jesus responded, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

What a story of mercy! What a story of redemption! What a story of humbling those who think they are righteous and exalting, through God’s amazing grace, the one who was condemned in sin.

Forgiveness. A second chance. A life reborn. Freedom from guilt and shame. She should have been condemned to death, but not when Jesus was there.

I never really thought about the fact that Jesus was not standing over her like the men condemning her to death. He was kneeling, writing in the sand, close to the condemned woman. Maybe even between her and the men condemning her to death.

The Bible doesn’t say exactly what Jesus wrote in the sand that day. I have heard some people speculate that Jesus may have written the names of women that some of the accusers had committed adultery with or some of the sins they had committed!

Then I realized something. Jesus knelt down in the dirt. He was closer to the woman than He was to the accusers. Most likely, she was the one who could see what Jesus wrote in the sand better than anyone else.

Though we can’t really know what Jesus wrote, this thought came to me: Jesus was kneeling closer to the woman than to the men. Maybe what He wrote was not intended for the men. Maybe it was intended for the woman caught in sin. And if that’s that case, knowing Jesus, He may have written something like this:

I am life. 

I created you in love.

You can be forgiven. 

You can start again.

We will not know until heaven what Jesus wrote in the sand, but knowing Jesus, it is more likely that He wrote words of redemption bathed in love.

And if I was that woman, that is precisely what I would need to hear.

As a matter of fact, that is what we all hear when Jesus gives us the chance for a new life.