Daily Reading for Personal Growth, 40 Days with God
8 and Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 In the morning he went back to the Temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.
3 The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught out in adultery. They stood her out in the middle.
4 “Teacher,” they said to him. “This woman was caught in the very act of adultery. 5 In the law, Moses commanded us to stone people like this. What do you say?”
6 They said this to test him, so that they could frame a charge against him.
Jesus squatted down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they went on pressing the question, he got up and said to them, “Whichever of you is without sin should throw the first stone at her.”
8 And once again he squatted down and wrote on the ground.
9 When they heard that, they went off one by one, beginning with the oldest. Jesus was left alone, with the woman still standing there.
10 Jesus looked up.
“Where are they, woman?” he asked. “Hasn’t anybody condemned you?”
11 “Nobody, sir,” she replied.
“Well, then,” said Jesus, “I don’t condemn you either! Off you go—and from now on don’t sin again!”
The light of the world
12 Jesus spoke to them again.
“I am the light of the world,” he said. “People who follow me won’t go around in the dark; they’ll have the light of life!”
13 “You’re giving evidence in your own case!” said the Pharisees. “Your evidence is false!”
14 “Even if I do give evidence about myself,” replied Jesus to them, “my evidence is true, because I know where I came from and where I’m going to. But you don’t know where I come from or where I’m going to. 15 You are judging in merely human terms; I don’t judge anyone. 16 But even if I do judge, my judgment is true, because I’m not a lone voice; I have on my side the father who sent me. 17 It is written in your law that the evidence of two people is true. 18 I’m giving evidence about myself, and the father who sent me is giving evidence about me.”
19 “Where is your father?” they said to him.
“You don’t know me,” replied Jesus, “and you don’t know my father! If you had known me, you would have known my father as well.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.