The Writing on the Ground

In John 8:3-11, we behold God writing the third time. In the One stooping to write on the ground we see "God manifest in flesh." The Jews had brought to Him a woman guilty of adultery. Moses said "that such should be stoned: but what sayest Thou?" they ask. The Lord from Sinai had given that command. Can He now speak contrary to His own command through Moses? He is silent; He stoops, and writes on the ground. Scoffers say it was to gain time to think. Away with such satanic insinuations, as though man, a thing of dust, could put his Creator into a dilemma! His silence! What a proof, even under the law, that "God is slow to anger," that "judgment is ever His strange work"! At last He answers the Jews. "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
If stone flinging is to begin, all around must be stoned. Again He writes on the ground. Writes what? Scripture does not say what He wrote, but records what He said.
Christ is seen as God delighting in mercy. Did He then wink at sin, and annul His own laws? No; He had come to take "the guilty culprit's place, and suffer in his stead." He had not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. The Jews had made Him the judge in this case. I love to think that in that capacity, while He had written the law in stone, He wrote possibly the sentence of death on the ground where the next gust of wind could blow it away! It was a sentence no man was able to execute, and the Lord, alone qualified to do so, would not. He was going to die for such as her, and thus the law would be carried out. As a man who writes on the shore may see the waves wash it all away, so what the Lord wrote was never recorded only the gracious words of forgiveness.
The waves of God's awful judgment soon rolled over Him, and wrung from Him the cry, "All Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over Me.”