Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they saidto test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
— John 8:2-11 (ESV)

I fell asleep last night just after reading this passage. In that instant between being awake and being asleep, I had the glimmer of a thought. Or more of a glimmer of a question.

Why the older ones first?

Certainly, reams have been written on this detail of a story that some Bibles qualify with the statement that the passage is not found in the earliest manuscripts. In those reams of paper, reason upon reason has been offered as to why the older men left first. I’m certainly not scholarly enough to know who makes the best argument or not.

Instead, I was thinking metaphor.

What if the woman caught in adultery represents each one of us at the moment when we come face to face with our own depravity? Or better yet, when we realize that we are sinners falling at the feet of God?

What if the men of the story represent our sinful past? The older men are those sins of long ago. Maybe it’s the time that you dug around in your mother’s purse or rode your Big Wheel down the hill backwards in direct defiance of your parents. Maybe it’s any number of childhood infractions that are minor. Sinful, yes, but minor in light of your more recent sinful activity. Like the old men of the story, these older sins can be forgotten quickly. We readily understand and accept forgiveness for them.

But the younger men. If we follow the same line of thinking, the younger men represent the vices to which we have become slaves as we grew older. I don’t have to enumerate them. You know yours even as you read this sentence. These are the ones that we can’t forget. These are the ones that stand ready to condemn us …

… in our own mind.

In a voice that carries above the condemnation, the Savior asks where they are. He doesn’t see them. We look around. We don’t either. We slowly begin to see ourselves as the Lord does … forgiven and standing in the promise that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.