“Pastor, What Happened to John 7:53 Through 8:11?”

A Brief Explanation

I am a strong proponent of expository preaching, meaning the Biblical text drives the sermon. The message I proclaim must come “out of” the text. Furthermore, if I am going to allow the text to give rise to the message then the best way to do that is to preach straight through a book of the Bible, one verse at a time, in its context. For you who have sat under my preaching for the past two years, you are well aware of my approach. I began our first series together in Colossians 1:1 and went through that book. Next, we turned to Ruth, started in the first verse of that wonderful work, and went through all the verses. Since April of 2010, we have been moving through the Gospel of John, verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph. Last week I completed John 7:52. Some of you were likely expecting the message today to begin with John 7:53 and cover the account of the woman caught in adultery. But, as you see from the bulletin, that is not the case. Why am I, an expository preacher who preaches straight through Biblical books, “skipping” this particular story and moving to John 8:12?

First, let me assure you it has nothing to do with the subject matter, namely, adultery. Our society needs to hear much on that subject. Second, bypassing these verses has nothing to do with any fear on my part to handle these verses. I believe some of you know me well enough by now to realize I am not afraid to deal with the matters addressed by the Scripture.

But, therein is the reason I am not preaching these verses this morning. I do not believe they were part of John’s original Gospel. In other words, I am not convinced they are part of God’s inspired Word and, since I only preach from the Word of God, I will not preach these verses.

While I am not an expert in the field of textual criticism, there are many godly scholars who are. Textual criticism is a field in which scholars use very rigid principles in analyzing various copies of a document in order to determine what the original writing actually said when they do not have that original. This is the case with the Greek New Testament. We do not possess the original Gospel of John, only many copies (manuscripts) of it. I trust the work these scholars do for their goal is to recover the original writing of John so that we may know exactly what the Word of God says. For most of the New Testament, this is no longer an issue. The thousands of manuscript copies have confirmed the contents of the original writing.

However, these verses (John 7:53 – 8:11) form one paragraph in which the majority of manuscripts, including the better manuscripts, indicate this story was not in John’s original work. Most modern English translations contain a note indicating this strong possibility.

I believe the story is very probably true. Certainly the actions of Jesus within these verses are the actions we would expect from our Lord. Nothing in these verses contradicts any other Scripture or doctrinal issue. Furthermore, I see no errors of any kind in this paragraph. Nevertheless, I will not, I can not preach these verses since I only preach His Word and I am convinced they are not part of that Word.

If you would like to discuss this further with me, please let me know. For now, we move forward to John 8:12!