The Judge who takes the punishment
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus' controversy with the Pharisees becomes sharper, and the eighth chapter finishes with the Pharisees picking up stones to shoot Jesus, but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.
It is important to note that the chapter begins when the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and they tested Jesus by saying: “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?
Jesus says, "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her."
Jesus forgives the woman and says: "Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
We can see here the redeemed woman. The stones she deserved for her sin, she did not receive. Now instead, Jesus is the one who will be the object of stones. The contrast could not be greater, but here we can have the clearest idea of what redemption is.
Redemption is just that. The stones that we deserve will be tossed into Jesus, He, in our place, will be crucified. What feelings must have crossed the heart of that woman, whom tradition identifies as Mary Magdalene, when she at the foot of the cross, saw an innocent person condemned to death, and she, guilty, living, she is seeing an innocent paying the price of her sin. The innocent dying in the sinner's place. What an extraordinary thing, because Jesus, who is the source of life, rushes into the abyss of death to rescue us.
Here we recall the famous Psalm 23 of the Good Shepherd: "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; For you are with me; Your rod and Your staff - they comfort me." Jesus, the good shepherd, who gives his life for the sheep, comes to seek us in the valley of the shadow of death. The sinner who was to be saved was saved from physical death, and moreover, we were saved from eternal death, which is the place where sinners go. Jesus saved us from eternal death, living our death on the cross, biological death, Jesus introduces us to eternal life.
This is the extraordinary phenomenon that is the object of our faith. Jesus himself wants to teach us this when he says, "Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death." Of course, the Pharisees here do not understand anything, Jesus is talking about eternal death.
The Pharisees understand it as physical and biological death and say, You are crazy, " Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died?" Jesus with great Parresia says: I am yes, Jesus does not use these words but he says: "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.". Notice that He does not say, "Before Abraham came to be, I was". But He is again saying:" I am God Himself who revealed Himself to Moses in the Burning Bush, I am who I am. " So the Jews pick up stones to stone Jesus because they recognize it as blasphemy.
If Jesus was aware that He was God Himself, He says it with all clarity. The Pharisees, who have no faith, take stones and become deicides there, that is, those who kill God himself. Let us prepare ourselves for the Holy Week which is about to be celebrated, entering into this great mystery, this marvelous commerce, the Innocent who died for us, so that we do not die the eternal death.
God bless you. In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen.
Source: https://youtu.be/Eb9-ssjCCTs
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