RISING above the most destructive forms of hatred directed against him, Jesus, on the cross, said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." That he attained the spiritual height where he could wipe out of his thought the greatest of sins committed against him entitles to careful study his method of reaching that spiritual altitude.
Three events, notable in their relation to Jesus' teaching and practice, are those associated with his words about casting the first stone, with his dipping the sop for Judas, and with his restoring the cleft ear of Malchus.
The scribes and Pharisees who brought to the temple "a woman taken in adultery" had each broken the law of God. Each, in his malice toward Jesus, was willing to indulge that malice by stoning the woman. When Jesus said, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her," he was by no means defending sin. On the contrary, he was prohibiting an opportunity for its exercise. The accusers of the woman disappeared. Hypocrisy slunk out of the temple. The scribes and Pharisees had planned to act in concert to put him in a difficult position. Jesus challenged their right to condemn, singling them out as individual sinners, and requiring that the one who had fulfilled the law cast one stone. So complete was the divine compulsion that the scribes and Pharisees left the temple, "one by one," each held responsible for his own thinking, each prevented from hiding under the concealment of a false reverence for the law.
