Last Sunday we continued our series through John’s Gospel with a sermon from our guest speaker, Michael King who preached from John 8:12-30. This meant that we skipped over the bracketed section found in John 7:53-8:11. An all too brief mention regarding this was given during the service. To be clear, our original scheduling did include a message covering this section, but an additional sermon was added to those given from John 7 which ended up taking precedence. My plan was to explain the textual reasons why these verses are almost certainly not original to John’s Gospel, but are a much later addition. In doing so, I would have gone on to reinforce the reality that far from throwing doubt on the Bible we have, the vast manuscript evidence gives us strong confidence that the Scriptures are compellingly accurate to the original manuscripts. What we find in the account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery- a favourite story for many- is not inconsistent to truths found in other parts of the Bible. So while it may not be legitimate to treat and preach the passage as Scripture, it is not unscriptural in its message.

For anyone who wants to see an example of an approach similar to what I would have taken, here is a link to a message by John Piper. I would encourage you to take the time to listen to (or read through the transcript of) this sermon.