One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”
Then Jesus answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”
“Go ahead, Teacher,” Simon replied.
Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver to one and 50 pieces to the other. But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”
Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”
“That’s right,” Jesus said. Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.
“I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” Luke 7:36-47
This passage has long bothered me. Since I came to Jesus as a child I haven’t fallen into gross sin—does that mean I am destined to love little? Or at least less than those who’ve been forgiven much?
Important to note however, the inward sins that we are often able to hide for the most part like jealousy, bitterness, greed, and pride that we might like to label “little” are often harder to overcome than the outward “big” sins that we like to label as much. As Jesus told other Pharisees later in Luke (11:39-40), “You are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and wickedness! Fools! Didn’t God make the inside as well as the outside?”
All sin is sin against a holy God. It seems perhaps that Jesus is not so much referring to who loves Him more, than He is referring to the fact that neither could ever repay. Simon, being forgiven (seemingly) little was still as utterly incapable of paying the debt on his own as the woman who had sinned much.
Lord, I want to love You well. I want to love You extravagantly as the immoral woman did. I need to be ever conscious of the fact that my pile of sin (little or much) is simply nothing I could ever pay on my own. Only Your extravagant sacrifice could pay my debt.
I am so sorry that my sin put You there.
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Amen.
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