“Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not
give me water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them
with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I
entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but
she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have
been forgiven-for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves
little.” Luke 7:44-47
Once again, this
chapter of the book of Luke was jam packed with so much good stuff!! Every
story speaks to me in one way or another, but the one above about the woman who
went to the Pharisee’s house when she knew Jesus was there just because she
wanted to wash his feet with perfume and show her love to him in this way is
the most touching to me. It’s a similar
lesson to my previous blog about Jesus hanging out with the tax collectors and
sinners because once again he is welcoming those who are seemingly unworthy in
the earthly society we live in, and he is questioned because of it. You would think the Pharisees would have
learned where he was coming from by now…but like children, we often have to
hear the same words and directions over and over again before they really sink
in, and we can practice applying them to our lives. When questioned by Simon concerning if Jesus
knew what type of woman he was allowing to kiss his feet, he answered with the
verses above. In a sense, Jesus is
telling Simon that this sinful woman loves Him more than the Pharisee or others
who have not been so much a part of the secular world, so to speak. I don’t know anything about this woman except
they say she had lived a sinful life.
So, she probably doesn’t know all the laws of the Jewish religion, as
the Pharisees did, and she most likely didn’t follow them as they would have
expected her too. She may have been a prostitute or engaged in a lot of
inappropriate behavior for a woman of her time, but she had experienced life
from another perspective than the Pharisees. She had experienced how rough it
could be, and she appreciated Jesus and all He stood for even more because of
those experiences and because of the varied perspective she had gained on life.
Does that mean we go out and seek to sin and experience all the “pleasures” of
life as King Solomon did when he was trying to find the meaning of life and wrote
about this in Ecclesiastes? No, it means
that no matter what you have done up to this point in your life, God doesn’t
care. It’s all forgiven through the sacrifice Jesus made. How does this apply to our lives today? Well, I know many friends who stopped going
to church because they felt judged and surrounded by hypocrites. I understand where they are coming from…I
have felt that too, but I go to church for God, not for those other people, so
how does this verse help me in that context? It reminds me that no matter what
someone else thinks about me and whether or not I am worthy enough to be
teaching Sunday School or attending church with other very “religious” people,
no matter whether or not they are hypocrites themselves or if they really are
just very good people trying to bring others to God without really
understanding how best to do so, I know this, ALL my sins are forgiven, and
because I have many, many sins in my past and even in my present life, I know
my love for God is greater than if I had never sinned at all. I love God
because of His love for me, and I appreciate Him more because I know how
undeserving of it all I really am. I’m not under the illusion that I am somehow
better or more deserving than anyone else, but I am still a child of God, and
unlike the human creatures he’s made, God’s love extends equally to all of us,
without judgment or condition. Praise
the Lord!!
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