“Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, ‘Do you
see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any 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
There are so many
wonderful stories about Jesus during the time his human feet walked in the dust
of this earth that’s it’s no wonder the saying, “What would Jesus do? -WWJD”
was so popular just a few years ago. This particular story about what happened
when Jesus stepped into the home of Simon for dinner one night is one of my
favorites. It illustrates the great
compassion of God and the tremendous grace extended to forgive those of us who
are the greatest of sinners. In the eyes
of man, the woman in the story who came to Simon’s house to see Him was not
worthy to even touch Jesus’s feet. She was a “many times over” sinner, but she
did not care what anyone else thought about her. She only wanted to please and
praise God. She wanted to be forgiven
and loved unconditionally, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this
“man” was the only one who would and could do that for her.
Unfortunately,
she was one of the few who truly believed in and loved Jesus as unconditionally
and faithfully as He loved her. There were so many who did not recognize Jesus
as God’s son when he lived on this earth. They simply refused to believe that
the religious traditions and laws they had been diligently keeping as God’s
chosen people could be put away so easily by this one man in his short 3 years
of ministry on earth. And they certainly were not willing to accept that this
Son of God would come to extend His love to all people with the sacrifice of His
own life for us. This changed everything they had known or thought they knew
about God and what He wanted from them as a people.
Those living in
the days of Jesus’s ministry failed to see that God recognized our weaknesses
and our inability to remain faithful in the letter of the law over the
centuries he fought with the Jewish nation and tried to show them through
numerous prophets, leaders, and devastating wars and events that he was the
only God they should be following and when they did not, trouble was sure to
plague them. He decided to change it up
a bit with the message His son brought to His people and eventually to all
people, regardless of their former race or religion.
His message was
simple: I love you no matter what you do, no matter how many times you mess up,
and I am not going to expect you to do all the right things any more. What I do expect is for you to love well, to
do your very best to make Godly choices, and to come straight to me for
forgiveness when you make a mistake. What I do expect is for you to have a pure
heart, right motives, and a contrite spirit, understanding how very much you
have sinned and how very much you have been forgiven by my unconditional
love. I expect you will mess up, and I
expect you will learn from that how to love more and love better. For he who
has been forgiven much, loves much.
If we do not
recognize our own imperfection and sin, then we cannot understand how to love
others unconditionally because we will be too busy judging them for what they
have done wrong and considering ourselves better than them. If God, who is perfect, can change his whole
strategy, negating the “legalities” of the Old Testament and tearing down the
divide between Himself and His creation in order to give us eternal life and
internal peace, how much more should we be able to love each other without
judgment, without pride, without them having to show us they are worthy, but
only because they were made by God just like us.
Commit yourself
to loving much today, and when the urge to judge others for their decisions
strikes you as it does for me many times a day (unfortunately it’s a very human
failing), think about what Jesus would do and choose to love them anyway and instead
of passing on that judgment in your words to them or others, stop and pray for
them and for yourself too. J Remember, the more we have been forgiven and
recognize our need to be forgiven, the more we learn how to truly love without
reservation or restraint.
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