Luke's Gospel carries the story of Jesus eating a meal at the house of a Pharisee named Simon (Luke 7:36-50). A sinful woman from the city came and washed Jesus's feet. Jesus asked Simon about two debtors, one who owed 500 denarii and the other 50, who were forgiven their debt and asked who would love the moneylender more. Obviously the one with the larger debt. Then Jesus compared Simon with the woman wiping His feet. He concluded, "Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven — for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little" (Luke 7:47). And He forgave the woman.
The logic was simple: we will love Jesus more if we are forgiven more. But it gets muddled so easily in our minds. On one hand, Scripture is clear. We are all guilty of much sin. We have all been enemies of God (Rom 5:10), hostile to God (Rom 8:7). Jesus said our sin would earn us eternal death if we didn't repent (Luke 13:3, 5 and much, much more). But we don't typically see it that way. Take, for instance, the guy who says, "Never been a sinner, I've never sinned; I've got a friend in Jesus" (a la Spirit in the Sky). What has he been forgiven? Well, apparently not much. Or, like Simon, "Well, sure, I've sinned, but it's not a big deal. Small potatoes. A transgression or two. Nothing much to forgive." Most of us, in fact, would think that way about ourselves. We're muddled. But Jesus said, "He who is forgiven little, loves little." And we're okay with that because we figure we love Jesus just fine. But as muddled as we are in our thinking about our sin (like Simon), we are equally as muddled about loving Jesus. We "love Him" by twisting His words and ignoring His commands and living our lives the way we want rather than the way He wants. We are not repentant and we are not weeping (like the woman at Jesus's feet). We're defiant. Most of us resemble Simon far more than we do the weeping woman.
Everyone sees Simon in that story as the bad guy, and we tend to identify with the woman when, in fact, we can't even see how little we actually love God. The standard is "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matt 22:37) and we might fit Him in on Sunday or so. If love is defined as seeking the very best for the loved one, for most of us seeking the very best for God is not at the top of our list. It would appear, then, that we often fail to see the magnitude of what we are forgiven and, as a consequence, fail to love Christ as we ought. May God forgive us.
2 comments:
We seem to prefer to have a high esteem for our goodness, but that only informs on how little we understand the stakes.
It absolutely mystifies me what I hear people who try to act is if it's possible to go through life with only a "few minor" sins, but who expect lavish forgiveness for these "few minor" sins. If this passage is True, then they should expect to be forgiven little. But the very notion seems offensive to them.
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