“And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on.” (Luke 7:40 KJV)
This story is often taught from the perspective of the sinful woman who lavished greatly on Jesus with tears and expensive fragrance. Yet, Jesus does not address the woman directly yet. He addresses Simon directly. This turns out to be an excellent example of how Jesus is momentarily leaving a lamb who is not lost while searching out one who is. In fact, if Jesus can reel Simon back in, there is a good chance that the other lost lambs around him may also follow. So, we see in verses 36 – 39 that there is a woman who is a sinner. Simon sees this immediately in verse 39 and in his heart he has judged her. Now, what does judging someone actually do to a person? First, at lightning speed, it drains our ability to love that person. Second, it partially masks an issue that we may have. We are told in dozens of verses, in both old and new testament sources, not to judge for these very reasons. On top of the fact that it sets us up for judgment. So, at this specific moment, Jesus has every right to come down on Simon very hard with a stern judgment for Simon’s judgmental heart. Jesus doesn’t do this. Why? Luke 19 gives us a clue. “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10 KJV) If you know he’s a lost sheep, would it be worthwhile to at least try to rescue him first? Something is devouring this sheep, in this case judgement, and much like a bear that is tearing a lamb apart, the bigger picture goal is to rescue it if it will allow it.
Jesus begins to do just this. He provides a short story with an easy illustration that is both applicable to the situation and Simon (and the others around Simon) can reason through. Once their mind is reset on the story, and removed from the immediate judgement, then Jesus does the same thing the Holy Spirit does in us (see John 16:7,8). He begins to convict us of our shortcomings (sin) that we might more clearly see that we are really not as squeaky clean as we may have thought. In verses 44 – 47, Jesus gives really easy present tense bullet points that Simon (and everyone in that culture at the time) can follow to identify specific shortcomings. Then in verse 48 he addresses the woman, but in addressing her, Jesus is driving a super mega big point home that he does not want Simon (or anyone around Simon) to miss. Jesus point blank forgives her of her sin! This should have a double impact. First, we are dealing with sin here. This is not shop talk, nor chatter about politics, nor chatter about sports, nor speculation about coming events, nor talk about the weather. The importance of this conversation just went straight to the top topic and has become very weighty. At the end of the day, do you, or do you not want to be forgiven of your sin? It doesn’t get much more pivotal than that. Secondly, and here they show signs of balking, Simon is actually sitting in the physical immediate tense presence of someone who can forgive sins. When we get past whatever it is that we need to get past to realize that Jesus can in fact forgive sins, we need to accept that offer. Scripture is laser beam clear on this (see John 14:6 and Revelation 20:15). Jesus is the only way.
What a beautiful testimony that this woman was able to offer. I’m not sure that Jesus could have picked a better present tense candidate for someone who knew who she was before Jesus, confessed her sin, accepted the offer of forgiveness and healing that was offered, and was now abundantly thankful for what Jesus had done for her. So thankful that she didn’t care about culture. She didn’t care about manners. She didn’t care about what people would think. She didn’t care about the expense that it might cost her. She was an “all in” testimony of who Jesus was to her personally and effectively was answering questions about the sufficiency of Christ before the questions were even asked. Wow! Do you see what Jesus did here? He used a rescued sheep that was found to give a lost sheep (and those around him) a chance to see what was really being offered here!
“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8 KJV)