Luke 7:36-50 - Homiletics

The woman who was a sinner.

It is a truly lovely story which the evangelist tells—one of those passages in the life of Christ which we are never tired of reading, and as full of meaning as it is full of beauty. We may regard it from many points, and present its didactic force in many ways. Perhaps we shall best ensure the reception of its various lights by studying the portraiture of character which it gives.

I. THERE IS SIMON THE PHARISEE —Jesus' host on the afternoon of the day whose earlier part had been signalized by the mighty work at Nain. The notable thing about this Simon is that he meets our view as the type of that anonymous, yet most powerful, influence which we call society. He is one of the priests of that goddess which society, everywhere and in every time, worships—Respectability. A Pharisee! that is as it should be. The Herodians were a base, courtly party, fawning on the Herodian dynasty, and therefore outside religious society. The Sadducees were latitudinarians. Some of them were clever, and had much to do with the intellectual life of the nation; but, on the whole, they were a cold-blooded sect which could not command the vote of society. The correct course was to be the Pharisee. That secured the social place, put one right with the Church and the world, for this life and the next. The odour of sanctity clung to the profession; it intimated a certain aristocratic position—a position among the elect of the heavenly kingdom. Simon the Pharisee is in society. And the desire that Jesus should eat with him, the entertainment which he offered Jesus, is in behalf of society. That must have its lion. It takes up one to-day and dismisses him to-morrow, but a lion it must have. Sometimes the lion is a religious person; a great preacher or a great author becomes, for the time, the fashion. Jesus of Nazareth was the hero of the hour. Everybody spoke of him, of what he did, said, was. This priest of society must give him a dinner. We need not suppose secret hostility. Simon seems to have been willing to know more of Jesus than he did know, to study him as a phenomenon with at least a measure of interest. But he is the patron. The courtesies which would have been extended to the privileged few are omitted. Is not this Jesus only a Peasant-Preacher? Further still, the conduct of the Pharisee is representative of the separatist side of society, not only toward Jesus, but toward the sinner. It is without generosity of feeling; it is narrow, bitter when its canons are broken. That horrid creature to come to his table and touch his guest!—is it not monstrous? He a Prophet? That he should let her go near him, that she should bestow her caresses on him—this is sufficient to dispose of the claim. He could not imagine any purpose of the visit except an evil one; and such a visit was a disgrace to his house. For Respectability, hard in its judgment, is always selfish, always thinking how a thing will look, what is becoming or proper, how it can be protected and preserved. Holiness seeks the sinner; it will give itself for him. Respectability bids the sinner away. Ah! this Simon is a figure most conspicuous in our life! Respectability is the Juggernaut-car which rolls through our midst; and, as it rolls, multitudes rush forward and lay themselves prostrate before it. It has a place for Jesus; it will patronize him. Jesus has a word for it, a terribly scathing word. "Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee."

II. THERE IS THE WOMAN . Who she was we know not. There is really nothing to confirm the old tradition which identifies her with that Mary called Magdalene, referred to in the following chapter, out of whom seven devils were cast. Whoever she was, she is known by only one feature—she was a sinner, an abandoned woman of the city. Perhaps she had heard some word of the gentle Prophet as he passed through the street. In some way "the Dayspring from on high" had visited her. And—not so difficult a matter in an Eastern house—she forced her way to his presence. Poor, weary one, for whom, for many and many a day there had been no sunshine—a mere plaything of coarse and wicked men! Observe her action as recorded in Luke 7:37 , Luke 7:38 . It is to her that the Lord turns; he has glances and words for her which he has not for the priests of Respectability. From her heart proceed the welcomes which the Pharisee had denied him ( Luke 7:44-46 ): Yes, in the social outcast there is often a preparation for Christ, a power of self-abandoning, simple trust, which is wanting in the Pharisees of society, with their forms and phylacteries, the pomp and pride and circumstance of the be-worshipped Respectability.

III. THE DEALING OF JESUS is "a precious history, the sweet kernel of which poor sinners will never exhaust." Consider his words about the woman, and his words to the woman.

1 . The word in the forty-seventh verse—let us see that we rightly apprehend it. The meaning is not, as might hastily be gathered, "forgiven because of her much love," as if the love were the reason of the forgiveness. That would be equal to putting the rill before the spring. There are two kinds of "for "—the "for" causal and the "for" inferential . It is the for inferential which we find in Jesus' saying. "From the love which moved this sinner to me, which constrained her to lavish on me the signs of respect which thou, Simon, didst omit, thou canst infer that her sins, which are many, are forgiven. Even as the tree is known by its fruit, so her forgiveness is proved by the presence of its appropriate fruit—love." This is the view borne out by the short parable which was the something that Jesus had to say to Simon ( Luke 7:41-43 ). Suppose that we insist on an interpretation of this parable which the terms employed in it might warrant, we are met by serious difficulties. For instance, it might seem to teach that the more, in amount, the debt remitted, the more will be the love realized; that the more of a sinner one has been, the more of a saint, after conversion, one will be. But we know that this could not be the meaning of Christ; and it was not. It is not the quantity of sins, but the conscience of sin, the sense of its sinfulness and bitterness and tyranny, which determines the question of the larger or smaller debtor. In the case before us, one steeped in iniquity represents the larger, the Pharisee the smaller. But, to prove that the consciousness of owing a great debt—the being, in one's own judgment, the five-hundred-pence debtor, yea, the chief of sinners—does not involve a wicked course of life, recollect the Apostle Paul, who had been zealous towards God above his equals. When he thinks of his "exceeding madness" against Jesus, he confesses, "I have nothing to pay. No debt could have been greater than mine, wretched man that I am." The much love is measured by the sense of there having been much forgiven. The love is as the knowledge of sin. If you think there is little to forgive, you will love only little.

2 . There are two words to the woman herself ( Luke 7:50 ). "He said to her, Thy sins are forgiven." An absolution, accepted by all who heard it, as full and authoritative. They are amazed: "Who is this that even forgives the sins?" Oh! who is he? Hartley Coleridge finely says—

"All the blame

And the poor malice of the worldly shame

To her were past, extinct, and out of date;

Only the sin remained, the leprous state."

It was to this leprous state that the word went down. With the voice of a declared pardon, there was felt the power of a new purity. "Daughter, thy sins are sent away from between thy God and thee. They are blotted out, no more to be remembered. And lo! as thou art justified, thou art washed throughly from thine iniquity, and cleansed from thy sin. Thy faith hath saved thee" ( Luke 7:50 ). The Lord gave no heed to the murmurs of those reclining at table. He answers these murmurs by not answering, or rather, by this additional word to the woman. The salvation was the entrance of forgiving love; and it was the trust in him that drew her to the Pharisee's house, which had opened her soul to his healing power. The power is only, is wholly, in him, but the faith is the condition and the means of the deliverance. "Saved, rejoicing sinner, go in peace." Wondrous, glorious gospel! his, hers, who wills to have it as the poor woman willed! Sinners of modern Christendom, you must be stripped of all the soft complacencies of Pharisaic righteousness; consciously poor and needy—sinners, and nothing else, you must get to the Christ of God. Until thus you have reached him, there is only a "something to say to you." The frank forgiveness, the fulness of the eternal life, is when he looks into the clinging soul, when he says, "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace."