Great Sinners

“Her many sins have been forgiven...” Luke 7:47

In Luke 7, we find one of the most dramatic stories in the Bible. Jesus is invited to dine at a Pharisee’s home and a sinful woman comes, uninvited, to the gathering. She brings with her an alabaster flask of precious ointment. She then bathed Jesus’ feet with her hair, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with the ointment. 

The Pharisee, and most probably, his other guests, are shocked. In the Talmud, if a woman lets her hair down in public, it was grounds for divorce. Here was a notorious sinner, with not only her hair down, she was touching a man who was not a relative. Although in Old Testament times, women could become leaders and were held in high repute, by Jesus’ time, women were separate from men in private, public and religious life. Respectable women stayed within the confines of their homes, and only the poor and disreputable would go, as it was called, “abroad”. 

Jesus knew exactly what Simon the Pharisee was thinking. “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner,” Simon thought, probably making the judgment that Jesus was no prophet! Jesus then proposes a story about two people who were in debt. One had a debt of 500 days’ wages, and the other just owed a paltry 50. “Since they were both unable to pay, the creditor forgave them both. Which of them will love him more?” 

Simon then replies, “The one, I suppose whose larger debt was forgiven.” We probably do not realize how much we have been forgiven. We usually go blissfully on with our lives ignorant of the price Jesus paid on the cross. If we knew, we would be grovelling at Jesus’ feet, wanting to kiss them like the sinful woman. But how do we do that now? 

The answer lies in Matthew 25:40: “Whatsoever you do for one of these least brothers of mine, you do for me.” Whenever we help the typhoon victims, feed the hungry, visit those in prison, teach a poor child to read, we are able to wipe Jesus’ dirty feet. When we speak out against injustice, when we forgive those who have hurt us, when we show love to the unlovable, we bind Jesus’ wounds. We are such great sinners, that we have to go “abroad”, and find ways to visit Jesus and show our gratefulness.