DID YOU KNOW
One of the most revealing scenes in the Gospels takes place around a dinner table. Jesus is eating in the home of Simon the Pharisee when a woman enters carrying an alabaster flask of ointment. Luke does not give us her biography. He simply tells us that she was known in the city as “a sinner.” Her reputation had become part of her identity in the eyes of the people around her.
That makes what happens next even more striking.
She stands behind Jesus weeping. Her tears fall on His feet. She wipes them with her hair, kisses His feet, and anoints them with the perfume she has brought. The room must have grown very quiet.
Simon sees the woman and immediately judges both her and Jesus.
But Jesus sees something entirely different.
Did You Know that the awareness of forgiveness can become one of the strongest sources of love for Christ?
Jesus explains the scene through a short story about two debtors. One owes a large debt, the other a smaller one. Neither can pay. The creditor forgives both. Then Jesus asks Simon which debtor will love the creditor more.
Simon answers correctly: the one who was forgiven more.
Jesus then turns toward the woman.
Luke 7:47 records His words: “For this reason I tell you, her sins—which were many—have been forgiven, for she loved much. But the one to whom little is forgiven loves little.”
Jesus is not teaching that the woman purchased forgiveness with affection. Her love is evidence that she has encountered mercy. She knows what she has been forgiven, and gratitude pours out of her.
That is an important distinction.
Grace comes first.
Love follows.
Her tears are not currency. Her perfume is not payment. Her kisses are not a bargaining tool. She is responding to the mercy of Christ.
This helps us understand why some believers possess such deep affection for Jesus. They have stopped pretending that their need for grace is small.
We can easily become too accustomed to the vocabulary of salvation. We speak about forgiveness, grace, redemption, and mercy so frequently that the words sometimes lose their emotional weight. Yet the moment we remember what God has actually forgiven in us, worship changes.
We stop treating grace as a theological concept and begin experiencing it as personal rescue.
The woman knew she needed mercy.
Simon did not seem nearly as convinced that he did.
And that difference shaped the way each responded to Jesus.
Did You Know that religious respectability can sometimes make it harder to recognize how much grace we need?
Simon is an interesting character because outwardly he appears to be the more respectable person in the room.
He is the host.
He is a Pharisee.
He understands religious customs.
He apparently has enough social standing to host a meal attended by Jesus.
The woman has none of those advantages.
Yet Jesus points out that Simon has neglected ordinary gestures of hospitality. He provided no water for Jesus’ feet, no greeting kiss, and no anointing oil. The woman, by contrast, lavishes attention upon Christ.
That does not necessarily mean Simon is cruel. It does mean he has underestimated both Jesus and himself.
This is where the passage becomes uncomfortable.
We usually imagine spiritual danger as obvious rebellion. Sometimes it is. But there is another danger: becoming so comfortable with religious behavior that we forget our continuing dependence upon grace.
The woman cannot hide what everyone knows about her.
Simon can.
He has a respectable exterior.
And respectable appearances can create the illusion that we are closer to God than we actually are.
That is why confession remains an essential Christian discipline. First John 1:9 tells us, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
The Greek word commonly translated “confess,” homologeō, carries the sense of agreeing or saying the same thing. In confession, we stop arguing with God about our sin.
We agree with Him.
There is tremendous freedom in that.
We no longer have to maintain the exhausting appearance of having everything together. We can approach Christ honestly.
The woman did.
And Jesus did not drive her away.
Did You Know that Jesus saw the woman’s faith before He addressed her reputation?
The room knew what the woman had been.
Jesus knew what grace was making her.
Eventually He says to her, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace” (Luke 7:50).
That is a beautiful sentence.
The people around the table seem fixated on her past. Jesus speaks about her future.
“Go in peace.”
The Greek word for peace, eirēnē, carries the sense of wholeness and well-being. Jesus is not merely telling her to calm down emotionally. He is sending her away with the assurance that the burden that brought her to His feet no longer needs to define her.
That is what forgiveness does.
It does not rewrite history by pretending sin never happened. It breaks sin’s claim to determine our ultimate identity.
The woman entered the room known primarily as “a sinner.”
She leaves as someone whose faith has brought her into peace.
That is gospel.
Some people continue carrying names Christ has already removed.
Failure.
Unworthy.
Dirty.
Hopeless.
Ruined.
The gospel does not tell us that sin is insignificant. Luke 7 tells us precisely the opposite. The woman’s sins were “many.” Jesus does not minimize them.
He forgives them.
That makes grace greater, not smaller.
The great surprise of Christianity is not that God discovers we were better than everyone thought. It is that He knows exactly what is true and offers mercy anyway.
That realization produces worship.
Did You Know that praise often grows strongest when pride grows weakest?
There is a reason the woman’s worship appears extravagant.
She has little interest in maintaining appearances.
Her tears are visible.
Her hair is down.
Her perfume fills the room.
Her affection for Christ becomes public.
Simon, meanwhile, remains composed.
That creates one of the central contrasts in the passage. One person is concerned with maintaining respectable boundaries. The other has been overwhelmed by gratitude.
Isaiah repeatedly exposes the danger of religious life becoming detached from the heart. Job, in another way, reminds us that human righteousness can never place God in our debt. Luke brings the issue directly to Jesus’ feet.
We do not worship because God owes us something.
We worship because grace has given us what we could never provide for ourselves.
Psalm 103:10 puts it beautifully: “He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.”
A few verses later David writes, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
Think about that the next time worship feels ordinary.
Think about what has been removed.
Think about what Christ carried.
Think about what forgiveness means.
Praise begins to change when we remember the distance between what we deserved and what mercy gave us.
That does not create humiliation.
It creates gratitude.
And gratitude is one of the purest forms of worship.
The question Luke 7 leaves with us is not simply whether we have committed the same kinds of sins as this woman. That would miss Jesus’ point.
The better question is whether we understand our own need for forgiveness.
Simon saw one sinner in the room.
Jesus saw two people who needed grace.
Only one seemed to realize it.
Perhaps that is where we should place ourselves in this story.
Not standing over the woman evaluating her past.
Not sitting comfortably beside Simon congratulating ourselves on appearing respectable.
But somewhere near the feet of Jesus, remembering how much mercy has already met us there.
When that awareness returns, love becomes less forced. Praise becomes less mechanical. Forgiveness becomes less theoretical.
We begin to understand why she wept.
And perhaps we begin to love Him a little more ourselves.
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