When we grasp the measure of grace we’ve received, we’ll greet each day with fresh gratitude.
In politics we have Republicans, Democrats, and a handful of others. Among churches we have Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, and a myriad of others. Wherever and however humans gather, we come from different backgrounds, develop various convictions, and hold assorted opinions. Discovering the roots of our movements usually involves a fascinating cast of historical characters, some good and some… well, not so good.
The same was true in the Israel of our Lord’s Day.
Among the Jews, one of the most important denominations/political parties was the Pharisees. Most scholars believe the word “Pharisee” is related to a Hebrew word meaning “To separate, to be separate.” In several ways, I identify with these Pharisees. They sought a holy lifestyle and wanted to preserve a conservative doctrine. They were strangely drawn to Christ, and after the resurrection many of them became His followers (Acts 15:5).
These various Jewish sects are absent from the Old Testament. They developed during the time between the Old and New Testaments, apparently during and after the period of the Maccabees.
Here’s a simple history. When the Old Testament ended about 400 B.C., Israel was under the domination of the Persian Empire. About a hundred years later, Alexander the Great swept over the area and created his Greek / Macedonian Empire. When he died at age 33, his kingdom was divided among his four top generals, and for many years Israel was the rope in a brutal tug of war between Egypt and Syria. When the Syrians pushed Israel to the brink of desperation, the family of the Maccabees rose up in rebellion and amazingly led Israel to independence under the Hasmonean dynasty.
This may be new history to you, but you’ve probably heard of Hanukkah. This celebration, which occurs during the Christian Christmas season, commemorates the rededication of the Jewish Temple after the Maccabean victory. The word “Hanukkah” comes from a Hebrew verb meaning “to dedicate.” This is also called the Festival of Lights because it involved the relighting of the Menorah.
Israel governed itself from 142 B.C. until 62 B.C., but the nation splintered into many divisions and collapsed into civil war. The Roman general Pompey intervened and captured Jerusalem in 63 B.C., and that’s why Jesus was born into an Israel occupied by the Romans.
During the fleeting years of independence (142 – 62 B.C.), some of the divisions resulted in the formation of groups such as the Pharisees, who feared the Greek influence of Hellenization was corrupting the faith of the Jewish people. The earliest reference we have to groups such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes come from the pages of the Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote just after the time of Christ.
The Pharisees were quite popular in Jesus’ day and were considered “The People’s Party,” as opposed to the aristocratic Sadducees and the politically extreme Zealots. They longed for the nation to be holy, but their idea of holiness was more external than internal.
I’ll share more about these groups later, but it’s interesting that the Gospel of Luke records, not one or two, but three dinners Jesus had with three different Pharisees who invited Him into their homes.
The first invitation is recorded in Luke 7. Jesus went, and things took an interesting term when an uninvited guest slipped in.
Has that ever happened to you?
One day I showered, shaved, and pulled on a pair of jeans. My adult grandson, Jordan, was living with me. We had only recently met, but that’s a long story. Anyway, I was wearing only a pair of jeans when I went through the house and saw a strange woman standing in the living room. We both froze, then I said, “Who are you?” She nervously explained she was Jordan’s mother, whom I’d never met. I greeted her, then ducked into the bedroom to don shoes and shirt.
We aren’t used to having strangers walk into our homes, but it wasn’t like that in biblical times. Commentator David Garland helped me understand the cultural setting for the story of Simon the Pharisee. He wrote, “Ancient life was lived in public, not behind walls. A large home would have a courtyard with rooms surrounding it and opening onto it, and perhaps a small dining room. Entertainment was a public affair and the doors of the house would be wide open; those not invited to the meal were free to wander in.”
With that in mind, let’s look at our Lord’s visit to the home of Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7, starting with verse 36: “When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.”
Luke doesn’t tell us the nature of the woman’s sins. We’re apt to assume she was a town prostitute, but there are many sins and many kinds of sinfulness. Luke doesn’t tell us because he wants us to put ourselves in her place. The more we see of Jesus, the more guilty we feel. When Jesus performed the miracle of the abundant catch of fish, Peter fell at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord; for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8).
One of the major failures of contemporary people is that we see ourselves as suffering from anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders, eating disorders, obsessive behavior, poor self-image, and all other sorts of psychological maladies, any of which may be true. But we seldom see ourselves as sinners, people whose everyday behavior falls short of the glory of God.
Yet that is our chief problem!
When we grasp the measure of grace we’ve received, we’ll greet each day with gratitude. But at some point it’s necessary to realize just how lousy, defective, wrong, and evil we really are. As I was growing up, preachers called this “conviction of sin,” a term I seldom hear now. When were you last convicted of sin?
This woman was under intense conviction. Verse 38 says, “ As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.” This was the only way she knew to repent. This was her act of repentance. Somehow she knew Jesus could help her feel clean, whole, and truly happy for the first time in her life.
She poured oil and perfume on the Lord’s feet, perhaps thinking of Isaiah 52:7, which she had probably heard in the Jewish context of her life: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”
The custom of washing a guest’s feet had been practiced for at least 2000 years. The first biblical mention of the practice is Genesis 18:4, when Abraham washed the feet of the very same Son of God. In that passage, three men showed up at Abraham’s tent. He later understood two were angels, and the third was the Lord Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ prior to His conception and birth. He would sometimes appear in the biblical story of Israel in human form. Abraham washed His feet then, and now, 2000 years later, the sinful woman was doing the same.
We have fragments of a first-century Greek document entitled Callirhoe [Cal-er-hoe]. It’s what we would call today a historical romance novel. One of the scenes shows the heroine Callirhoe entering the shrine of Aphrodite and placing her hands and face on the goddess’ feet. She lets down her hair and kisses the image’s feet.
So what the woman was doing in Luke 7 wasn’t outside the cultural patterns for her time. In sorrow for her sins and in adoration of Him who brought good news and proclaimed peace, she washed his feet with her tears and perfume, and wiped them with her hair. Six times this passage mentions this woman’s handling of the Lord’s feet. She was humbled, convicted, and worshipping the only one who could help her.
Simon, however, was horrified. Verse 39 says, “When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.’”
He didn’t speak those words aloud. He said them to himself. But the Lord Jesus knows how to read faces, and He knows how to discern our thoughts. He looked at His host and said, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
Pause a moment and place yourself in the scene. If Jesus could read your face and discern your thoughts, He might say, “(Robert – Heather – Blake…), I have something to say to you.”
What do you think He would say? What area of your life would He want to address? Application-centered Bible study is simply a matter of putting ourselves into the text and letting it speak directly to us. How often we need to find a verse and put our names in it!
Simon invited the Lord to proceed, and it gave rise to one of Christ’s powerful parables.
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Jesus asked Simon two questions, the first about which of the debtors most loved the one who had forgiven them. But His second question is more subtle: “Do you see this woman?” Obviously Simon saw her—she was the unwanted center of attention—but did he really see her? And do we? Do we really see the people around us as hurting and needing a Savior? Do we see them with compassion?
Simon had failed as a host. He had not given the traditional kiss of hospitality to Jesus, nor had he offered oil for His face or water for His feet. This breach in etiquette indicates that Simon invited Jesus, not to honor Him, but to scrutinize Him. The Lord turned the tables on him. Jesus scrutinized His guest and found him to lack any awareness of his own sins, and not only that. Simon didn’t have sufficient compassion to desire the healing of those who did recognize their shortcomings.
Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
I’m an advocate for what is called “early high Christology”—the view that Jesus thought of Himself as God and His followers came to the same conclusion early in the Christian story. Our Lord’s proclamation of forgiveness of sins assumes His deity. Against whom had this woman sinned? She had sinned against the moral laws of almighty God, and only God could forgive her. Jesus assumed that right. He forgave her and saved her on the basis—not of her tears or perfume or hair—but on the basis of her faith.
And she loved Him dearly for it.
This story leaves me a bit frustrated, for even though I battle with my own episodes of guilt and shame, I’m not sure I realize the level of my own inner corruption. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Isaiah 64:6 says, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”
We needn’t grovel in past sins once-for-all forgiven, but we do need to ask the Lord, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).
One of the paradoxes of the Christian life is simultaneously recognizing the extent of our guilt and the extent of God’s grace. Ruth Bell Graham once said to me, “The closer you get to Heaven, the more you feel of Hell.” Not understanding, I asked her to explain. She said, “The closer you become to the Lord, the more you see the level of your own corruption and the more horrified you feel about even so-called small sins.”
I thought of that conversation when I recently read of a meeting her husband, Billy, had with a handful of Christian leaders. In 1979, Dr. Graham organized a prayer meeting at a hotel to pray for America and the upcoming elections. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ was there. So were pastors Charles Stanley and Adrian Rogers, along with evangelist James Robison.
The group met around a large rectangular table, and they discussed the weakened condition of America and its leadership. Growing international threats created an ominous sense of urgency, and the men prayed for God’s will, for His presence and intervention in our nation.
About midway through the two-day session, Dr. Graham looked at everyone and said, “Can I ask y’all something? Do any of you men feel holy? I mean, do you feel holy? Because I’ve got to tell you, men, I don’t. I don’t feel holy. I don’t know if I’m a holy man.”
When no one responded, Billy continued, “I know holy people. I think my wife, Ruth, is holy. And her parents, who are missionaries, I think they’re holy. And I know some other people who I think are holy. But I don’t know that I’m holy.”
At that, Adrian Rogers let his hand fall on the tabletop and his head slumped forward, and he said, “Billy, if you’re not holy, what about all of us!”
The men began praying with a renewed sense of vigor, saying, “God, we want to be holy. Whatever that looks like, we want Your will….”
I’ve often thought of Dr. and Mrs. Graham. She said the closer to heaven she got, the more she was sensitive to sin in her life; and her husband said he didn’t feel he was a holy man.
I can identify, can’t you?
On the one hand, when we come to Jesus Christ we’re declared holy in His sight because of the cleansing power of His blood. On the other hand, we’re not yet as holy in our condition in this world as we are in our position in our Lord. We are growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). We are pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us (Philippians 3:12). The Lord is in the process of sanctifying us through and through (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
How do we handle the paradox of being positionally holy and conditionally unholy at the same time?
May I offer two suggestions.
First, cooperate with the Holy Spirit as He who has begun a good work in you carries it on to completion (Philippians 1:6). Become more sensitive to sin, more conscious of God’s Word and His will, and more impressionable by the godly Scriptures you read, books you study, and Scriptures you absorb.
Second, try to grasp the measure of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Throughout the course of my life, I’m grateful the Lord has kept me from scandalous sins that could have wrecked my ministry and brought reproach to the Lord. But I’ve made mistakes. I’ve overreacted in tense moments. I’ve hurt people. I’ve done and said things I regret. Some of my decisions were shortsighted and damaging.
The older I become, the more these failures come back to haunt me.
What helps me are the visual images given to us in the Bible illustrating the vast, boundless nature of grace. In the parable at Simon’s house, Jesus likened God’s forgiveness to canceling a debt (Luke 7:42). If it’s cancelled, you no longer have to think about it, worry about it, or fret over it.
The Bible also says God blots out our sins (Acts 3:19); He washes and cleanses us (1 John 1:9); He frees us from the prison of guilt (Isaiah 61:1); He hurls our sins into the sea (Micah 7:18-19); He throws them behind His back (Isaiah 38:17); He sends them from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12); He abundantly pardons us and makes us white as snow (Isaiah 1:18 and 55:7).
The greatest image in my mind is that of the Red Sea, crashing down on the pursuing armies of Egypt. Moses had liberated the Israelites from bondage, from shame, from their bitter slavery in Egypt. They had seen the slaying of the Passover lambs, foreshadowing the death of Christ. When trapped at the Red Sea, the sea parted and formed great walls of congealed water and the Israelites crossed to the other side on dry ground.
But Satan didn’t want to let them go, and Pharoah sent his army into the supernatural corridor to recapture them. But the walls of water collapsed and the enemy disappeared under the overwhelming flood.
When I’m tempted to feel guilty or ashamed about anything in my past, I just look backward to see nothing but the swelling depths of the Red Sea of the blood of my Savior. That’s all I see. And I’m grateful.
Aren’t you?
When we grasp the measure of grace we’ve received, we’ll greet each day with fresh gratitude.