Dinner and Depth of Forgiveness

The politics of the Pharisees and how they related to Jesus are fascinating. Very early in the public ministry of Jesus, Nicodemus, a Pharisee, came to see Jesus by night, seeking further understanding of his purpose and teaching. He got a discussion with Jesus which included the very famous verse for evangelists everywhere, John 3v16. The Pharisee consensus turned more and more against him as time went on, of course, ending with the crucifixion. But some time between these events, in Luke 7v36-50, we see Jesus actually went to dinner with Simon the Pharisee. 

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.” “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

(Luke 7:36-50)

Jesus was invited but then when he turned up, he was not honoured. We're not told how much effort was made with the food, which might've been a major interest for me! But nice food or not, his feet were not washed on entry to the house, and he seems to have been generally treated as a second-class visitor. He was not anointed or kissed, as seems to have been the custom. Perhaps some other Pharisees heard about Jesus coming and turned up to check him out. Maybe Simon did not want to honour Jesus if his other guests held him in contempt. He went with the flow of his peers. But another visitor had no such inhibitions.

This visiting woman treated Jesus with great honour. Although she was a sinner in the eyes of the Pharisees, there was no sexual element to her outpouring of love and affection on the Lord. She washed his feet with her tears, probably finding the dishonour from Simon inappropriate. Wishing to correct what Simon had not done, she went further and poured ointment on him and kissed his feet. God is not against intimacy and affection, to the right extent in the right context. Rather, He made them possible and enjoys them. He wants to bless us with true friendships, with Himself and with others. The sexual act does not necessitate real intimacy of relationship. Intimacy, in common usage, is a distorted and largely empty word, just as love is. 

After the Pharisees criticise the woman, Jesus tells a parable about debt. The punchline: Those who love most are those who have been forgiven most. 

Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

(Luke 7:47)

What can we surmise from this encounter? 

Jesus is not saying that the woman's sins were forgiven he as a result of her great love for him. Rather because she exhibited so much flamboyantly-expressed love for Jesus, it was clear her many sins were already abundantly forgiven. The full-on nature of her love and affection were evidence of the forgiveness she was experiencing. Forgiveness makes room for love to abide and for love to flow. It then flows from God to us, and from us to God, and also out to the people we meet. We do not earn God's forgiveness by our love. We can't love our way into being forgiven. Instead we need to realise that both the forgiveness and the love are graciously granted by God! Isn't that amazing! None of us could love our way into being forgiven by God. When fully received, His forgiveness releases us into love. The second half of verse 47 shows the same flow, but there we see everything diminished:  The one who has been forgiven little loves little. 

Forgiveness needs to be received. It must be appropriated. It is freely offered by God. The woman had seen her need deeply and received deeply.

There is a sense of proportionality in what Jesus said. 

".....her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

The woman had been forgiven much. She seems to have had a bit of a reputation. Was this because she actually was an unusually bad sinner in the sight of God? I don't think she was. She certainly looked to the world like a bad sinner, but we are all bad sinners in the heart. Jesus taught this fact. We can see the attitudes of the heart are as indicting for us as the deeds themselves (Matthew 5v21 and 27). The truth is that we are all totally corrupted by sin outside of Christ (Romans 7v18). Every one of us, therefore, needs deep forgiveness. It's not reserved just for obvious 'sinners'. Sometimes obvious sinners are less furtive and devious than the apparently upright, who may be better at hiding what is going on. So we're all the same (Romans 3v23). (This obviously doesn't mean we can't do right at all, because God has granted something theologians call natural grace. Being evil, we can still love our children, see Matthew 7v11. But it does mean no part of us is completely free from the defilement of sin. So we all need much forgiveness). 

This raises a question about proportionality. Why does Jesus say some have been forgiven little? He seems to be referring to Simon and the other Pharisees here, because they showed little love and honour for him. It's certainly not because God has limited capacity or desire to forgive. It is absolutely not God's desire to hold grudges and to have to punish people. God freely forgives all men, because Jesus would die, and now has died, for all the sins of the entire world.

The answer has to be to do with whether we have received of his forgiveness, and how much? God holds out complete forgiveness to every man woman and child on the planet. But how many people have received it? Our ability to receive forgiveness at all depends on whether we accept Christ. Having accepted him, our awareness and experience of forgiveness comes as we see just how much has been forgiven. Paul had a lot of love for God and for people. He also saw the extent of his own sin, 1 Timothy 1v15. It's hard or impossible to gratefully receive something you don't know you need. Paul was not like that. We experience forgiveness to the extent that we become aware of our sinfulness and of the completeness of God's provision for it in Christ's Blood.

If we think we are basically great people who sin occasionally, we will receive a little sense of God's abundant forgiveness into our souls. If, like this woman, we see ourselves as corrupt and despicable to the core, we will receive a huge sense of forgiveness, and a similar sense of gratitude. Surely this is what Jesus is getting at. 

Both love and forgiveness are made for giving as well as receiving. There's a helpful pun in there. For giving. get it? We can only love to the depth we have received love. We can only forgive to the depth we have received forgiveness.

God has complete love for us and complete forgiveness for our sin. There are no grey areas, for he is Light. The only reason we cannot experience the forgiveness of God is if we reject the means of forgiveness, Jesus Christ and his sacrifice of himself. Supposing we accept that forgiveness, I believe there is often a personal journey for each of us. We further need to be aware of just how much He has had to forgive in us. We may not realise this in the first instance, when we first come to have faith in the risen and ascended Christ. When we are filled with the consciousness of how much he loves us, we will love him and others quite naturally and extravagantly. We will abundantly and totally forgive them in the same way. This woman seems to have been very aware of her own sinfulness and God's graciousness.

If we don't forgive, we will not experience the forgiveness of God. Why? Because love and forgiveness are living things, intended to live in you. If we are harbouring bitterness, let God reveal it and repent. Remove the blockage. It is dreadful to be intimate with God and to lose the living intimacy, and unforgiveness is a major reason for that happening. Can you gladly forgive someone who has hurt or harmed you badly? Who has shown callous indifference and contempt for you? Who has neglected and ignored you when they should've taken responsibility for you? We all do these things, at times, and to some degree, even if we tend to notice the occasions when they were done to us most. Can you honestly desire only the very best for people who do bad things to you? If so, and if it is not an act, then you are practicing the forgiveness of God. May we so press in to God that we are routinely able to forgive like this. 

The Nature of the Fight of Faith

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

(1 Timothy 6:12)

We're called to 'fight the good fight', as the old hymn says. It is a fight of faith. Who or what are we fighting with? In a sense, we are not fighting any sort of offensive fight, certainly not with people. In 1 Corinthians 10v3-5, Paul says we are fighting strongholds and imaginings. These are primarily problems in our own thinking. A stronghold is a way of thinking resistant to the Word of God, and through which the enemy can gain influence. Imaginings are thoughts. Thoughts which may be suggested by the world system, but which are not the final truth in God. The world and the devil will start to tell us we are sick, or poor, or headed for poverty. These are vain imaginings. The facts around us may confirm these imaginings. We need to reject them based on God's promises from the Bible. In Ephesians 6v11-17 we are instructed to put on the armour of God. Faith is part of that armour; the shield. This sounds quite militaristic, and it is. But again, there are no offensive weapons mentioned, apart from the sword of the Spirit, and that is the word of God. The sword pictures the Word of God as a weapon to cut away anything which hinders us, by discerning between flesh and spirit, between what is purely human and worldly and what is of God (Hebrews 4v12). It's not described in Hebrews 4 as an offensive weapon to attack people. The New Testament also tells us to cast out demons, so the Ephesians 6 full armour is offensive in that sense. There's a militant indignation at the devil and his cohorts, and we have authority to drive them out when their presence is discerned in a person or place. We drive them out by using the authority of the Word, because Jesus has already instructed and empowered us to do this. 

Paul's way to describe the fight in 1 Timothy 6 is not by describing the enemy, but by describing the method. The method, of course, is faith. Why is this? It's because the enemy, from God's true perspective, is already defeated. By faith, we simply agree with and enter into Gods' perspective. We should be remaining in that perspective of victory by our faith. There's a great old hymn exhorting us to do fight the good fight. What does it involve, fighting this fight of faith? 

First, what is faith? In the New Testament Greek, faith is the word 'pistis'. It means belief, conviction, credence, reliance. If we have faith in Christ, we believe Him, rely on Him and have conviction that what he says is true. How does faith like this develop and grow? 

God often speaks in pictures. A year or two ago I started seeing pictures in my mind of a man wearing headphones.  Around that time I had bought some, to listen to music without disturbing people in our smallish house in Cape Town. God often speaks using ideas familiar to us. God probably wasn't suggesting I upgrade my headphones. My wife didn't think so either! I decided instead He was using figurative language. Most headphones don't allow much external sound in. They reject unwanted, sound, the sound of the world around you. Many modern models go further and actively counteract extraneous noise, allowing you to concentrate fully on the material you wish to hear.

What did the pictures mean? We need to be tuned in to God, even if that means we remain relatively ignorant of some aspects of the world around us. It's about which voice and language speaks loudest to us. I believe God was prompting me to listen to His voice and His Word, but also to actively avoid too much exposure to hearing about the affairs of this world. We were in South Africa at the time, and there were many troubles, some of them very close to where we lived. I intentionally visited dangerous neighbourhoods at the time, and God is fine with that as we reach out for Him with the Gospel. But we also had a riot outside our complex and some internal crime. Back in the UK there are different issues, as we are reminded now we have returned. It's not necessarily better, just different. Wherever we live though, it's easy to focus in excessively on this world. We might start to think about how secure we are, or how to change the government. We start to think about jobs and income, and whether we can survive financially. In the UK, it's easy to get concerned about Godless values being enforced on people. All this is the way things seem to be. But it's really only how they seem to be. There's a higher truth we can draw from, a truth which over-rules the natural order. The natural order has reality, but there is a higher and absolute truth and reality which will bring the natural order into line with god's Word and promises. 

We cannot escape all persecution, because many people will hate us for our faith. But we can live in the positive promises of God. Even if the world tells us we will fall into sickness, poverty and misery, we can receive and appropriate His over riding promises. We do this by faith. We believe what He has already said and give thanks. You can ask if you like, but it's often not necessary, because we have His Word on issues which concern us. He will then prepare a table of blessing, of health and prosperity, in the presence of the enemies of sickness and poverty. As far a faith is concerned, over-focus on the world can paralyze us and shift us into unbelief. If we listen to the secular media too much, we don't just hear facts about this world, we also tend to pick up the thinking, principles and attitudes of this world. For example, news outlets in many countries seems to thrive on negativity and therefore generate fear. There's a form of excitement involved in this, in generating fearful suspense, but there's death in it too. Faith also has an element of excitement, but it's a different, purer, sort of excitement. It's the excitement of overflowing life. And God has commanded us not to fear. 

Using the analogy of natural hearing, we can see we are called to listen actively to His voice. 

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

(Joh 10:27)

His voice is not always an audible voice. It comes in various forms, including audibly or directly as words spoken to the mind. More usually it comes as a settled conviction or as a desire of the heart, and is accompanied by a sense of deep peace. How do we decide if we are indeed hearing God? It isn't always easy. It is much easier to discern His voice accurately and reliably if we are already thinking in line with His ways. This will happen when we spend a lot of time in prayer, worship and reading the Word. Fasting also helps, and can allow the Word to gain deep entrance by quieting the soul.

What do we mean by this world? Not the planet, that's fine, though it might not last. This world order works in a certain way. It is dominated by control of others, selfishness, and by strife, lust, anger, greed and envy. There are also elements to this world order which are not inherently evil, but which are often used in a Godless way.

Money is an example. It's a dominating factor in purely human thinking. Human learning and Godless ideas and ideals are others. These things certainly have power and some validity, but they don't have final power, God does. And He works through His Word and our faith. In this world order, this natural way of thinking, we may consider ourselves wise. But this is often worldly wisdom. We may consider ourselves good judges of people, or well able to predict the future, what people will do next. But we can be wrong. Sometimes very wrong. We may use natural wisdom, money and learning and other methods to best try to run our lives and make decisions. A lot of the time there is nothing wrong with these methods. But we mostly need to spend time listening for God's voice. What if we believe He is speaking to us about a present situation? If God speaks something not in line with our worldly evaluations, or tells us to do something seemingly risky, will we hear and obey? He will speak in line with his written Word. Will we let God's truths and promises govern how we feel about life, not what external indicators and values might say to our hearts and minds? Will we let His Word, written and spoken, govern our actions?

Our senses 'speak' strongly to our hearts and minds. What our senses perceive is not necessarily wrong, unless we deliberately expose them to sinful influences. But we need to process these sensory inputs with a mind governed by the Word of God. This well help us to act in a Godly way. If God speaks prophetically with a picture or impression, perhaps through another believer, and if we recognise God's voice in it, we should act on that word. We will maintain our peace and joy this way. We will be led in a good path. If we let the strife and uncertainty of the world in to govern our thinking, guess what? Peace will go. Bad decisions are likely.

If we've allowed the world to poison our hearts and minds, our passions and feelings will get corrupted. We will not be satisfied or peaceful within. It may well take effort to press back in to God and get back in harmony with Him. Personally there have been times as a Christian when I have let sin and the devil in, and my heart has even started to grow hostile to God. I've blamed Him for things which are not his fault or doing. This is not good, but there is a way back. If we really get messed up, and drift well away from Him, God will grant us the gift of heart repentance if we seek it and ask. In a sense, we have already repented when we realise we have drifted away, but he can help us return to peace and obedience. God granted the gift of repentance to the Gentiles in Acts 11v18. They wanted God, and God helped them to receive good things from Him. 

It is our souls which are the battleground, our souls get corrupted when we sin and neglect our relationship with the Lord. We become confused and are conscious of defilement. It is within our souls we need to find repentance back toward God. We should always be aware that our Spirits, if we are born again, are sealed for the day of redemption. We have that security. The governing essence of our being, the very core of who we are, is already sealed and perfected for the age to come. Our spirits are ready for that age of abiding, remaining, peace and perfection. They don't need further transformation. Or souls do. And our bodies may need healing too.

In summary, a major aspect of the fight of faith is to fill our minds with Godly thoughts and promises. Reading and understanding His written Word is vital. We can do so much to renew our minds, and thereby stay in the will of God. In this way, we will increasingly walk faithfully with Him. We'll be at peace. We are called to act in line with His Word.

God has given us His precious Word for a good reason. There are so many dependable promises in it. We have to exercise our faith and take hold of those truths, to grasp them with our entire being. This takes effort. Doing these things brings the joy, peace and stability of heaven in to this often drab and miserable present age.