(Luke 7:47)

 

To explain the expression,
"Her sins are forgiven, for she loved much," we must distinguish
between grace revealed in the person of Jesus and the pardon He announced to
those whom the grace had reached. The Lord is able to make this pardon known.
He reveals it to the poor woman. But it was that which she had seen in Jesus
Himself, which, by grace, melted her heart and produced the love she had to
Him—the seeing what He has for sinners like herself. She thinks only of Him:He
has taken possession of her heart so as to shut out other influences. Hearing
that He is there, she goes into the house of this proud Pharisee without
thinking of anything but the fact that Jesus is there. His presence answered,
or prevented, every question. She saw what He was to a sinner and that the most
wretched and disgraced found a resource in Him; she felt her sins in the way
that this perfect grace, which opens the heart and wins confidence, causes them
to be felt; and she loved much. Grace in Christ had produced its effect. She
loved because of His love. This is the reason that the Lord says, "Her
sins are forgiven … for she loved much." It was not that her love was
meritorious for this, but that God revealed the glorious fact that the sins—be
they ever so numerous and abominable—of one whose heart was turned to God were
fully pardoned.

 

If God manifests Himself in this
world, and with such love, He must needs set aside in the heart every other
consideration. And thus, without being aware of it, this poor woman was the
only one who acted suitably in those circumstances, for she appreciated the
all-importance of the One who was there. A Saviour-God being present, of what
importance was Simon and his house? Jesus caused all else to be forgotten. Let
us remember this.

 

The beginning of man’s fall was
lack of confidence in God, originating in the seducing suggestion of Satan that
God had kept back what would make man like God. Confidence in God lost, man
seeks, in the exercise of his own will, to make himself happy:lusts, sin,
transgression follow. Christ is God in infinite love, winning back the
confidence of man’s heart to God. Removal of guilt and power to live to God are
another thing and are found in their own place through Christ, as pardon comes
into its place here. But the poor woman, through grace, had felt that there was
one heart she could trust, if none else; and that was God’s.

 

God is light and God is love.
Revealing Himself, He must be both; so Christ was love in the world and also
the light of it; so also in the heart. The love through grace gives confidence,
and thus the light is gladly let in; and with confidence in the love and seeing
self in the light, the heart has wholly met God’s heart:so with this poor
woman. This is where the heart of man and God always and alone meet. The
Pharisee had neither—pitch dark, neither love nor light were there. He had God
manifest in the flesh in his house and saw nothing — being sure only that He
was not a prophet! It is a wondrous scene to see these three hearts:man’s, as
such, resting on false human righteousness; God’s; and the poor sinner’s fully
meeting God’s heart as God did hers. Who was the child of wisdom? for it is a
commentary on that expression. (Luke 7:35).

 

And note, though Christ had said
nothing of it but bowed to the slight, yet He was not insensible to the neglect
which had failed to provide Him with the common courtesies of life. To Simon He
was a poor preacher, whose pretensions he could judge, certainly not a prophet;
to the poor woman, God in love, and bringing her heart into unison with His as
to her sins and as to herself; for love was trusted in. Note, too, this
clinging to Jesus is where true light is found:here the fruitful revelation of
the gospel, to Mary Magdalene, as to the highest privilege of saints.