Sermon on Luke 7:36–50: Why people respond differently to Jesus
A sermon by James de Costobadie, Senior Pastor at Latimer Church, on the story of the sinful woman who anoints Jesus at Simon the Pharisee's house.
Summary
James de Costobadie preaches from Luke 7:36–50, the account of a woman with a sinful reputation who enters Simon the Pharisee's house and anoints Jesus' feet with tears, her hair, and expensive perfume. The central question he addresses is why some people are deeply moved by Jesus while others remain unmoved. He argues that the difference comes down to three things: whether a person can see the size of their debt before God, whether they can see what Jesus has done to cancel that debt, and whether they actually accept the offer of forgiveness Jesus extends. He uses the historical case of George Wilson — an American man who refused a presidential pardon and was subsequently executed — to illustrate that Jesus' offer of forgiveness, though free, must be personally accepted to be valid.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Why people respond so differently to Jesus
James de Costobadie: Vegemite, long-distance running, hot spicy food, the Green Party — why is it that some things in life are so divisive? They split any crowd into two. Or for that matter, think of Jesus of Nazareth. Why is it that some people are drawn to Jesus? They see in him something so special that they speak in personal terms of actually loving him, of wanting to devote their lives to him, while for other people they struggle to understand what the fuss is about.
Maybe you yourself are someone who hasn't had too much to do with Christian things. Maybe you've got a Christian friend or a Christian family member, and it's always been a bit of a mystery to you why they seem to invest so much time, why this is so special to them, why this is such a big part of their life. Or maybe you're someone who has come to church for a while but you suspect that other people get more out of it than you do and you're left a bit cold on the inside. Why the difference when it comes to Jesus?
Tonight, in the passage that's just been read for us, we meet two people who themselves met Jesus in real life, and one of them had her life completely turned upside down by that meeting. We'll see the difference that Jesus made in her life. We'll see how he brought her forgiveness, how he brought her everlasting peace, how joy and delight in life became hers, how he bestowed upon her a dignity that she had never known before. I've been a Christian nearly 35 years and every year has got better, and I can relate to many of those things that were true of this woman here. And yet the other person in this incident remained completely unmoved.
So let's have a look at them, and as we do we'll see three things that help explain the difference in a person's attitude towards Jesus — why one person is drawn towards him and one person thinks very differently about him.
The scene: Simon's dinner party
The scene where the incident took place is in someone's private house. Verse 36: when one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him. The Pharisees were well respected, good people — people looked up to them and thought highly of them in first-century Israelite society. They are good and upright people. Jesus has come round for dinner with one of them, and later on in the passage we find that there were other guests there, so maybe quite a few of them. Simon has invited his friends to meet Jesus.
And in the midst of this dinner, in the midst of the comings and goings, someone else enters the house. We're not told too much about her, but what we are told is the one thing we need to know, in verse 37: a woman in that town who had lived a sinful life. In other words, that's what she's known for. As we would say, she was someone who had a reputation. Maybe they'd seen her on street corners, maybe they'd seen her going into houses with men, or whatever it is.
She comes into this house, and we read in verse 38 that she comes in with tears, wetting his feet. In the middle of this polite company and this dinner party of sorts, she makes this scene — wiping his feet with her hair and kissing them, pouring perfume on them. Because in her hand she's holding the other thing we're told about: this jar of alabaster perfume. This is clearly a special ointment — Coco Chanel's liquid gold — and she breaks the top and pours it onto Jesus' feet even as she wipes his feet with her tears.
Simon, the owner of the house, freezes. His blood freezes. He's horrified by her. The thought that a woman such as this would just come into his house — he's never gone within a hundred yards of this kind of person, and she is right there. She doesn't ring the bell, she doesn't ask for permission, she is right there. And he freezes. But he also freezes because of Jesus. He expects Jesus to draw back, to push her away. This woman has got her hands on Jesus' feet. She's literally touching him. She's got her hair on his legs. He expects Jesus to push her away — and Jesus doesn't.
And so verse 39 — I don't think we probably needed to be told, it was probably obvious to those who were there — when the Pharisee who had invited Jesus 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.
Simon the Pharisee is appalled, shocked, horrified. And why is that? It's because he has thought highly of Jesus, he thinks that Jesus is of God, and he reasons to himself: if he were a prophet, if he was of God, he would never let someone like this touch him. Because Simon had a view of God — and tell you the truth, it's the view that most people have of God. It's probably the view that all of us would have of God naturally, which is that God accepts good people and doesn't accept people who have lived a certain way. That is just how we naturally think.
We've all heard of the Ten Commandments, and we naturally think that if you've kept enough of the commands then you get into God's good books, and if you don't, you're probably on the outer. If you are someone who gets to heaven, nearly everyone would have the same idea — good people, religious people, that kind of people. Certainly not people over here.
I used to think of humanity like a sort of tower block. You think of the best people up at the top and the worst people down at the bottom. Now if you think of humanity like that, what kind of people get to heaven? Well, people in the top half or the top third or whatever. One day God will come along and sort of put a slice in there and take those people to be with himself. It's funny when you play that game — I always found that you put yourself just sort of above where the slice goes. Sort of just creep in there. That's how we think, because we imagine that God is after the good people.
If God were to come to this world, what kind of people would he give the medals out to? He'd give the medals to the good people. That's what always happens. Dignitaries come to town — you don't get the riffraff wheeled out to meet them. You get the good people. You get the people who've done things. People with letters after their name and all that sort of thing.
That's how Simon thinks. So he's very disappointed. He thinks Jesus is obviously not of God. And so Jesus turns to him.
Jesus corrects Simon's entire worldview
I love the way Jesus speaks to him in verse 40. He says: Simon, I have something to tell you. And he is about to tell Simon that he is completely mistaken. He is mistaken about God. He doesn't understand what God is like, or who God wants, or what God has come to bring. He's mistaken about himself and what kind of person he is. And he's mistaken about this woman. His whole worldview needs to be turned upside down.
And tonight Jesus might say the same to us. He might speak to us individually. Jenny, Rob, Tom, Sarah — I have something to tell you. And what he wants to tell some of us is that our way of thinking is completely wrong. The way we see ourselves, the way we see God, what we think happens, who God accepts after this life, who goes to heaven — may have been completely wrong. And we need to allow Jesus to speak to us and to hear what he has to say.
To help Simon, Jesus tells him a little story. He puts forward the thought that there are two people who both owe money to the same person. One person owes a little bit — let's say 50 bucks. The other person owes an absolutely massive amount, a life-ruining amount. Imagine this person who perhaps has set up a business and borrowed money off someone, and the business does well for a time. They borrow more money, and then it begins to not go so well, and then it begins to head south. People walk away, circumstances happen, the business goes bust, and they owe this same person a massive amount of money. One person owes 50 bucks, the other owes 5 million — a life-ruining debt.
Now Jesus says: imagine the moneylender has the goodwill to cancel the debts. He says to the guy who owes 50 bucks, it's all right, you don't have to pay me back. How do you feel if you owe 50? Well, thank you very much. Really? Thanks. Might drop him an email or buy him a coffee or something. I appreciate that. But what about the person who owed 5 million? What? Do you mean that? Do you mean I have to pay you back later on? I'm happy to try. No, he says, it's cancelled. What, like really cancelled? It's gone. You don't owe me the money anymore. You don't have to pay me.
Now, how does that person feel? And you see what Jesus is saying here. He's saying that this woman has a debt like that, and I have cancelled it, and that is why she thinks the way she does.
First reason: Can you see your need?
So the first reason that makes us different in our response to Jesus is whether we can see our need. The truth that Jesus is painting here is that we are all debtors to God. Because of the way that you and I have treated God — and all people have treated God — we have a debt before him. The question is, can you see how big your debt is before God?
If you're the sort of person who thinks, basically I'm a good person in life, I haven't done too much wrong, life is going along okay — you will view God in one way. I remember once I had a school report and the report said, "James, making steady progress." And a lot of people think that's sort of how it is between them and God. Maybe not perfect, but kind of making steady progress. No one in this world thinks they're perfect. But if you're the kind of person who thinks, you know, basically I'm okay, I've done one or two things wrong — that's the equivalent of thinking you're in debt by about 50 bucks.
But if you see that you have lived your life against God, if you come to a position of seeing that you've actually not lived in reference to God at all, if you come to see that you've lived life taking from God every single day and never saying thank you, and that actually we've set ourselves up opposed to God — you begin to see your debt in a very different way.
And the Bible says that that is actually the reality. Everything good that you and I have in our life, we only have because God is so generous. Every single day and every single year that we have lived on this earth, we have received good things. Life itself — we're here tonight, we're alive, we're breathing, because God gives us the breath in our lungs and enables our hearts to keep pumping. The people who are precious to you in your life, your family or your friends or other people who are precious — God has given us those relationships. The practical things, the food, the housing, the holidays, the other good things that we enjoy, the job you have, the money you earn — it all comes because God is a generous God.
Now I don't know if you've ever thought about that before. If you're like me, naturally, no, we don't. We just charge on in life as if it were a right. But imagine a child growing up in a house where they take, take, take, take, but never even acknowledge their parents. What would you call that? You'd say that child is like a little emperor — all entitlement — and we don't like it. But when you discover that you are the child, that is, we've been living in this life for 15 years or 30 years or 50 years or 75 years, and we've been gobbling up everything good that God gives us but never in reference to him, never thanking him, just charging on as if we own this world — as if we owned ourselves. We don't even own ourselves. God owns us. He created us.
You see that it is rude. If someone treats you by ignoring you 90% of the time, but 10% of the time when they cannot find anyone else to help them they come back to you — what would you call that? You'd say that's rude. We feel used when someone treats us like that. How do you think God feels when 90% of the time we ignore him, gobble up all the good things that he gives to us, but 10% of the time when everything else falls apart and no one else can help us in life, then we come to him and pray, please help me God? What do you think he's supposed to feel?
Our debt is so massive before God because our sins are so great before God. We are in a debt of billions of dollars, each one of us. But Simon the Pharisee couldn't see that. He just thought he was quite a good person.
Now why couldn't he see it? Well, one reason which comes out implicitly in this passage is because he looked across and he saw what this woman was like. In other words, he compared himself to her. And in life you can always find someone who will play you on side, because there's always someone worse than us. You know, there you are driving along on the motorway, your speed has edged up a bit, you're 10 or 15 kilometres over the limit, and then on your outside — vroom! — this car zooms past. Now if the blue and red lights start going behind you and you get pulled over, how would you feel? You'd say, oh officer, I think you got the wrong person. To which the police officer might say, I'm not bothered about them — you were going 15 over, I'm afraid you're the problem. It's no good just referring to someone else.
But we persuade ourselves we're okay because someone else is worse. That actually came home to me some years ago when I went to visit a prison and was introduced to some of the prisoners there. I went to the wing where there were prisoners who'd committed offences against children. And what was striking was that even within that wing of the prison, they graded their crimes — some of them they viewed as more acceptable, some as less acceptable, and some completely unacceptable. Because in life you can always find someone worse than you who plays you on side. And so we persuade ourselves that we're okay before God, not realising that we have a debt that is life-ruining. For one day we will have to stand before God, and on that day we cannot stand behind someone else. We can't stand behind our parents or behind our children or behind someone who's worse than us. It'll be us and God.
For Simon, he had created his own hierarchy of badness, looking at this woman and making him feel better about life. And so he doesn't think he has much debt to be repaid by God. Jesus says that's the difference between them — he doesn't love because he doesn't think he has much debt to be forgiven.
So first question for us tonight: can you see your debt before God? Can you see how big the debt is? That's the first thing.
Second reason: Can you see what Jesus offers?
Then the second thing that determines how we see Jesus is whether we can see what Jesus offers. As long as we don't think we have much wrong between us and God, Jesus will always feel like an irrelevance. It's a bit like the departments in a hospital. I'm not very interested in the departments in a hospital until I've got something wrong that means I've actually got to go to one of those departments — and suddenly they're the most important place in the whole world.
Now for this woman, she sees her need, but then she also sees how Jesus meets the need, and she shows she understands Jesus in how she behaves towards him. At the beginning of the incident, when she's all tears and with her hair all over Jesus' feet, we don't really pick up why she is like this. But as you go on in the story, you realise the reason she's so moved is because of her gratitude to Jesus.
Have a look at verse 44. Then Jesus turned towards the woman and said to Simon: Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You didn't 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 didn't pour oil on my head, but she 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.
This, says Jesus, is what makes the difference in how a person treats Jesus. When you see that you have a debt before God that is so huge you could never pay it. When you see that you deserve nothing from God except his wrath at our sins and our debt. When you see that one day you will stand before God and no one will be able to cover for you, you won't be able to hide behind anyone else, and you don't have a leg to stand on for that day — and then when you see that Jesus came into this world to pay your debt in full — that, says Jesus, is what alters a person's view towards him.
Because Jesus goes from being a figure of history, to being someone that our parents occasionally used to mention, to being our Saviour who can actually rescue us from eternal death. Jesus goes from being an irrelevance to being the most important person in our life and in our world. It doesn't get bigger than that.
This woman — we don't know a huge amount about her. We don't know how much she had seen of Jesus and the amazing things that he did. We don't know how much she had heard of Jesus and the amazing teaching that fell from his lips. But the point was that she knew enough to know that Jesus had come to forgive her — of all people — her sins. To pay her enormous debts.
A question for us tonight: can you see what Jesus has come to offer you? Can you see your need? But can you also see what Jesus is offering you? Can you see that Jesus left the palace of heaven to come into this stinking world, to live a life where he would be brutalised and tortured — and he did it out of love for you, so that on the cross he could pay for your sins? Having lived the perfect life, he was able to absorb our sins — the sins of your life — into himself, and the wrath of God with those, so that you and I would not have to drink that for ourselves. Can you see what Jesus has done for you? And can you see that he did it not because he had to, but because he chose to? Not because he needed to, but because he wanted to? Because he loves you — that's why he did it. He was propelled out of heaven because of love for you.
Have a look at verse 48, where Jesus turns to the woman and says: your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. It was a statement that she needed to hear. But I actually think it wasn't just for her — this was partly a statement for Simon as well. Sometimes people think that God is anti-women, or that Christianity is anti-women or something. Jesus here is saying to Simon: Simon, you should take a leaf out of her book. She has understood something that you haven't understood — that she can be forgiven, and needs to be forgiven. And indeed has been forgiven.
What a wonderful truth: your sins are forgiven. What a liberating truth, what a life-changing truth. This woman must have felt so inadequate walking into that company. Can you imagine the life that she's led? She's walking into this sort of posh, polite company. She must have felt so unworthy, so full of shame. But Jesus had taken that shame away. She just wanted to be close to him. She didn't care in the end what people thought, actually. Because he had given her forgiveness and dignity. Because even though her debt was massive, she knew it was all forgiven. And Jesus confirms it: all your sins are forgiven.
Now for some of us here, maybe we could never imagine that someone could forgive us, that God could forgive us. We imagine that somehow we've gone too far in life. The point is, if he could forgive this woman, he can forgive us — anything that we have done, anything at all, and everything that we have done. That's why he came into this world, to pay for the whole lot.
He doesn't pay for 99% of her sins and ask her to pay the 1% that's left. She wouldn't have been able to do that either, nor would we. He comes to pay for all of it, every part of it.
I don't know when the last time was you went out for a coffee with someone or a meal or whatever, and then you get to the end and perhaps you're just sort of thinking about paying, and you find that they get out their wallet or phone and they get to the till first and put their card on it and they might turn back and say, it's all right, it's all covered. You think, oh, well, that's very kind of you — because it's a lovely thing when someone pays for you. Well, at the cross of Christ, God says to you: don't worry, it's all covered. I paid for it. What, all of it? Yes, all of it. Every penny, every sin. That's what Jesus has done.
He pays for the open sins that we've committed and the secret sins. He pays for the recent sins and the past sins that are still clinging to our conscience. He pays for the sins that we committed once and those that have dogged us for years and years and years. He pays for the average sins that everyone has, but also the worst sins that we would hate, hate for anyone else to find out about us. He pays for the sins of which we know and also our hidden faults that we're absolutely blind to. And it's as if he picks the whole lot up and puts it in an incinerator — they're burned up. Because at the cross, when Jesus dies, that's what happens. Our sins are consumed. They are burned up. Gone, gone, gone. Forgiven, forgotten, forever.
This is the second thing that makes a difference — whether we can see what Jesus has done for us. I wonder if you can see what he's done for you.
Third reason: Will you accept Jesus' offer?
That leads us to the third thing that makes a difference in how we view Jesus, which is when a person accepts Jesus' offer.
Have a look at the last couple of verses. Verse 49: the other guests began to say among themselves, who is this who even forgives sins? They're bystanders, they're watching on. Who is this who can do this — like no one else is able to do this? Who is this person, Jesus?
Jesus turns to the woman again and says: your faith has saved you, go in peace. Your faith — that is, the fact that she trusted in Jesus. Because faith simply means trust. Everyone in this world has faith; it depends what your faith is in. And for many of us — in fact every person by nature — our faith is normally in ourselves. That's how we're sort of born, that's how we're brought up. That's how most people imagine it will be on the day when they finally meet God, if there is a God. They imagine that God will want to know they've done enough good things in life, and they'll sort of scrabble around in their pockets and try and find the odd good thing that they did sometime in life and throw it at God and sort of hope that's enough. In other words, their faith is in themselves to get through that day.
But this woman knew that faith in herself would cut no mustard with God. She didn't have anything to offer. And the wise person will see the same is true for them.
One day you and I will have to stand before almighty God. What will we be trusting in on that day when we have to meet him? Because if we stand in front of God with our sins still loaded onto us, he will say to us: excuse me, but what are you doing here, unforgiven? And if we were to say, oh, I'm so sorry, I thought it was a case of just trying to do my best — he might say, well, why do you think I gave my Son then, to pay for people's forgiveness? And if we say to God, well, I'm so sorry, I didn't realise that Jesus was so important — he'll say, what? I gave my one and only Son to die, and you didn't think that was important? You must think I'm mad. And we will not have an answer to say to him.
You see, because God is making us an offer. And when someone makes you an offer that is free to us — courtesy of Jesus paying the price for us — why would we not accept it? He is offering to forgive our sins. But make no mistake, that offer has to be accepted to be valid.
The case of George Wilson
That came home to me a few years ago when I heard of a man called George Wilson. George Wilson lived quite a while ago. He was an American, a real person. He committed serious crimes and was sentenced to death. The president at the time was Andrew Jackson, who granted him a pardon — as US presidents can do — because his family and others petitioned on his behalf. For reasons that I was never quite able to establish, George Wilson then turned down the pardon. Who would do such a thing? But he did.
And it became a battle in law — the United States government versus George Wilson. It made its way up through the courts, and the issue was: what happens when a person refuses a pardon? In the end it went to the Supreme Court, who finally ruled that the offer of a pardon had to be accepted to be valid. And in George Wilson's case, because he wouldn't accept it, it wasn't valid, and he was subsequently executed.
Jesus is making us an offer. He is making you an offer. The question is, will we accept what he's offering to us? It's a genuine offer. It's a free offer because he's paid the price. But it's not automatic. We have to actually accept it for it to become valid.
An invitation to respond
So third question: have you accepted it? Or maybe I should ask, what would stop you from accepting an offer like that? Do you see your need? Do you see what Jesus has offered you? Why would we not accept what he's offering?
It may be that some of us have sat on this for far too long. We've known about this for far too long and we haven't taken action. And I want to encourage you not to go home tonight before you come to God and take him up on the offer. Why would you put it off another day? If you know it's the right thing for you to do today, then why not accept it and say, yes, I'm in.
But for others of us, there are reasons not to accept it — particularly perhaps it's very new to us. And before you make a big decision in life, most people do want to take a little bit of time about it. Think of a young couple — they generally don't get married on the first date. And there's a good reason for that: before you make a big decision, you want to know whether you can entrust yourself to the other person. Most people do want to have a bit of a look at Jesus. Can I trust what he says?
Jesus is making an offer. Maybe for many of us here we said yes to Jesus many years ago, and I hope today that you find your love for Jesus is more now than ever before, because you understand how great a thing it is that he's done for you. If we find that love waning, it's because we've forgotten how much he has forgiven us.