Forgiveness’s Outcome (Luke 7:36-50)

The Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee by Peter Paul Rubens

In one of two separate occasion where Jesus was anointed by a woman in the house of a man named Simon (here, the Pharisee not the leper), Jesus uses the occasion to teach an important lesson about saving faith. An unnamed, sinful woman (not Mary of Bethany as in the other occasion), pours expensive perfume on Jesus as she weeps and washes His feet with her tears. Simon the Pharisee, Jesus’s host, is concerned that Jesus allows her to do this, and thinks that He could not be a true prophet without knowing that she is a sinner.

Jesus, reading Simon’s thoughts as well as knowing the woman’s condition, tells Simon a parable and asks him a question. Suppose a wealthy man had two debtors—one with a great debt and the other with a small one—and he forgave them both their debts. Who would love him more? Simon correctly supposes that the one who had been forgiven the greater debt would.

Jesus ties this idea into the idea of saving faith. Those who know that they owe God a debt that they could never repay are grateful, and love Him, for the free gift of forgiveness and reconciliation. People who do not think that they are sinful, or very sinful anyway—those who think that they can overcome their debt to God on their own—do not respond to God with gratefulness and love.

This is a classic Gospel truth. We can never hope to pay the debt of our sin. The fact that Jesus has died for and paid our tremendous and overwhelming debt elicits thankfulness and love on our part. We want to live for God and please Him out of gratitude. We serve God out of gratitude. However, people who do not recognize their sin, people who think they can overcome their debt and earn their way into heaven are not grateful to God. They think they deserve His favor due to their goodness. Their works do not lead to salvation, nor gratitude or love. However people who do have saving faith exhibit good works, not as a means of earning God’s forgiveness but rather as an outcome of that faith.

Our good works do not produce earned salvation nor love for God.

God’s free gift of salvation through grace produces both our good works and love for God.