'There was a certain creditor which had two debtors;
the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.
42. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly
forgave them both. Tell Me therefore, which of them
will love him most? 43. Simon answered and said, I
suppose that he to whom he forgave most.'--LUKE vii.41-43.
We all know the lovely story in which this parable is embedded. A
woman of notoriously bad character had somehow come in contact with
Jesus Christ, and had by Him been aroused from her sensuality and
degradation, and calmed by the assurance of forgiveness. So, when
she heard that He was in her own town, what could she do but hasten
to the Pharisee's house, and brave the cruel, scornful eyes of the
eminently respectable people that would meet her there? She carries
with her part of the spoils and instruments of her sinful adornment,
to devote it to His service; but before she can open the cruse, her
heart opens, and the hot tears flow on His feet, inflicting an indignity
where she had meant an honour. She has nothing at hand to repair the
fault, she will not venture to take her poor garment, which might have
done it, but with a touch, she loosens her long hair, and with the
ingenuity and self-abasement of love, uses that for a towel. Then,
gathering confidence from her reception, and carried further than she
had meant, she ventures to lay her sinful lips on His feet, as if asking
pardon for the tears that would come--the only lips, except those of
the traitor, that are recorded as having touched the Master. And only
then does she dare to pour upon Him her only wealth.
What says the Pharisee? Has he a heart at all? He is scandalised at
such a scene at his respectable table; and no wonder, for he could
not have known that a change had passed upon the woman, and her evil
repute was obviously notorious. He does not wonder at her having
found her way into his house, for the meal was half public. But he
began to doubt whether a Man who tolerates such familiarities from
such a person could be a prophet; or if He were, whether He could be
a good man. 'He would have known her if He had been a prophet,'
thinks he. The thought is only a questionably true one. 'If He had
known her, He would have thrust her back with His foot,' he thinks;
and that thought is obviously false. But Simon's righteousness was
of the sort that gathers up its own robes about it, and shoves back
the poor sinner into the filth. 'She is a sinner,' says he. No,
Simon! she _was_ a sinner, but she _is_ a penitent, and is
on the road to be a saint, and having been washed, she is a great
deal cleaner than thou art, who art only white-washed.
Our Lord's parable is the answer to the Pharisee's thought, and in
it Jesus shows Simon that He knows him and the woman a great deal
better than he did. There are three things to which briefly I ask
your attention--the common debt, in varying amounts; the common
insolvency; and the love, like the debt, varying in amount. Now,
note these things in order.