Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro* –Jesus’ parable teaches that all people have a deadly common problem – the problem of sin.

“The wages of sin is death.”

It doesn’t matter whether it is the best person who ever walked the earth, or the most horrendous reprobate, all are equally guilty before God.

Somehow, we inherently know that.

We do.

That’s why everyone does something to try to deal with guilt.

Everyone.

Some rationalize – like the guy who stole a car from the front of a cemetery saying, “Well, I assumed the owner was dead.”

We may deny it; repress it; refuse to think about it; cover it with a frenzied lifestyle or just ignore it.

Our society is expert at psycho-babble that points blame anywhere but us!

Like the gang members in West Side Story to Officer Krupke!

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke, / You gotta understand,

It's just our bringin' up-ke / That gets us out of hand.

Our mothers all are junkies, / Our fathers all are drunks.

Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!

Gee, Officer Krupke, we're very upset;

We never had the love that ev'ry child oughta get.

We ain't no delinquents, / We're misunderstood.

Deep down inside us there is good!

[Even the judge gets in the act!]

Officer Krupke, you're really a square;

This boy don't need a judge, he needs an analyst's care!

It's just his neurosis that oughta be curbed.

/ He's psychologic'ly disturbed!

But guess what?

In the end, none of these methods works.

My dad was 59 years of age when he was found to have colon cancer.

He ignored symptoms long enough that the doctor prepared us for the worst.

We had the elders come and pray, then they operated.

They found a grapefruit size tumor, and the doctor said, “I don’t know how to explain it, but it hasn’t spread.

Both ends of the colon are clean.”

The cancer was cut out and Dad had another 30 years.

But that would not have been the case had we ignored, repressed, denied or blamed something else for the symptoms.

And the same is true of sin.

It has to be cut out by repentance.

That’s the only remedy – the only remedy for guilt.

That’s the message of Simon’s dinner party.

Dinner is interrupted by a woman of the streets who comes crying and anointing Jesus’ feet.

Simon is appalled by the lack of decorum.

But Jesus shows by means of a brief parable that Simon and the woman have a common problem.

Both are sinners.

But they do differ in one respect.

The woman is forgiven; Simon is not.

Simon’s outward goodness is actually bad, keeping him from God; the woman’s badness has been made good by Christ.

Everything turns on forgiveness.

That’s what makes bad, good.

So what does forgiveness look like?

*I.

Forgiveness is Based on Faith Alone*

This woman has come to Simon’s house for one reason only -- to express a heart that overflows with gratitude for forgiveness from a past that had rendered her an outcast.

She didn’t come to get forgiven.

Somewhere in Capernaum she had heard Jesus preach; considered her sinful life, heard Jesus’ call to repentance and she believed!

She had no good works to offer, but she believed and was forgiven.

Now – having been forgiven much, she loves much and longs to express that love.

She’d been a willing participant in sin -- taking her pleasure where she could find it – perhaps rationalizing it was her only means of support.

No one suggested, not Simon, not she and not Jesus, that she had not been a great sinner.

She was.

But she’s been forgiven.

Jesus says in v. 47: “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much.”

Jesus says her sins “are forgiven.”

Perfect tense -- past action with continuing results in the present – best translated “her sins, which are many, have been forgiven.”

She was a new person in Christ.

Having told Simon that her sins had been forgiven, Jesus turns to assure the woman herself in v. 48, “And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven”, surgically extracted to be visited no more judicially.

But how?

How forgiven?

Was it some act of contrition?

Some symbolic ritual?

Turning over a new leaf?

Was that it?

Jesus answers in Lu 7:50, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Her faith saved her.

Pure, unadulterated, heartfelt commitment to Jesus.

It’s the perfect tense again – “your faith has saved you in the past with continuing results in the present; go in peace.”

This woman had experienced the truth of Eph 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved (perf tense) through faith.

And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God 9) not a result works, so that no one may boast.”

She could never say, “I did it.”

She could only say, “He did it.”

And she loved Him for it.

Simon wanted to say, “I did it,” and as a consequence, he was still in his sins.

Charles Wesley worked hard for salvation, even doing missionary work in America.

But he had no peace until one day he was ready Luther’s intro to Gal.

He describes his conversion: “At reading the words, ‘What?

Have we then nothing to do? No! nothing but only accept him, “Who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,” ’ there came such a power over me as I cannot well describe; my great burden fell off in an instant; my heart was so filled with peace and love that I burst into tears.”

Forgiven much, he loved much!

Note two things about faith.

*A.

Faith Has an Object* – Faith must have a worthy object.

Telling people, “Just believe,” is folly.

Faith in faith in a suicide mission.

During the Boxer uprising in China in 1900-1901, there were some Boxers who did not believe bullets could kill them.

They thought that their incantations and rituals made them invulnerable.

They were honest and entirely sincere in their belief.

But when the bullets flew, they fell.

Faith in faith is folly.

Faith requires a worthy object.

Jesus is the only such worthy object of saving faith.

In v. 48 Jesus tells the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

49 Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” “Can He really do that?”

Absolutely!

Jesus showed that by their own rules.