THE LOVE OF FORGIVENESS

Introduction

-{Luke 7}

-The book entitled Miracle on the River Kwai gives the story of Scottish soldiers who were POWs in Japanese labor camps during WWII. These soldiers were forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad and they all had degenerated to barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened. A shovel was missing. The Japanese officer in charge became enraged. He demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot . . . It was obvious the officer meant what he had said. Then, finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the body and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing. Indeed, there had been a miscount at the first check point. The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die so others would be forgiven and saved! . . . The incident had a profound effect. . . The men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors lined up in front of their captors (and instead of attacking their captors) insisted: "No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness." Sacrificial love that comes from forgiveness has transforming power.

-The sacrifice of an innocent man that brought forgiveness and deliverance made a change in the lives of those who were saved.

-Unlike the story, there is no mistake about sin and wrongdoing, and there is no mistake about the need for forgiveness. But quite possibly we have become so familiar with the gospel that we have forgotten the wonder and amazement of the forgiveness offered to us. Maybe we have degenerated to the point that we think we deserve that forgiveness. As the cliché goes, familiarity breeds contempt, and maybe we have become so familiar with the gospel message that we hold the forgiveness given to us in contempt.

-But one thing is certain, forgiveness (when accepted and realized in a life) brings with it a change of heart that leads to a change of action. The sacrifice and forgiveness turned those barbarous POWs into loving people who were willing to extend that forgiveness to their captors.

-In the passage that we are looking at today, Jesus told a parable to awaken the listener to their great need for forgiveness which, when truly received, evokes a powerful response in the one forgiven.

-I hope we learn today that genuine forgiveness produces a demonstrable response of overwhelming love for Christ.

READ LUKE 7:36-50

-Three lessons I want us to consider today:

1) The universal need for forgiveness

-A Pharisee had invited Jesus to his house for dinner, maybe out of curiosity or maybe to try to trap Jesus in His words. We’re not sure the motivation, but Jesus didn’t shun him. Jesus ate with Pharisees and tax collectors alike to reach them for the kingdom.

-The dinner was probably held in a courtyard of the Pharisee’s complex, and curious onlookers would come when rabbis and teachers got together to hear the conversation and listen to the teachings that were given. But normally they would just stay on the outskirts of the courtyard—close enough to hear, but not close enough to disturb.

-Jewish tables were set low, and those participating in the dinner would be laying on their side, leaning on the left arm, eating with the right hand, and their feet sticking out away from the table.

-A woman of the town took the brave move of approaching the table to see Jesus and do what she did. Simon, knowing the woman’s reputation, figured that this woman would make him and everybody else ceremonially unclean because she was a great sinner.

~And he reasoned within himself that if Jesus were a true prophet, he would know who the woman was, what she had done, and wouldn’t let her anywhere near Him.

-Jesus, knowing Simon’s thoughts, gives the parable about forgiveness to get some things through Simon’s hard heart.

-And our first take on the parable is that it demonstrates the universal need for God’s forgiveness. In Scripture sin is often equated with debt because we owe a debt to a righteous God for breaking His laws and commands.

~We see this in the Lord’s prayer where we are taught to pray FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS.

~Jesus uses this terminology in His parable using the double meaning of the term to make the point. In the parable He is talking about financial debt, but the real meaning behind it all is the spiritual debt owed to God.

-In the parable a moneylender had two debtors that couldn’t pay. One owed 50 denarii which is almost two months wages, and the other 500 denarii which is over a year and a half’s wages.

~One owed less than the other, but the thing is, both still had debt. It didn’t matter if it was small or big. To expand the parable a little bit, the moneylender may have had people who owed him 5 denarii or 10 denarii, maybe even 1 denarius.

~But the thing is, all these folks still owed a debt. And for the purposes of the parable, the folks who owed the debt couldn’t pay their debt. It was beyond their ability to do anything about it.

-And so, one takeaway from the parable is the unpayable debt. Referring to sin, every human being has a sin debt to God. Sure, some of us are greater sinners than others, and there’s always someone who is a greater sinner than us, but none of that matters because we all owe a debt, and there is nothing that we can do about it.

-Just like the moneylender cancelled the debt, not because of what the debtors had done, but merely by grace, so God extends grace to sin-debtors through Jesus Christ. Jesus paid the debt for us through His death and resurrection, and with it He extends forgiveness. He says to the believer as He said to the woman in the passage, your sins are forgiven you.

~The thing is, in order to pursue this forgiveness by faith in Jesus Christ, and then to live as one forgiven, we first need to acknowledge our sin and its depths and depravities.

-This goes beyond merely acknowledging the generality that everyone is a sinner. It goes beyond merely agreeing that you have had sin in our lives. It is a heavy burden recognizing your offense against a holy God that puts you in a spiritual debt that is beyond your capability to pay off, and yet He has offered forgiveness and made the way of forgiveness.

-There is a point where we stop the excuses and getting defensive about the fact, but we just come humbly saying I HAVE SINNED AGAINST ALMIGHTY GOD AND THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT. THANKFULLY, JESUS DID, AND I ACCEPT THE GIFT.

-We, as sinners, then remain in awe that the perfectly righteous One cancels our debt, and we never lose that wonder that we are free. Don’t ever become so familiar with forgiveness that you lose the amazement of forgiveness, because those who don’t have it still carry their debt.

-Not long before she died in 1988, Marghanita Laski, one of the best-known secular humanists and novelists, said this in a television interview, "What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me."

-Little did she know that she had someone who was willing to forgive. She too had a sin-debt, but it was not forgiven her because she did not know Christ. Christian, don’t ever forget the gift you received. If you are not a Christian, what are you going to do about your debt?

2) The blindness of self-righteousness

-Simon the Pharisee sat there looking down and condemning this woman and her audacious actions that she dared to take upon herself in his household to one of his guests, not knowing the forgiveness that prompted it.

~In his heart he judged the woman, and then in his heart he judged Jesus, because nobody that was worth knowing would allow such a woman to come near them much less touch them and much less lavish such affection on them.

-Simon sat there in his self-righteousness looking down on what he saw was flaws in the other people, while completely ignoring his own sin and issues and problems. His self-righteousness blinded him to his own need for forgiveness.

-He may have had a general sense that everybody sins, but then looked down at the woman and said in his heart BUT AT LEAST I DON’T SIN LIKE HER. How many of us do the same thing? Oh sure, I sin, but not like THAT!!! I might be messed up, but I’m not as messed up as them.

~And because we stand in self-righteousness, looking down on others, we miss our need for forgiveness and, if a Christian, forget where it is we came from spiritually.

-You know what, Simon might not have sinned as much as this woman did. There’s no doubt she sinned. Jesus Himself said that her sins were many. And yet she pursued forgiveness, whereas Simon the Pharisee did not. There is no one who is clean in God’s sight, and so we are in no position to stand or sit there condemningly toward others, looking down at them, judging them. There is one judge, and it ain’t you or me.

-There’s a story about a woman at the airport waiting to catch her flight who bought herself a bag of cookies, settled in a chair in the airport lounge and began to read her book. Suddenly she noticed the man beside her helping himself to her cookies. Not wanting to make a scene, she read on, ate cookies, and watched the clock. As the daring "cookie thief" kept on eating the cookies she got more irritated and said to herself, "If I wasn't so nice, I'd blacken his eye!" She wanted to move the cookies to her other side but she couldn't bring herself to do it. With each cookie she took, he took one too. When only one was left, she wondered what he would do. Then with a smile on his face and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, and he ate the other. She snatched it from him and thought, "Oh brother, this guy has some nerve, and he's so rude, why, he didn't even show any gratitude!" She sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate, refusing to look at the ungrateful "thief." She boarded the plane, sank into her seat, and reached into her bag to get a book to read and forget about the incident. But right there, next to her book was her bag... of cookies.

The cookies they ate in the lounge were his not hers. She had been the thief not him. All that time in her self-righteousness she condemned another, when all the while she was the sinner.

-The apostle John warns us in his epistle:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8–10 ESV)

-Who are you to look down at others? Who are you to judge God wondering how He could forgive some like ____{fill in the blank}__?

~Stop looking at the sin of others and deal with yourself. Don’t be blinded to your transgressions just because you think that you are better than someone else. Know your need of forgiveness, seek that forgiveness, and rejoice when other sinners also receive that forgiveness.

-One last quick point:

3) A response of love for the forgiver

-There seem to be some missing elements to the story, but I think we are able to figure them out. At some point before this dinner, Jesus must have had an encounter with this woman, and in that encounter she believed in Jesus and received forgiveness and release from her sins.

-Knowing that Jesus was going to be at that dinner, she wouldn’t let societal norms get in the way of her responding to Jesus and what He had done for her. It was highly inappropriate to interrupt a dinner like that, especially when they were your supposed social superiors. But that was not going to stop her response—the joy of forgiveness compelled her to act.

-Again, Jesus is reclining at table, with His body toward the table and His feet laying away from the table. She walks into the dinner party and approaches Jesus and clings to His feet. Her tears wet His feet, so without a towel she uses all she had to wash and dry His feet—her hair. She kissed his feet. She had an alabaster jar of what was probably perfumed oil—very expensive. It may have been something she saved for a special occasion in her life—maybe a future husband. But now, after encountering Christ and receiving the forgiveness He offered, there was no one more important to her at that moment than Jesus, and she was going to show that love to Him in the only ways she knew how.

-Jesus said that her response was love—the one who is forgiven much will love Jesus much.

~To make His point, Jesus compares the woman’s response to Him with Simon’s response to Him. Although it was not necessarily a duty, it was common courtesy to have a servant wash the feet of guests, anoint the guest, and for the host to give the oriental kiss on the cheek. Simon did none of those for Jesus, which was an indicator of what He really thought of Jesus.

~The woman, on the other hand, absolutely lavished Jesus with love and affection and service, using her most prized and expensive possession to demonstrate her love for Him.

-Simon who, in his self-righteousness, didn’t think he needed a lot of forgiving, didn’t respond to the offer of forgiveness and therefore had no love for the One who could forgive. Even when Jesus said the woman’s sins were forgiven, all Simon and his self-righteous friends could do was judge Jesus for claiming to do what only God could do.

-Jesus saves, Jesus forgives, and that gift is received by faith—that is why Jesus says her faith saved her. And in response, she loved Jesus in an open, public, sacrificial way.

-When you experience the release from the guilt and shame and power and penalty of sin, and that burden is lifted off of you, it is a natural response to love the one who so forgave you.

~Let me ask you: have you so loved Jesus that you would abandon all and give up all in a response of love to Him? Has He become the most important person in your life to the point that if so needed you would give up your most prized possession for Him?

~Or do you think that you’re not that bad of a sinner that you really didn’t need Jesus to do much for you, therefore you love Him little?

Conclusion

-A member of a major non-Christian religion said to a missionary to India, "Tell me one thing your religion can offer the people of India that mine can’t." The missionary thought for a moment and replied, "Forgiveness! Forgiveness!"

Unlike the followers of all other world religions, those who put their hope in Christ have full assurance that their sins are forgiven.

British Bible teacher David Pawson says, "I have talked to devout Muslims who pray five times a day, have journeyed to Mecca, have fasted during Ramadan, and are more devout than many Christians. But when I ask, ’Do you know if your sins are forgiven?’ they’ve said, ’We don’t. We just have to hope for the best.’

-We don’t have to hope for the best, because Jesus who is the best took care of our sin, and we can be forgiven. And when we are truly forgiven, we are going to live like it.

-Christian, have you responded in love to your forgiver? Maybe you need to come to the altar and lavish some affection on Him in prayer.

~But maybe you haven’t experienced that forgiveness yet…