The True Jesus: Forgiving Sinners

Now that Easter has passed, we will continue our walk through the book of Luke.  We are seeking to remind ourselves who the True Jesus is.  Our passage today is Luke 7:36-50.  If you remember, the passage before this is all about how the religious leaders had rejected John the Baptist because he was too anti-social and yet, they had rejected Jesus because he was too social.  He was a “friend of sinners.”

It seems very appropriate for Luke to share a story that clears up the truth about how much of a friend Jesus was to sinners.  In some ways He is and in others He is not.  If you are a sinner who likes your sin and won’t change for anybody (not even God or Jesus), Jesus won’t be your friend, in the end.  He will be your judge.  However, He will be the kind of friend to you who continues to try and speak the Truth into your life so that you can avoid that judgment.  Yet, Jesus did not have a problem with interacting with sinners and this was in great contrast to the religious leaders of His day.  Let’s look at the passage to clarify this issue.

Jesus Interacted With Sinners

The accusation that Jesus is a friend of sinners is very true because He was not afraid to interact with them in their lives and let them intersect what He was doing.  In this story we are going to see two very different kinds of sinners.

The first sinner is the Pharisee who we find out later is named Simon.  This Pharisee invites Jesus to his house for a meal and Jesus accepts the invitation.  We don’t know Simon’s motives, but more than likely Simon is seeking to deal with this “Jesus-problem” on his own.  If he can poke, prod, test and catch Jesus teaching error in some way then he will be hailed as a great rabbi by his peers.  If he was truly interested in Jesus no doubt he would have approached Jesus much like Nicodemus did; in secret at night.  Now before we leave this let me ask you this question.  Would you accept an invitation from a hypocritical religious leader who only wants to trap you?  The love of Christ does not reject Simon, but rather accepts the opportunity to be Truth in his life.  This man does not think that he is a sinner.  However, his sins were of a religious kind.  He was proud of his ability to do the Law.  Thus he was self-righteous around others.  He would be guilty of nit-picking on the finer points of the Law and yet ignoring the bigger issues to which it pointed.  He will also show that he is quick to judge others and yet lacked proper introspection.  Still Jesus goes to his house.

The second sinner is the woman from the town who is a sinner.  She comes into the home uninvited and imposes herself on their mealtime.  Simon normally would have had her thrown out.  But he waits and watches to see what Jesus will do.  We are not told what the woman’s sins are.  They must be something that is known publically for Simon to know.  Is she an adulterer, prostitute, or thief?  Next we can ask why she is there and crying so badly.  It seems clear that she has either heard of the teachings of Jesus by others, or she has heard Jesus teach.  He may have even spoken directly to her.  We have to be satisfied with not knowing on that account.  It is clear that she is convicted of her sin and yet thankful to Jesus for what He has taught or done for her.  The good news that even though she is a sinner, if she will repent, God still has a place for her, has filled her with tears of regret and yet tears of joy.  Notice that Jesus does not make an issue of her presence.  Instead he allows her to stay.

Their Actions Contrast Greatly

What is interesting is that both the Pharisee and the woman are breaking social custom here.  He did not show the common courtesies one would show in that day and she entered someone’s home uninvited when they were entertaining guests.  Yet, she is doing so out of love and Simon is doing so out of lack of respect.

The woman’s actions are self-effacing and humble.  She weeps and washes the feet of Jesus.  Drying the feet with her hair was something that slaves would do.  She is kissing His feet the whole time.  Then she anoints the feet with a costly, perfumed ointment.

We contrast this with the Pharisee who neglected to have the feet of Jesus washed and then has him lay at his table with dirty, stinky feet.  This is dishonoring to Jesus.  Lastly, he despises the woman and the lack of response from Jesus.  Though the judgment is not spoken outwardly, it is there nonetheless.  Most likely this despising was obvious on his facial expressions.  Either way, Jesus knew exactly what he was thinking.

Why is Jesus interacting with these two sinners?  His whole purpose is redemptive.  He wants to bring them to repentance for their sins so that they can be in fellowship with The Father in Heaven.

The Parable of Debts

Jesus tells a parable to Simon in order to help him see the other side of this situation.  Right now, Simon is invested in the position that the woman is a sinner and should be thrown out.  The parable is parallel to the people at the meal.  God is the creditor and it is the Pharisee who owes a debt of 50 denaria to God.  Likewise, it is the woman who owes a debt of 500 denaria to God.  Jesus accepts the fact that the quantity of this woman’s sin was greater than Simon’s.  However, most likely Simon didn’t believe He had any sin debt to God.  Jesus then asks the question.  If their debts are forgiven which of them will love more?  Notice that Simon is focused on the great quantity of the woman’s sin.  Jesus says that he should be focused on both of their abilities (rather lack of ability) to pay anything.

Forgiveness Yields Love

There is nothing in this world like true forgiveness.  When we know that we have done someone wrong, then come clean with them about it, and they truly forgive us…the feeling is of amazing relief, joy and thankfulness.  It invokes the desire to love that person in a far deeper way.  Yet, if we don’t think we need forgiven of something, we won’t care what the other person thinks or does.  In both cases, it will show up in our actions.  Thus the formula: Forgiveness will lead to loving actions.

Sometimes people confuse what is being said in vs. 47.  Jesus is not saying that the woman will be forgiven her sins because she loved much.  If you carefully read the passage you will see that the forgiveness comes first and the love follows.  Jesus is pointing  to her actions and saying that her great love is proof that she knows she has been forgiven of a great debt.  She does all she can at the expense of her own self-respect to honor Jesus.  Simons actions on the other hand were anything but loving.  Even the loving action of inviting someone to dinner and feeding them is tainted by the disrespect and dishonor in all of his other actions.  Thus his lack of love is proof of what?  This is the unspoken question that Jesus is putting back to Simon.  The unseen always has visible effects.  Sometimes people deceive others and even lie to themselves.  But that truth is incontrovertible.  Thus Jesus gives the woman assurance that her sins have been forgiven her.  Why?  She is forgiven by the grace of God because of her faith in the Word and Person of Jesus.  Such blessed assurance to receive from Jesus himself.  You have been forgiven (perfect tense).

This all begs the question: Was Simon forgiven?  In the parable both are forgiven.  But in reality Simon acts as if he doesn’t even have a debt.

The real question is to us who are reading this today.  What about me?  Do I recognize that I have a debt of sin to God?  Do I also recognize that I have no way to pay for my sin?  It doesn’t matter if we quantified our sin and compared it to others.  The truth is that we are all in the same boat: we don’t have anything of value that will cover our sins.  If we are to be free of that debt, God himself must freely forgive the debt.  Why would He do that?  Scripture is clear that it is by grace (freely given) we are saved through our faith in Christ and even that is not of ourselves.  If you don’t think your sin is bad enough to warrant eternity lost then you need to spend some time meditating on what it means to be a traitor and join rebel forces against the Creator, the Heavenly Father, who alone is Good.  It matters not your rank among sinners.  Only that you are one.  Praise God that He befriends sinners in order to redeem them back to Himself.  Thus Jesus says to the woman who was a sinner: Go in peace.  Go in peace with God, peace within yourself, and peace with even those who still accuse you.  I no longer have to fear the finger pointing of men like Simon when I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God has forgiven me.!

Forgiving Sinners Audio

Obstacles To Jesus

Today we are going to be in Luke 5:17-26.  Here we will see that there are obstacles that get in the way of us finding Jesus, or being touched by him.  Some of these obstacles are physical and some of them are not.  Some of them have to do with ourselves and others are outside of us.  However, it is faith that overcomes all obstacles in order to be touched by Jesus.  Without faith in God we will never press through these obstacles, nor receive from Jesus what God has for us.

Now this may sound like all the work depends on us.  However, the Truth is that we are only cooperating with the immense work that God has already done.  The Son of God had come to Earth and took on the additional nature of a man.  He had lived a sinless life and had come speaking the Truth and healing.  Thus we should never over estimate the greatness of our actions.  Yet, faith is necessary.  Without faith it is impossible to please God and without it no one will see God.  Let’s look at this story.

The Crowd

In verses 17-19 we find Jesus in an unnamed town and he is teaching.  It says that the Spirit of the Lord was present to heal and yet there was a crowd that had formed around him within the building and outside.  The success of Jesus had itself become a wall around him.  This physical issue of Jesus is pointed out in John 16:7, “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.”  The Holy Spirit is not limited to a physical body and can be everywhere at once.  While Jesus walked this Earth, he was limited to a body and only so many people could hear him and get close enough to touch him.  This day it was a problem for a man who was paralyzed.

We also know that the crowd is a mixed crowd.  It is mixed with those who need healing and those who just want to see it.  It is mixed with those who believe in Jesus and those who are looking for means to oppose him.  In fact wherever there is a crowd around Jesus, even in today’s churches, it is mixed in motives.  Some who are taking up room around Jesus do not believe and get in the way of those who do want to believe.  Some who refuse to be touched by Jesus physically block those who are trying to get near.  Is it possible that satan could crowd Jesus with deceivers and false disciples in order to discourage those who truly want Jesus?  You better believe that it happens.  Just remember that not everyone crowding around Jesus and His Church really want Him.

Much of the crowd only want things from Jesus.  They may not be actually resisting him like the Pharisees and Scribes.  But neither do we only want him.  The problem is not that we want things or even healings.  The problem is when our desire to get these things gets in the way of really hearing what Jesus is trying to say to us.  Do I want things from Jesus more than I want Him?  If I received no healing would I still trust Him?  If I have to choose I choose Jesus.  That is what faith is.  It is holding to Jesus because only He has the Words of Life.

Now even though the crowd can be an obstacle and should be challenged to make a choice, the person on the outside also needs to make a choice.  Are you going to let the crowd around Jesus keep you from Him?  Are you really going to say to Him when you stand before Him in eternity, “You didn’t make it easy enough for me.  Or, It was too hard.”  Really?  Do you remember the woman who had a feminine problem where she was bleeding every day?  She had wasted all her money on doctors with no cure.  Decades later she is poor and weak.  Jesus is surrounded by a crowd.  Who could expect her to be able to get through the crowd?  However, she wanted a touch from Jesus so bad that she pushed through the crowd just to touch the hem of his garment.  It is interesting that in that story (Luke 8) we are told that the crowd “thronged” Jesus.  It literally means to suffocate or choke.  I wonder if God is sometimes choking and suffocated by the unbelief and lack of faith of the crowd that has pressed in around Him today, looking for things from Him more than wanting just Him?

Yet in this story the man is paralyzed.  He can’t even do what that poor, weak, bleeding woman could.  Here we see that we do need friends.  Sometimes the obstacle is in me.  But as we explore this aspect, keep in mind that no matter how much we need friends, we need Jesus more.  The best friends are those who help us to get to Jesus.  So don’t let the presence of the crowd or the sin of the crowd keep you from Jesus.  Do you want Jesus?  Then press through the crowd and reach him.  Don’t hold back.

Physical Conditions

Now let’s focus on the fact that the man is paralyzed.  His health is an obstacle to getting to Jesus.  Now bad health can range from paralysis, zero ability, to the sniffles, only hampered.  If I only have small physical issues then I need to find ways around them and press through.  Yet, in this case that won’t work.  He needed help.  This is true if we are the paralyzed man or we are the friends.  People need help to come to Jesus.  No one who has ever been saved became so without the help of people.  So don’t let physical issues keep you or your friends from pressing through to Jesus.

God put us in families with neighbors who should be our friends so that we can care for one another.  His clear command to love our neighbors is best done by doing whatever it takes to help them to know God’s provision for them and receive it.  The heart of the Great Commission (Go into all the world…) is first helping our immediate friends and family and then scoping out to the ends of the earth and those we do not know.  No one will come to Jesus without someone going out of their way to help them.

Now not all physical obstacles are in our body.  The building itself was an obstacle.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  What is the problem and how can we get around it?  It was no easy task but the solution that came to them was to lift him up onto the roof, break through the roof and lower him down in front of Jesus.  This is probably not the only thing they could have done, but it is what these friends of the man did.  The key is not the way, but the minds and hearts that partnered together in order to help a friend.  It is a holy task to take the time to discover what it is that keeps and individual from Christ.  IT is a holy endeavor to work to remove those obstacles.  Neither is it a pretty sight.  It will involve hard labor and difficulty.  But these are the sorts of things that love does.

Am I such a friend?  I may not have any paralyzed friends who need me to cut through a roof.  A real friend helps his friend to overcome those obstacles within and without in order to get to Jesus.  Yet, we are going to see that this man was not just a sick man who couldn’t get to Jesus.  He was also a sinner.  Yet, his friends helped him anyways.  Compassion.

Sin

The story builds up to the moment where the man is lowered before Jesus, obviously sick and in need of healing.  Yet, Jesus says the unexpected, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”  What?  I came to be healed of paralysis not have my sins forgiven.  Don’t you know we are in public?  I didn’t want anyone to know I was a sinner.

Sin is our biggest obstacle to reaching Jesus.  O, sure the sin of OTHER people is an obstacle.  But, here we are looking at his own personal sin.  He was a sinner.  He wanted his paralysis fixed, but he needed his heart fixed.  Now there are some people who love to keep others in their sins.  These Pharisees and Scribes who were cynically watching Jesus that day were some of the biggest sinners.  They didn’t need physical healings but they needed their sins forgiven.  They did need touched by Jesus.  They could care less about the suffering of the people and that Jesus was healing them.  They didn’t see a miracle and rejoice.  Instead they went back to their plotting room and said, “We’ve got to kill this guy, or everyone is going to follow him.”  They didn’t care about their brothers and sisters physically and only pretended to care spiritually.  Jesus really does care about both.  Watch your own heart.  As Christians we can become so self-satisfied that we no longer have compassion for those broken by their sins.  We are called to help overcome these obstacles, not rejoice that you don’t have them.  The first way we can do that is to cease sinning against them and then love them despite their sin and try to bring them to Jesus.  Don’t settle for friends and family who are stuck in sin.  Fight for their souls in the name of Jesus.

“Which is easier to say?”  Jesus knows what they are thinking when he tells the man his sins are forgiven.  There is an irony in this question.  If you were a godly person it would be harder for you to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” because that is God’s job.  Yet, in a sinful world and as a sinful person, it would be easier to say that you can forgive sins because it can’t be seen.  Forgiveness of sins is an invisible thing.  But physical healing is obvious.  Now Jesus could have healed the man and then forgiven his sins.  But he does it the other way around for emphasis.  We think his greatest problem is paralysis.  In this world we strive to fix real problems, yet just not the most important ones.  Sin was the man’s most obvious problem to God.  If you could choose to have only one thing from God, you would be a fool to choose physical health.  The man’s amazing healing was Jesus way of proving he could forgive sins.  In fact, all of the healings Jesus did were not because he was on a personal mission to wipe out all sickness and disease in the world.  It was always a means to help the faith of those who were hearing him teach amazing things.  Now it wasn’t true because Jesus did a miracle.  The miracle was true because what Jesus was saying was taught all throughout the Old Testament.  The miracles were not supporting a man who was contradicting the word of God, but one who was fulfilling it.  “Behold, the lamb of God!”

This man left glorifying God that day and for good reason.  But notice the affect on the crowd.  Yes they were amazed, but a fear of the Lord had also settled upon them.  “What manner of man is this who forgives sins and proves it by healing paralysis?”  Signs can help us.  But if we do not have a fear of God no multitude of signs will persuade us.  Because we do not fear God, we become lazy in reading God’s Word and internalizing it.  We become lazy and resistant to listening to the Holy Spirit.  And then, when the Truth appears we kill it.  Why?  We do so because we have been saying no to Truth in so many little ways until we are insulated from Jesus.  Friend, don’t let obstacles keep you from Jesus.  He has already done the heavy lifting all you have to do is believe enough to push through these wet paper bags that remain in the way.

Obstacles to Jesus Audio