Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 7:36-50, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 19
- Date: Sunday, June 1, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Appreciating What We Have Received
It has been a nostalgic week at our house. My wife has been a little sad that, as of today, for the first time in many years, we no longer have anyone in the nursery now that Princess Spider-Man has moved up to the next class. Then I walked into the auditorium, and my second oldest told me, “Daddy, I really enjoyed youth group today.”
I was not prepared for that. I know that when I get home, they will say, “But we told you.” You understand that just because I knew does not mean I had fully realized it. There is a difference. So we have had many conversations about the children growing up and things changing. More and more, we find ourselves entering that stage of life when we say, “Back in my day.” The first time I heard those words come out of my mouth, I thought, “That is something old people say.” One of the things we were talking about this week is how they just don’t understand what life was like back in the day.
We did not have much money for eating out, just as one example. We didn’t have a lot of money to go to restaurants all the time. If we did, it was a real treat.
The greatest treat was getting Chick-fil-A because the restaurants were not everywhere. They were in the malls. The only way we got Chick-fil-A was if we happened to be at Dorman Mall, Mom was in a good mood and had a little extra money, and it was mealtime.
So if we ever got to eat Chick-fil-A, it was like we had won the lottery. It’s not that way anymore. I ate there three times last week, which sounds bad.
Let me explain. I had been sick and nauseated, and as I began to recover, that was the only food that did not repulse me, so that is where I ate. But our children have grown up with it not as a special treat but as a staple. From the time they had teeth, we were going at least once a week, and sometimes twice.
It’s not a big deal to them. Hey, we’re going to take you someplace special for lunch. I thought you said you were taking us someplace special. This is just Chick-fil-A.
They do not understand. It reminded me that when you have always had something, you do not appreciate it the same way as someone who has not always had it. And we could say that about any number of things that maybe we didn’t have growing up, that our kids do have or our grandkids do have, that if it’s just always been there, you don’t realize what a big deal it can be, like you do if you haven’t always had it.
That is the principle at work in the story at the end of Luke 7. If you are new with us, we are glad you are here. We are working our way piece by piece through the book of Luke.
Today we come to Luke 7:36, where Jesus encounters two people who embody this contrast spiritually: one who thought he had always possessed the things of God and failed to appreciate them, and another who had only recently experienced God’s grace and valued it at an entirely different level. So we’re going to look at this this morning in Luke chapter 7. We’re going to start in verse 36.
Luke 7:36–50 records: Now one of the Pharisees was requesting him to dine with him, speaking of Jesus, And he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner, and when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.
And Jesus answered him, Simon, I have something to say to you. And he replied, Say it, teacher. Verse 41, Jesus says, A moneylender had two debtors.
One owed 500 denarii and the other 50. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?
To put this into perspective, a denarius was about one day’s wage for a common laborer. The man who owed five hundred denarii owed more than a year’s wages. The other owed 50.
The other owed more than a month’s wages. Both were enormous debts, but there was a clear difference between them. And so Jesus asked if they were both forgiven, Which of them will love him more? Verse 43, Simon answered and said, I suppose the one whom he forgave more.
And he said to him, you have judged correctly. Turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house.
You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with perfume.
For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little loves little. Then he said to her, Your sins have been forgiven.
Those who were reclining at the table with him began to say to themselves, Who is this man who even forgives sins? And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
A Banquet and an Uninvited Guest
In verse 36, Jesus is invited to a banquet where the contrast between His host and an uninvited guest teaches us something about sin and transformation. First, we need to understand what is happening because the setting is somewhat foreign to us. In this day and age, if you were wealthy, if you were somebody prominent like this Pharisee, you would hold these lavish banquets and you would invite other prominent people that you would host these banquets and people would come to these banquets to see and to be seen and to socialize and to network.
And it was the invited guests who would come in and would recline on these couches to eat. That sounds like a terrible way to make a mess, but it was their custom. They would recline on these couches next to the table and they would eat.
What seems strange to us is that these banquets were partly open to the public. Not that everybody could come in and participate in the banquet, but they could come into the banquet hall. It was somewhat like people gathering outside the Oscars, Emmys, or another awards ceremony even though they are not invited inside.
They cannot necessarily enter and take a seat, but they come to see who is there, what they are wearing, and whom they are with. And the people would be able to come into the room and see who was there and talk to some of the people, talk to some of the important people in society. And so Jesus was invited to this.
We do not know the Pharisee’s motives with certainty. Some commentators say he was obviously trying to trap Jesus, but Scripture does not tell us enough to make that claim with certainty.
Others say he loved Jesus and simply wanted Him nearby, but the text does not tell us that either. We’re in Galilee.
We know that in Galilee, people tended to be a little more accepting of Jesus than they were around Jerusalem. Probably the Pharisees were more accepting than the Pharisees at Jerusalem. He was probably friendlier toward Jesus than many people in Jerusalem, but not as receptive as the crowds in Galilee.
A safe conclusion is that everyone was talking about Jesus. So the Pharisee may have thought, “Let us invite Him to the banquet.” “Let us see what He will do.”
“Let us see what He will say.” “Let us see how it reflects on me to host this prominent rabbi.” And so he invites Jesus to the party.
The woman entered because the setting allowed her to see Jesus and speak with Him. But she goes beyond just coming in and talking to Jesus and comes in to anoint him. All four Gospels record an occasion when someone anointed Jesus with costly perfume.
In some cases, there’s the detail of washing His feet with tears. In some cases, there is the detail of drying His feet with his hair. Some people claim that the differences among these accounts are discrepancies.
So it shows us the Bible’s not true. But the details indicate that the four Gospels record three separate events. Because they’re outlined as taking place in three different locations.
They occur in different locations and at different times. That question belongs to a more detailed study. We can talk about that tonight if you want to get into it.
But this is one of the instances where somebody comes and anoints Jesus. The text calls her a sinner, which likely indicates that she was known as a woman of loose morals.
That’s how the man talked about her. She was a sinner, and she came to Jesus, and the way she came to Jesus just scandalized everybody. Yet the way she approached Jesus showed that a serious change of heart had taken place.
A Repentant Sinner Is Transformed
And she teaches us in a couple of verses here, in verses 37 and 38, that a repentant sinner is a transformed sinner. Because that’s what she was. She was somebody who had come to Jesus repentant.
The word repentance is often misused. Repentance does not mean that she had become sinless or had already corrected every part of her life.
Repentance means she has changed her mind and her perspective to where she now agrees with God about her sin. An unrepentant sinner says, “I love my sin and hate God.” A repentant sinner says, “I love God and hate my sin.”
Even when we are repentant, we will still sin at times. It’s an unfortunate fact of living in this fleshly body. But as repentant sinners, we hate our sin and we agree with God.
We understand the need for His forgiveness and we’re seeking it out. And something about that transforms us. So some of the ways that it shows us she’s been transformed, we see here in verse 37, she has abandoned her sinful pursuits because of Jesus.
When Luke calls her a sinner—a woman of loose morals—she was very likely a prostitute. Luke uses a euphemism. She was likely involved in sinful sexual activity for money.
By the way, this is not Mary Magdalene. Scripture never identifies Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. This woman was not Mary Magdalene.
But she comes to Jesus and she breaks this alabaster vial of ointment, of perfume to anoint Jesus with. This was something expensive. When things like this happened, on other occasions, some of the disciples, especially Judas, who was skimming the money, who was embezzling, got mad because that could have been sold for a lot of money.
Now, when we know something about this woman’s history, and we know she’s able to afford these fancy things, it’s not hard to imagine that she’s able to afford these things because of her job. She’s been involved in the things she’s been involved in to make money and to have that kind of lifestyle. Here, however, she was no longer concerned about the cost. She was no longer concerned about the possessions she had acquired through her former lifestyle.
Instead, she took this costly perfume for which she had worked and poured it out for Jesus. The things that she has pursued sinfully up to this point just don’t matter to her anymore. She’s willing to abandon those things for Jesus.
And we see she’s changed her entire way of thinking because of Jesus when we get to verse 38. And it says, standing behind him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears. She had thrown herself at Jesus’ feet.
She has thrown herself at His feet. She was weeping so deeply that her tears washed His feet. This was clearly a woman experiencing profound emotion.
We have to read between the lines carefully. We want to be careful about what we assume. We don’t know exactly what’s going on in her mind and why she’s crying like this, but she’s either weeping over her sin because she regrets the sin that she’s been participating in, or she’s weeping in joy over the salvation she’s found in Jesus.
She’s weeping in joy over the hope she’s found in Jesus, or maybe it’s a combination of both. But there’s something about where she’s been and where she is now with Jesus, and there’s a difference between the two, and it drives her to this extreme emotional reaction where she is weeping to the point that she is able to wash His feet with her tears. Something has changed about this woman’s perspective on life.
Whether it was regret over her sin, joy over the hope she had found in Jesus, or both, her entire way of thinking had changed. And we look just a little further in verse 38, and we see she surrendered her dignity because of Jesus. It said she kept wiping His feet with the hair of her head.
This was considered shameful. As a woman in first century Jewish culture, you didn’t uncover your hair and let it down in public. Yet she uncovered her hair publicly and used it to dry Jesus’ feet.
Such intimate contact also violated social expectations. She broke these social taboos in order to serve Jesus. And why is she doing it?
She’s doing it to serve Jesus. She’s doing it because what’s dignified for her, what makes her look better, what makes her more acceptable in the eyes of other people is not as important to her as serving Jesus. And so she kept wiping His feet with the hair of her head.
Not only that, she offers her full allegiance to Jesus when it says that she was kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume. Her actions here leave no question for us about where her heart was and about where her allegiance was, that something in her life had changed because of this man, and she’s ready to devote everything she has to Jesus. That is a picture of transformation in the heart of a repentant sinner.
What Repentance Looks Like Today
Two thousand years later, we do not have the opportunity to anoint His feet physically. We don’t have the opportunity to do exactly like she did. But the things that these actions represent are still things that we’re called on to do today as those who trust Jesus, as those who’ve repented, as those who’ve been transformed.
We are called to walk away from sinful pursuits and the old way of life. Walking away from sin and repentance are not identical, but they are inseparably connected. Repentance is that change of mind, but it leads to the change of life.
If we claim to belong to Jesus but there is no difference between who we were before and after coming to Him, something is wrong. Repentance should transform us. The things that we used to cling to, the pursuits that we used to run after, the sinful things, they shouldn’t have the same allure for us anymore because Jesus changes us.
He should change our entire way of thinking. If we think about everything after Jesus precisely the same way we thought about everything before Jesus, something is not right. The new life we have in Christ includes the renewing of our minds as we are conformed to His likeness.
If there are places that we are called to obedience to Him, and we’re not willing to surrender, we’re not willing to submit because it might make us look bad, or because it seems undignified, or because, as we say at home after borrowing the phrase from Bluey, “It is not the done thing,”
I mean done, not dumb. It’s not what people do. If we are willing to look at Jesus and say, “No, I cannot do that,”
That’s not what people do. Then something’s wrong. If we’re trying to offer Jesus anything less than our full allegiance, something is wrong.
Now, am I going to stand here and lie to you and tell you that’s always easy? No. If it were easy, entire books of the New Testament would not address our ongoing struggle between the flesh and the Spirit and call us to walk deliberately in the Spirit.
It’s a battle. It’s an everyday battle to make sure that our allegiance is not just with Jesus, but that it stays with Jesus. But if after Jesus, we’re still going on trying to offer him half of our heart, half of our allegiance, half of our time, half of everything we have.
If we’re trying to offer him less than 100%, something’s wrong. Because the transformation that he makes in us calls for 100%. That’s why he said the first and greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
That is all in the first few verses. Then we move on from there and we get to deal with the other sinner. See, the Pharisee thought there was one sinner in the room.
There were many sinners in the room, and he was one of them. A self-righteous sinner is a hardened sinner. This man was hardened to the point that he could not understand his need or didn’t want to understand his need for forgiveness.
He did not want to understand his need for Jesus because his self-righteousness had hardened him. What is self-righteousness? That is one of those familiar church words.
Self-righteousness means when we think I’m good enough. “God will accept me as I am because I am good enough.” I try hard.
I’m not like these other people. That’s self-righteousness, and it hardens us. We see some of the ways this shows up.
Verse 39 says that when the Pharisee saw the woman clinging to Jesus’ feet—anointing, washing, drying, and kissing them—he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know what sort of person this woman is who is touching him. He assumed he knew better than Jesus what was going on. He’s looking at this saying, if he really was a prophet, he would know what a sinful, awful person she is.
And that implies, I see right through it. That implies I have more discernment and more wisdom and more knowledge than Jesus, That is never a claim we should make because it is both false and foolish. But while he is failing to understand what’s happening, and he’s even attributing this to Jesus’ ignorance.
“If Jesus and I see this differently, Jesus must be wrong.” Again, that’s not a place you want to be. But not only is he saying that, he is questioning the claims that chapter 7 has all been about, about Jesus being a prophet.
When Jesus raised the widow’s son, the people connected the miracle with both Elijah and Elisha. I had said Elijah, while Blanche pointed out Elisha. We were both right; both prophets raised a widow’s son. And the people looked at that and said, he’s a prophet.
God has sent us a prophet. Now, that’s true. He’s more than a prophet though, but that was as true as far as it went.
And then in dealing with John the Baptist, is it you? Are you the expected one or should we look for somebody else? Everything Jesus had done up to that point had given irrefutable proof of who he was, that all of his claims were true.
Yet this man had the arrogance to say, in effect, “Jesus and I do not agree. Clearly, I am right.” The irony, though, is here he says Jesus doesn’t know what’s going on.
He can’t possibly know what’s going on in this situation. Jesus read his mind. You want to talk about not knowing what’s going on in a situation?
You can’t say that to Jesus when you’re sitting there questioning him in your mind, and Jesus is reading your mind and answering the question. But he assumed he knew better than Jesus. And self-righteousness will do that to us.
That Jesus will call us to do something, and we’ll say, no, I’m too good to do that. Or we will see the work that Jesus is doing in somebody else’s life, and we’ll treat it as a trivial thing. We’ll try to explain it away, because he could never work in that person.
He could never change that person. Self-righteousness will harden us to the point where we think we actually know better than Jesus. Not only that, he assumed he was better off than this woman.
When we get to verse 39, part of what he’s saying to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know what sort of person this woman is who is touching him, that she is a sinner. “Call the authorities—a sinner is in his house.” There had been one all the time.
He recognized the woman’s sin. He was right, there’s nothing, he didn’t say anything that was incorrect. His statement that she was a sinner was true, but his emphasis implied, “She is a sinner—not someone like me.”
Not like me. He was one of the righteous, he thought. Well, the problem there is he recognized the woman’s sin, but he failed to notice his own.
And self-righteousness will blind us to our own sin. It’ll make us think, I’m fine. I don’t need to deal with God about that.
And the sin will be left there to fester and grow and get out of control. And he failed to see how Jesus’ words applied to him. Jesus spoke this parable about the debtors.
He told the story about the two men, one who owed 50 days wages to a money lender, one who owed 500 days wages to a money lender, and asked about them both being forgiven. What he was telling the man was that this woman, that he was just disregarding as a sinner, like he wasn’t one, this woman was merely showing the appropriate appreciation for what Jesus had done in her life, for the hope he had brought her, for the forgiveness that he was offering. She was showing the appropriate amount of forgiveness.
So he’s telling this story so that the man, maybe it’ll break through the wall of ignorance, and the man will understand she’s simply been forgiven more. But we get to verse 43, and the spiritual application of this just goes over his head. Jesus said, who do you suppose will love him more.
And Simon answered and said, I suppose, and Bible scholars have made a big deal about those two words, I suppose, that it indicates like, okay, as my kids say, duh, like it’s a ridiculous statement. Like, Jesus, I can’t believe you’re asking me such a ridiculous question. This is beneath me.
He’s answering the question, I suppose, the one to whom he forgave more, he’s completely missing the point. Because if he realized, you’re the one that owes 50 days wages, I think it would have hit that man like a ton of bricks. Because here he is thinking, I’m right with God.
But a smaller debt does not mean that someone is not a debtor. You cannot condemn the person who owes five hundred days’ wages merely because you owe only fifty. You still owe a debt.
And if God’s standard is absolute sinless perfection, then none of us measure up. Just because you’ve sinned less than the other person doesn’t mean you measure up to God’s standards. You look really good by human standards, but by God’s standards, we’re all fallen.
And so even as Jesus is coming at him with this story that should have broken through, he still is so blinded by his own self-righteousness that he can’t see how Jesus’ words applied to him. And I think this is the saddest part. When we get to verses 44 through 46, Jesus turns toward the woman and said to Simon, Do you see this woman?
And he draws a comparison between the two. I entered your house. You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
A good host in that culture was supposed to offer you something to wash your feet with when you sat down to eat. He hadn’t done the minimum that was expected. And he says, and yet she has come and she has washed my feet with her tears.
She’s wiped my feet with her hair. He said, you gave me no kiss. They were supposed to greet their guests and show hospitality.
I am glad that this custom has largely disappeared; we do not need to greet everyone with kisses. But that’s what they did in their day and age.
He said, you didn’t greet me. You didn’t show any appreciation of me being here. But ever since I walked in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.
You didn’t anoint my head with oil. That was another common thing because of the dry, dusty climate. That’s why they would wash the feet because you walked everywhere.
It was dry, dusty roads. Their feet would become dirty. Because of that same dry climate, your skin would be dry.
They would anoint the head with oil. It was just a way of taking care of your guests. He said, you didn’t do that, but she has anointed my feet with perfume.
And this really draws the contrast between the two. He made some space for Jesus in his life, but nothing really changed. He let Jesus in, but that was about all.
That’s the big difference between these two. They’re both sinners, 50 sins, 500 sins. Obviously, fifty sins are fewer than five hundred, but both fall short of God’s standard.
But by God’s standard, 50 or 500, one is enough to condemn us. They’re both sinners. Both had access to the same Savior.
The difference here is that one thought he was good enough and he hardened his heart to the point that he kind of made space for Jesus to come around. And the other one recognized her own sin, recognized that Jesus was her only hope. She repented and was transformed and her entire life became about Jesus.
That’s the clearest picture as far as what we can see of the difference between the self-righteous sinner who’s been hardened and the repentant sinner who’s been transformed. Are we just trying to give Jesus a little spot in our lives? Are we just trying to tack Him on, make Him a Sunday activity?
Are we making Him a hashtag in our social media posts? Are we making Him a song we sing now and then? Are we reducing Him to a message on a T-shirt while nothing truly changes?
Or is He the Lord of our lives? And the difference between the two, what led one to be repentant and the other to be hardened, was faith. The reason this difference shows up on the outside is because of the difference on the inside, which was faith.
Jesus had already declared her forgiveness in verse 48. As a matter of fact, he said, if you go back to verse 47, that the very reason she loved him like this was because her sins had already been forgiven.
And as Jesus is talking about the forgiveness in verse 49, the crowd began to question his ability to forgive. “Who does this man think He is, claiming the right to forgive sins?” Jesus doesn’t explain his authority.
He doesn’t give them an argument. Throughout Capernaum, He had already demonstrated who He was and that He possessed authority to forgive sins. He didn’t argue with them.
He reaffirmed His authority and said, “Go in peace. Your faith has saved you.” Why are your sins forgiven?
Who am I to forgive sins? I’ve already told you who I am to forgive sins. Let’s talk about why I forgive sins.
It’s because your faith. Because you believed. Was it because she believed he was a miracle worker?
I don’t think that was it. Was it merely because she believed He existed? Everyone in Capernaum knew He existed. That Pharisee knew he was real. It’s because she believed that he was exactly who he said he was.
That’s the kind of faith that it takes to transform us. What does that mean? Believing that when Jesus came, he came as exactly who he claimed to be.
She believed that He was God’s Son, Israel’s Messiah, and mankind’s Savior. God the Son came in human flesh, lived a sinless life, and came to forgive sins. She didn’t know how he was going to forgive sins, but he paid for it.
The way he did it was to pay for it. This perfect, sinless Man had no guilt of His own, yet He was nailed to the cross and shed His blood, taking responsibility for my sins, yours, hers, and even the Pharisee’s. That sin was nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ. It was punished.
It was paid for in full. So that if we’ll simply put our trust in him, if we’ll have that faith, our sins will be forgiven. The difference between the repentant sinner and the self-righteous sinner still appears today.
You can sit in church for decades and still not be transformed. It is not about how many times you have attended church. It’s not about how big a show you put on of being good.
It’s about have you trusted Jesus as your one and only Savior? Have you come to that point of realizing I’m not good enough. I need God’s forgiveness.
“Jesus is the only way I can receive it.” And trusting that Jesus can do what he says he can do. This morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, it’s not about trying harder.
It’s not about being better. It’s about realizing Jesus paid for your sin in full. It is about asking for the forgiveness He purchased on the cross and rose again to guarantee.
Asking for that forgiveness. Believing that you’ll have it. And you will have it.
