Thoughts on the Sermon: Jesus is a friend of sinners the beautiful story of faith and forgiveness Sermon by Pastor Joseph Prince 24th of March 2013
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Hi lovely people. I’m setting aside a blog post again for the teachings of what i believe is important of our knowledge of Christ. Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts about this (you can do so on the bottom of this page.) Today we will recount the beautiful story of Jesus being annointed by a woman who was deemed sinful and unworthy. I was very blessed by this sermon and i hope you will be too.
All these ideas came from a sermon i heard the day before in the Church Service in New Creation Church 24th of March 2013. I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as i enjoy sharing it with you. I’ll just highlight a couple of things in this beautiful story because Pastor Prince gave so much more than i could actually receive in revelations and understanding. Thank God for anointed preachers all around the world.
Jesus is a friend of sinners – Luke 7:33-50 (NIV)
Here is the text from the bible of the story we will talk about.
Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman
36 When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. 37 A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. 38 As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
39 When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
40 Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
41 “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[a]and the other fifty. 42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
43 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
48 Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
49 The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
50 Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
-End of Quote-
There are the really obvious lessons in this story about forgiveness and love. It is simple to understand that the pharisees who were the religious leaders in that time were self righteous in their own eyes and looked down upon everyone who were any less educated in the scriptures or “kept” the law like they did. We all know today that none of us can compare or consider our sins to be less than another person’s. So the pharisees were hypocritical about their lives and they loved to criticize people whom were visibly less “Holy” than them.
In many stories in the Bible, the Pharisees have been really naive about who Jesus is. And there comes one of the first revelations i had while listening to pastor preaching. That is, how the pharisees saw Jesus determined how they recieved from Jesus. The Pharisees called Jesus teacher but never saw him as a savior. Therefore, the person who was saved was the woman who saw Jesus as the one person and God to be able to help her. In that way she too received in the way she saw Jesus. Forgiveness was given to her but not to the Pharisees at that point in time.
When Jesus explained the parable for the creditor and debtor we know that the pharisees did not understand what Jesus was saying for they were to busy finding what was wrong with the situation. As they were too held up in their own beliefs and thoughts they were also taking away their own revelations of the parable of the one who loved more because he was forgiven more.
In actuality all of us have sinned and fallen short. And nobody can actually say that i’m a better person than another. The point of the story was to show that even though both the pharisees and the woman may have been forgiven by Jesus, they both received differently because of the consciousness of how much they were forgiven.
My friends, let’s never ever for a moment doubt the immense forgiveness that Jesus gave us when he died on the cross. Let’s not be self righteous and deem our deeds to be more important than the consciousness of Jesus’s grace and love.
Final thoughts on this beautiful story of the love of Jesus
Lastly, whom did you think had more change in their life after this incident? Who did you think changed their hearts and minds and went out to sin no more?
A lot of people have this idea that if you tell people that they are totally forgiven of their sins, past present and future that they will go out and sin even more. Pastor prince shared a different take on this. If someone truely feels the love and forgiveness and how much was forgiven they will live life to be better people. And its the people who think that what they do is correct all the time and they are better than everyone else that carry on their own self righteous streak of sins which they deem to be small or ok.
If you truely understood how much Jesus gave up on the cross. His status as the Son of God, everything he owns (everything in the world and the heavens belong to him) and the way he suffered for our sins, you wouldn’t go out and carry on sinning. You would go out and fall in love with Jesus and emulate his attributes because you are no longer condemned and need longer sin.
I hope i’ve explained this clearly, if not please forgive me. Lastly, pastor prince also commented that God wants a loving and trusting relationship with us. He pointed out that God wants us to be obedient because we know he loves us and not obedient because his law says so. Just like the who father sternly tells his son to sit down and the son sits down but turns to his friend and says “i’m sitting down physically but inside i’m standing up!” God doesn’t want that with us too. He wants us to be forgiven of all our sins and also be free of the need to want to sin because we know that we are deeply loved by him.
I pray that we’ll remain love conscious with God rather than rule/law conscious.
Tell me what you think below. God Bless.