He Who Has Been Forgiven Much (Luke 36-47)

Our text for today, Luke 7:36-47 shows what radical devotion is all about. By radical devotion, I mean serious devotion of one’s heart, time, talent, and money on behalf of God.  

In our relationship with God, radical devotion takes genuine love of God. You cannot devote yourself seriously to someone whom you really don’t love. Therefore, you will devote yourself to God as much as you love Him.

The Bible is clear about how much we should love God. In Matthew Chapter 22, an expert in law once asked Jesus about verse 36: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Here comes Jesus’ reply in verse 37~40, “37.Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39.And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40.All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” We all know what this passage means: the core of our Christian life is to love God wholeheartedly first, and then to love our neighbor as well.

Today, my message will be focused on the first part of this commandment, namely, loving God wholeheartedly. Do you love your children? Silly question! What does love mean to you? According to 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, the nature of love is far more complicated than we can fathom. No wonder! Love is the very nature of God after all.

However, we can rightly say in plain English that love is something like the combination of sense of devotion and responsibility, along with warmth of joy and happiness in your heart toward the object you love. Accordingly, by saying ‘I love God’, we mean ‘my heart feels happy and joyful in thinking of Him. My heart is devoted to God. I feel responsible for God’s work, for His church, for His people, and for His world.’

Serious devotion takes genuine love for God. Do you love your God? Is it possible on earth for one to love the invisible God? Take a minute and think back to those days when your eyes became blinded to your sweetheart. You saw the person and somehow got attracted by the way he or she looked. It could have been his smile, her voice, attractive hair, or something indescribable, and so on.

When it comes to loving God, however, it is a different story because God is invisible. Loving God means that you have a spirit-to-Spirit connection with Him. It becomes real in your heart since God is the Spirit of Love. The Bible says in 1 Peter 1: “8. Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him….”

Recently, I read an article in a certain magazine entitled “Why I feel still lonely when I am in marriage?” Haven’t you felt the same way at times? Especially when you have children, the attention from your spouse seems to be aloof, which makes you feel less loved by your spouse. Remember the time when you went out on a date. Your sweetheart looked like an angel. But, now, when you see her early in the morning in tangled hair, she is far from being an angel and vice versa. (I am not talking about my wife. She looks beautiful every morning. Well, I’ll leave it up to your imagination.) You feel as though the initial enthusiasm, the so-called, ‘the flame of first love’ has become blurry.

However, God’s love for you never changes. Once you experience the love of God, your life would never be the same. Instantaneously, your eyes are open to the beauty of God. Listen to the bible in Lamentations 3:22,23 “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; 23.they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”  The mutual love between God and you will become new and fresh every morning.

Why am I talking this much about the love between God and you? That is because you can devote your heart and life to God as much as you love  Him. Last Sunday I said that you could love your God as much as you know of Him. Now, today’s Gospel text tells us another secret about what compels your heart to fall in love with God.

In our text Luke 7:36-47, the bible introduces a sinful woman who showed her love for God and amazing devotion to God. One day while Jesus was eating in the Pharisee’s house, a sinful woman began to bathe Jesus’ feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the extremely expensive perfume, presumably the best treasure she had saved in her life.

Starting in verse 44, Jesus contrasted the full-blown devotion by the sinful woman to the superficial one by the Pharisee, Simon. Simon invited Jesus to his banquet but never welcomed him into his heart. He gave Jesus a meal out of his affluence but not his heart. Unlike Simon, the sinful woman showed that her love for God was genuine and sacrificial. As she poured out her treasured perfume, she was actually saying, “Jesus, I love you more than anything else in my life. You mean more to me than this precious perfume.”

Her love for God and devotion amaze us all. How was it possible? This is what Jesus says in verse 47, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.” Do you get it? Her marvelous love for God and devotion was her reaction to the forgiveness of sins she had been assured of in Jesus Christ.

Are you assured of the forgiveness of your sins in Jesus Christ? If then, I challenge you to devote your life fully to God. God wants you to devote yourself to Him by giving Him your time, energy, talent, material, and your heart. Therefore, I urge you to be attentive to worship, church activities, choir, the financial health of our church, and the serving of God’s people. They are all God’s call for you.

Let me wrap up this message. As you are serious about God, He will be serous about you. As you seek His work, He will take care of your work. As you lift up your heart to Him, He will stretch out His hand to you. Finally, keep in mind that you are God’s love and joy. Amen.