Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 75 · March 16
Which of Them
“Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”
You may have read this verse and felt the floor move under you: "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much." It can sound like a price, as if she produced enough love and then the forgiveness followed. If that were so, everything would hang on how big your feelings are, and you already know what yours are like on a tired, ordinary morning.
The story itself settles the question, because Jesus settles it a few lines earlier, and He makes Simon the Pharisee do the settling. He tells of a lender with two people in debt to him. One owes five hundred pence and the other fifty. Neither can pay, and "he frankly forgave them both." Then Jesus asks, "Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?" Simon answers, "I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most," and Jesus tells him, "Thou hast rightly judged." In that story the forgiving comes first, and the love grows out of it. Simon, the host at the table, has just agreed to that order. So whatever the next sentence means, it cannot mean the opposite of the story Jesus told to explain it. And the last words Jesus speaks to the woman point to her faith: "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace." There are two people in that room, and the verse reaches them from opposite sides.
Simon had invited Jesus, yet he skipped the usual courtesies. He gave Him no water for His feet, no kiss of greeting and no oil for His head. Simon's trouble is his arithmetic: "to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." Everything starts with how small Simon thinks his own debt is. What he needs is a truer figure for what he owes.
The woman stands at the other end of the account, and she knows exactly what she owes. She has come into a Pharisee's dining room, where the host knows what kind of life she has lived. Now she is weeping over a guest's feet in front of everyone, and wiping them with her hair.
The order holds for both of them. Great love is what being forgiven produces in a person; it was never the fee. So if your love for God feels thin this week, ask a better question. What number have you written down for your own debt, and have you let Jesus check it? He forgave the large debt and the small one freely, and He will forgive yours the same way.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 75 is Through Not Around (Isaiah 43:2).