Love: The Woman Who Wept At His Feet

There is a scene in Luke 7 that most readers walk past too quickly.

Jesus is having dinner at the house of a Pharisee named Simon. It is a formal meal. Guests are reclining at the table in the way ancient Near Eastern people did, with their feet extending out behind them.

Into that formal setting walks a woman.

The text does not tell us her name. It only tells us that she was known in the town as "a sinful woman." Which in the culture of the time meant she was likely a prostitute, or someone whose reputation had been publicly ruined. She was the last person you would expect to walk into a Pharisee's dining room.

She did not care.

This week's theme: Love.

Today, what she did, and what Jesus said about her that reshapes what love even is.

She had brought an alabaster jar of expensive perfume. She stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell onto his feet. She let down her hair, which respectable women did not do in public, and used it to wipe his feet. She kissed his feet. And she poured the perfume on them.

Simon watched all of this silently, judging her, and, quietly, judging Jesus for allowing it.

Then Jesus told a parable. Two men owed a moneylender money. One owed a large sum. One owed a small sum. Neither could pay, and the lender forgave them both. Which one would love him more?

Simon answered correctly. The one who had been forgiven more.

Then Jesus said something that lands like a punch.

"Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little." - Luke 7:47

Read that carefully.

Jesus is not saying she was forgiven because she loved much. He is saying she loved much because she had been forgiven much. Her love was the evidence of her forgiveness, not the cause of it.

And he is saying something to Simon, without naming him directly. Whoever has been forgiven little loves little. Simon, the Pharisee, who prided himself on his righteousness, had loved Jesus with less. Because he had not sat with how much he needed forgiveness.

Here is what this story teaches about love.

Love is not primarily something you generate. It is something that flows out of you when you have truly received what God has done for you. If you have not felt loved and forgiven deeply, your love for God and for others will be measured and cautious. If you have really absorbed the scale of grace, your love will spill.

The woman had absorbed it. She knew what she had been. She knew what Jesus was offering. Her love was not restrained because she had nothing to protect. She had already been publicly ruined. She had nothing left to lose. And so she poured out everything, tears and hair and perfume, at his feet.

That is love. Not the neat, measured love of someone protecting their reputation. The extravagant, spilling love of someone who knows exactly how much they have been forgiven.

If your love feels thin, you may not have sat long enough with how much you have been forgiven. Sit with it today. Let the extravagance rise.

YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY

Think about the specific ways you have been forgiven. Not in the abstract. The specific ones. Then let that awareness overflow into one specific act of extravagant love today. Toward God. Toward someone you know needs it.

A PRAYER FOR TODAY

Father, help me sit with how much I have been forgiven. Let it break me open like it broke her open. Let my love spill the way hers did. Amen.

WATCH THIS

If today's story landed, I made a video walking through every verse about love in the Bible. It goes deeper into where love actually comes from and what it looks like when it is real.

OVER TO YOU

What have you been forgiven of that could be the source of extravagant love this week? A word or a line. Every reply held with care.

God bless you, my friend.

KEEP GOING WITH ME

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