Love Sees Differently: What Jesus Saw at Simon's Table in Luke 7
Have you ever sized someone up on a first impression? Most of us have, and most of us have been on the other end of it too.
In college, Carlos served on an RA staff with a guy named Mike and liked him right away. At the end of training week, when everyone was supposed to say something nice about each other, Mike stood up and admitted he hadn't liked Carlos at all at first. He thought Carlos was kind of scary, like a grizzly bear, but by the end of the week he'd realized Carlos was really a teddy bear. (Carlos still isn't sure that made it better.) Mike has been one of his closest friends ever since.
Time together is usually what changes a first impression. But in week four of The Main Thing, our series on living and loving like Jesus through the Gospel of Luke, Carlos made the case that what should shape how we see people first is our experience with Jesus and his love. Here's the big idea: When we experience the love of Jesus, we begin to see and love others differently.
A Woman Who Refused to Stay Outside
All through Luke 7, Jesus crosses the lines people had drawn, to the point that critics call him "a friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Luke 7:34). Right after that, Luke tells us about Jesus eating at the home of Simon, a Pharisee, quietly letting us know that Simon belongs among the sinners Jesus came to reach too.
"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" (Luke 7:37). When a well-known teacher came to dinner, the doors were often left open so people could listen in, so the scandal wasn't that she was in the room. The scandal was that she refused to stay on the edges. She didn't come for the dinner. She came for Jesus.
She stood behind him weeping until her tears fell on his feet. Then she let down her hair, a scandalous thing for a woman to do in that culture, wiped his feet with it, kissed them and poured her perfume over them.
Simon watched and made up his mind: "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" (Luke 7:39). In the same breath, he judged the woman and wrote off Jesus. Simon saw her reputation, while Jesus saw her.
Do You See This Woman?
Jesus knew exactly who she was and exactly what Simon was thinking, and he asked a question that sits at the center of the story: "Do you see this woman?" (Luke 7:44). Everyone in the room had noticed her. Jesus was asking whether Simon really saw her the way he did.
At Calvary, we say worship is seeing God accurately and responding appropriately, and the whole scene at Simon's table is about seeing accurately. Jesus doesn't pretend this woman's sin doesn't exist, but he refuses to define her by it.
It would be easy to cast Simon as the villain, but he's actually being pursued here too. Jesus loves him enough to tell him the truth. The woman knows she's an outcast, while Simon doesn't know that about himself, so they're outcasts in different ways, one with obvious sin and one with sin hidden behind respectability. As J.C. Ryle put it, Simon showed Jesus "outward civility but no heart love," and "it is possible to have a decent form of religion yet know nothing of the gospel." Simon gave Jesus a seat at his own table and still didn't see him.
Jesus came for both of them. That's why Carlos asked whether we're bold enough to pray a scary prayer: Jesus, help me see like you. That means seeing the rejected, the obvious sinner, the respectable sinner and the person we've written off through his eyes, and seeing ourselves as people who need grace.
Two Debts Nobody Could Pay
Jesus tells Simon a story about two people who owed a lender money, one about 500 days' wages and the other about 50. Neither could pay, so the lender forgave both. "Now which of them will love him more?" Simon answers that it would be the one with the bigger debt, and Jesus tells him he's right (Luke 7:41-43).
Then Jesus turns to the woman. Simon gave him no water for his feet, no kiss of welcome and no oil for his head, but she has washed his feet with her tears, kissed them and poured perfume on them. "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).
Carlos warned that we can read this wrong, as though we'd need to sin more to experience more of Jesus' love. The key is that neither person could repay what they owed, so both were in a hopeless situation. The point isn't that Simon sinned less. It's that he understood his sin less. When we truly see what we've been forgiven, forgiveness produces love, and the woman's tears and perfume weren't earning her forgiveness so much as revealing what it had already done in her.
Worship Is a Response, Not a Transaction
This woman is weeping at the feet of a holy God, and instead of being consumed, she's embraced. Jesus doesn't tell her to clean herself up first. He meets her in her brokenness and says, so the whole table can hear, "Your sins are forgiven... Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (Luke 7:48, 50). Carlos noted that the way Jesus phrases it points back to grace she had already received. We don't worship to get God to forgive us. We worship because he already has.
The woman never says a word in the entire story, and she doesn't need to. Her tears, her perfume and her humility speak her devotion loudly enough.
See Jesus, See Yourself, See Others
Because the woman sees Jesus accurately, she sees herself as a sinner who needs grace and has received it, and she responds with worship. Simon misses Jesus, which means he misses the truth about himself and about her as well. Carlos summed up the movement like this: see Jesus, see yourself, see others, and respond appropriately.
The love we receive from Jesus flows back toward him in faith, gratitude and extravagant love, and it flows out toward other people. Not a Hallmark Channel version of love, but his. We can't love like Jesus until we learn to see like him, and how we see and treat people is part of our worship. So his question still confronts us: do you see the people around you the way he sees them?
Carry It Into Your Week
Carlos gave us two prayers for the week, and the second is bolder than the first: Jesus, help me see like you, and Jesus, help me love like you. Pray them as often as you need to, and take these questions with you:
Where are you in this story right now: the woman overwhelmed by grace, Simon close to Jesus without really seeing him, or someone on the outside still wondering who he is?
Who have you stopped seeing accurately?
Which person in the story do you naturally move away from, the obvious outcast or the respectable religious person, and who in your life is like them?
Whoever you tend to move away from is the person Carlos asked us to pray for by name this week.
Join Us This Sunday
Love sees because Jesus first saw us, it transforms because he has changed us, and it responds as we turn back to him and carry his love out to the people around us. Wherever you find yourself in this story, there's a seat at the table for you and a place for your whole family, from Calvary Kids on up.
Join us this Sunday! Souderton: 9:00 & 10:30am | Quakertown: 9:30am