Faith and Forgiveness
It was a Sunday and I was sitting in church feeling distant and disconnected. (keeping it real lol.)
We all know those moments as followers of Jesus where His voice is radically clear. The times where every day brings new revelation and wonder.
And we know the moments that are…not like that.
As we are familiar with these two parallel realities, we also know what it is to be somewhere in between, in the middle, in the space that is neither exciting nor mundane. If we are honest, we have all experienced these contrasts and have come to experience first hand that the Christian walk is not exempt from the ups and downs of life.
Yet as I was sitting there that Sunday feeling bored and disconnected I felt a sudden warmth within my chest of the tangible, physical presence of the Holy Spirit and was awakened to pay attention to what He was saying. All in this moment I heard the words, “You need to know that I have forgiven you. Forgiveness is your healing.”
The comfort of these words and of His presence was quickly joined by my curiosity about His reasoning for telling me this. Forgiven me of what? Don’t I know that I’m forgiven already? In what ways do I need healing?
Knowing that we are forgiven by God seems incredibly simple because it is the basis of the entire gospel. Yet trusting His forgiveness takes great faith that does not come naturally. Again and again I find that the greatest hindrance to the fruit of the gospel in my life is my own undying perfectionism that pulls on me like gravity. Do we not become almost immediately distant when our thoughts embark on the spiral of condemnation that regularly accompanies reminders of our insufficiency?
My reliance on anything other than the cross to feel “okay” before God is in direct defiance to the true gospel. It is as if I believe that with enough scrubbing, my old sweatpants could become a designer dress…it is just not possible. My pride whispers to me that if I just get such-and-such right this time then God and I can continue on good terms because I have earned it. What a cringe to even type that. Behind that whisper stand mountainous insecurities questioning if God’s forgiveness can actually be trusted, which when stripped away reveal a current of unbelief in the true gospel - that I am saved by faith alone.
So after that Sunday moment where I questioned why the Lord revealed what He did, it quickly became so very clear. He led me to this passage from Luke 7:
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,[c] 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.”
I have read this passage many times and never processed it the way I have recently. As I imagine being in this woman’s scenario, I wonder if I would’ve walked in the unapologetic boldness that she clearly possessed.
She knew she was a sinner. Everyone else knew she was a sinner. And evidently, she knew that Jesus was holy. If she did not have an awareness of His divine nature then there would’ve been no reason to act as extravagantly as she did.
This story becomes so humbling to me when I truly consider what I might’ve done if I was in her position. Here this woman was, in a room full of the most righteous men, all of whom having a seemingly wide knowledge of her life, in the company of the Son of God. I’m pretty sure I would’ve said “yeah no thanks” to that situation and kept my distance out of self-protection. All the pride/shame/fear that would’ve caused me to stay away is the very opposite of what caused her to go - faith. And as Jesus states so plainly in the last verse, it was this faith that saved her.
When we fully believe in the merciful, forgiving nature of God, it leads us to extravagant, bold worship. The rest of the world may point and stare and remind us of who we used to be - but like this woman we too can know that none of that matters in the presence of the One who is worth everything that we have. This was a blatant, elaborate display of love that could only come from brokenness and humility. In this passage we find the ever-comforting truth that our sin should drive us TOWARD Jesus, not further away.
I want to worship as this woman did. I want to always live with the awareness of how much I have been forgiven. I don’t want to be the one on the side of the room pointing out how the person extravagantly loving the Lord is unworthy to be there.
The concepts of faith and forgiveness should be simple, but let’s face it…sometimes they are not. How good He is to continually remind us how we need Him. To which we have the opportunity to respond with bold faith that leaves the true gospel on display.