Thoughts On Guilt
These are some thoughts I’m trying to put together for a future sermon. I’ve struggled with this, most of my life, growing up in “holiness churches”. My Christian Ethics class has been great for this struggle! Read the scripture/story, then read my thoughts.
The woman comes in during Jesus’ discussion with Simon the Pharisee. She washes His feet and Simon is repulsed because she is a “sinner”. But Jesus recognized her brokeness for sin instead of Simon’s “looking down his nose” at sin. We tend to be like Simon. So this story illustrates our fruit. Our attitudes will show how we feel towards God, whether we intend them to or not. We will show the depth of our love to God, according to the depth of our understanding of how much we’ve been forgiven. I don’t think the story means that the whoever sins the most will have a better understanding of God’s love, but the one that understands that their sin is such an aberration against God, they will be able to say, “I love much, because I KNOW I have been forgiven much.”
As I said, we tend to be like Simon and not realize our sin problem. Oh, to be like the woman crying at Jesus’ feet, because I realize how much He has forgiven me!
People need to hear this and understand it. We don’t play the “my sin isn’t as bad as your sin” game, we realize that we ALL have offended God equally and need to come begging at the feet of Jesus, pouring on our most expensive oils, and wiping our tears with our filthy rags.
-AOD
