“For this reason I say to you, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”

And what did all this prove? It proved that she had good reason to be grateful to Jesus. And Jesus knew the reason why. He knew that she had been burdened down by many sins, and that on hearing His words as He proclaimed the Good News she had at some stage found forgiveness for them all. This explained her love and gratitude. Her much love proved her much forgiveness. A lesser love would have indicated that she had received a lesser forgiveness.

It should be noted that the fact that she was there at all, not saying anything but expressing genuine Christian love, indicated that she felt that she owed Jesus a debt of gratitude. Why else would she love Jesus? The kind of ‘love’ she had been used to would not have been deserving of forgiveness, nor would it have been welcome to Jesus. What had happened here had to be because something that He had done or said had genuinely benefited her, and it had to have been something spectacular for her to humiliate herself like that. Furthermore she would have been in no doubt about the kind of welcome she would receive in the Pharisee’s house, and yet she had come. Why? Because she had known in her heart that Jesus would not turn her away. She knew that He would welcome her because He would know that she had turned to God and had been forgiven. (She would not expect to be welcomed as a practising prostitute). Thus all points to an experience of having been cleansed for which she was grateful. And the parable confirms that Jesus was aware of it.

‘But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.’ Is there a hint here of Simon’s own failure. Not on a par with the woman’s, but still there? He had not demonstrated great love.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The lesson:

v. 47. 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.

v. 48. And He said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.

v. 49. And they that sat at meat with Him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also?

v. 50. And He said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

On the basis of the parable and the facts as stated by Christ, He tells Simon: Forgiven are her many sins, for she loved much. The fact that her many grievous trespasses had found forgiveness in the sight of Christ and God filled her heart with joyful love, which she was constrained to show by her outward behavior. The forgiveness was not the result of the love, but the love, followed and flowed out of the forgiveness, just as the sun does not shine because it is light outside, but it is light because the sun shines. “The papists adduce this verse against our doctrine of faith and say, Since Christ says: Her many sins are forgiven because she loved much, therefore forgiveness of sins is not obtained by faith, but by love. But that this cannot be the meaning the parable proves, which shows clearly that love follows out of faith. Therefore, when one has forgiveness of sins and believes, there faith follows. Where one does not have forgiveness, there is no love. ” On the other hand, there is no partial forgiveness. A sinner to whom certain grievous sins are forgiven has forgiveness of them all. Simon’s lack of love proved that he had no forgiveness, in fact, cared nothing about forgiveness in his proud Pharisaic mind. But to the woman Jesus now said: Forgiven are thy sins. This word out of the Savior’s mouth was the seal and surety of her forgiveness. It was the word which inflamed the glow of her faith into a rich fire. Though the other guests took offense at the words of Jesus, He continued in His kind assurance to the poor woman. Her faith, which she had proved by her love, had saved her. Through her faith she had accepted the redemption of Jesus, she was a blessed child of salvation.

Summary

Jesus heals the servant of the centurion of Capernaum, raises the widow’s son of Nain, receives an embassy of John the Baptist, and is anointed in the house of a Pharisee, teaching a lesson in faith and forgiveness.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Luk 7:47. For she loved much: Wherefore she loved much. That nobody might put a wrong construction upon this woman’s behaviour, our Lord declared, that her regard to him proceeded purely from a sense of the favour he had done her, in bringing her to repentance, and in raising her to the hope of pardon. For doubtless he had previously made her sensible of her sins by his sermon, and had raised her to the grace of true repentance; and therefore she expected her pardon from the general doctrine of the gospel; and particularly from the promise of rest which Jesus had lately made to all weary and heavy-laden sinners: but the favour of pardon bearing a proportion to the multitude and greatness of the sins pardoned, this woman, who was a notorious sinner, could not but love Jesus ardently, who had converted her, and blotted out all her transgressions. “I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, namely, by me;” for the reason will not hold without this. So that Jesus, on this occasion, in the hearing of Simon and all the guests, plainly assumed to himself the prerogative of God,the right of forgiving men their sins. Accordingly the guests understood him in this sense, as appears from the reflection which they made upon his speech, Luk 7:49. The clause, for she loved much, is better translated as above, Wherefore, &c. Our Lord did not make the application of this parable more directly; but left Simon to do it.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Luk 7:47 . , by Beza, Grotius, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, de Wette, Ewald, Bleek, and others, is separated from by a comma, and connected with . But the latter has its limitation by . . . It is to be interpreted: on account of which I say unto thee ; on behalf of this her manifestation of love (as a recognition and high estimation thereof) I declare to thee.

. . .] her sins are forgiven, the many (that she has committed, Luk 7:37 ; Luk 7:39 ), since she has loved much . This expresses not the cause , and therefore not the antecedent of forgiveness. That the words do express the antecedent of forgiveness is the opinion of the Catholics, who maintain thereby their doctrine of contritio charitate formata and of the merit of works ; and lately, too, of de Wette, who recognises love for Christ and faith in Him as one; of Olshausen, who after his own fashion endeavours to overcome the difficulty of the thought by regarding love as a receptive activity; of Paulus, who drags in what is not found in the text; of Baumgarten-Crusius, and of Bleek. Although dogmatic theology is not decisive against this opinion (see the pertinent observations of Melanchthon in the Apol. iii. 31 ff. p. 87 f.), yet perhaps the context is, because this view directly contradicts the , Luk 7:41-42 , that lies at its foundation, as well as the . . . which immediately follows, if the love does not appear as the consequent of the forgiveness; the antecedent, i.e. the subjective cause of the forgiveness, is not the love, but the faith of the penitent, as is plain from Luk 7:50 . Contextually it is right, therefore, to understand of the ground of recognition or acknowledgment : Her sins are forgiven, etc., which is certain, since she has manifested love in an exalted degree . Bengel says pertinently: “Remissio peccatorum, Simoni non cogitata, probatur a fructu , Luk 7:42 , qui est evidens et in oculos incurrit, quum illa sit occulta;” and Calovius: “probat Christus a posteriori .” Comp. Beza, Calvin, Wetstein, Hofmann, Schriftbew . I. p. 603 f.; Hilgenfeld also, Evang . p. 175. The objection against this view, taken by Olshausen and Bleek, that the aorist is inappropriate, is quite a mistake, and is nullified by passages such as Joh 3:16 . The expresses that the woman is in the condition of forgiveness ( in statu gratiae ), and that the criterion thereof is the much love manifested by her. It is thereafter in Luk 7:48 that Jesus makes, even to herself, the express declaration.

, . ] a general decision in precise opposition to the first half of the verse, with intentional application to the moral condition of the Pharisee, which is of such a kind that only a little forgiveness falls to his share, the consequence being that he also manifests but little love (Luk 7:44-46 ). There was too much want of self-knowledge and of repentance in the self-righteous Simon for him to be a subject of much forgiveness.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

47 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.

Ver. 47. For she loved much ] Nam, notificativum est, non impulsivum. Her love was an argmnent (not a cause) that her sins were forgiven her.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

47. ] This verse has been found very difficult to fit into the lesson conveyed by the Parable. But I think there need be little difficulty, if we regard it thus.

Simon had been offended at the uncleanness of the woman who touched our Lord. He, having given the Pharisee the instruction contained in the parable, and having drawn the contrast between the woman’s conduct and his, now assures him, ‘Wherefore, seeing this is so, I say unto thee, she is no longer unclean her many sins are forgiven: for (thou seest that) she loved much: her conduct towards Me shews that love, which is a token that her sins are forgiven.’ Thus the is not the causative particle, ‘ because she loved much;’ but, as rightly rendered in E. V., for she loved much: ‘ for she has shewn that love, of which thou mayest conclude, from what thou hast heard, that it is the effect of a sense of forgiveness .’ Thus Bengel, ‘Remissio peccatorum, Simoni non cogitata, probatur a fructu , Luk 7:42 , qui est evidens et in oculos incurrit, quum illa sit occulta;’ and Calov., ‘probabat Christus a posteriori .’

But there is a deeper consideration in this solution, which the words of the Lord in Luk 7:48 bring before us. The sense of forgiveness of sin is not altogether correspondent to the sense of forgiveness of a debt . The latter must be altogether past, and a fact to be looked back on, to awaken gratitude: the former, by no means so. The expectation , the desire , and hope of forgiveness, the of Luk 7:50 , awoke this love; just as in our Christian life, the love daily awakened by a sense of forgiveness, yet is gathered under and summed up in a general faith and expectation, that ‘in that day’ all will be found to have been forgiven. The , into which we have been baptized, and in which we live, yet waits for that great , which He will then pronounce.

The aorist is in apposition with the aorists throughout Luk 7:44-46 , as referring to the same facts.

Remark that the assertion regarding Simon is not , but ; stamping the subjective character of the part relating to him: he felt , or cared about, but little forgiveness , and his little love shewed this to be so: on the whole, see Bleek’s note.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Luk 7:47 . , wherefore, introducing Christ’s theory of the woman’s extraordinary behaviour as opposed to Simon’s ungenerous suspicions. , I tell you, with emphasis; what Jesus firmly believes and what Simon very much needs to be told. (Doric perf. pas.) , forgiven are her sins; i.e. , it is a case, not of a courtesan acting in character, as you have been thinking, but of a penitent who has come through me to the knowledge that even such as she can be forgiven. That is the meaning of this extraordinary demonstration of passionate affection. , the many, a sort of afterthought: many sins, a great sinner, you think, and so I also can see from her behaviour in this chamber, which manifests intense love, whence I infer that she is conscious of much forgiveness and of much need to be forgiven. : introduces the ground of the assertion implied in ; many sins inferred from much love; the underlying principle: much forgiven, much love, which is here applied backwards, because Simon, while believing in the woman’s great sin, did not believe in her penitence. The foregoing interpretation is now adopted by most commentators. The old dispute between Protestants and Catholics, based on this text, as to the ground of pardon is now pretty much out of date. , etc.: this is the other side of the truth, as it applied to Simon: little (conscious) sin, little love. The doctrine here enunciated is another very original element in this story. It and the words in Luk 5:31 and Luk 15:7 form together a complete apology for Christ’s relations with the sinful.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Luke

LOVE AND FORGIVENESS

Luk 7:47 .

This story contains three figures, three persons, who may stand for us as types or representatives of the divine love and of all its operation in the world, of the way in which it is received or rejected, and of the causes and consequences of its reception or rejection. There is the unloving, cleanly, respectable, self-complacent Pharisee, with all his contempt for ‘this woman.’ There is the woman, with gross sin and mighty penitence, the great burst of love that is flowing out of her heart sweeping away before it, as it were, all the guilt of her transgressions. And, high over all, brooding over all, loving each, knowing each, pitying each, willing to save and be the Friend and Brother of each, is the embodied and manifested divine Love, the knowledge of whom is love in our hearts, and is ‘life eternal.’ So that now I have simply to ask you to look with me, for a little while, at these three persons as representing for us the divine love that comes forth amongst sinners, and the twofold form in which that love is received. There is, first, Christ the love of God appearing amongst men, the foundation of all our love to Him. Then there is the woman, the penitent sinner, lovingly recognising the divine love. And then, last, there is the Pharisee, the self-righteous man, ignorant of himself, and empty of all love to God. These are the three figures to which I ask your attention now.

I. We have Christ here standing as a manifestation of the divine love coming forth amongst sinners.

His person and His words, the part He plays in this narrative, and the parable that He speaks in the course of it, have to be noticed under this head.

First, then, you have this idea-that He, as bringing to us the love of God, shows it to us, as not at all dependent upon our merits or deserts: ‘He frankly forgave them both’ are the deep words in which He would point us to the source and the ground of all the love of God. Brethren, have you ever thought what a wonderful and blessed truth there lies in the old words of one of the Jewish prophets, ‘I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for Mine holy Name’s sake’? The foundation of all God’s love to us sinful men, that saying tells us, lies not in us, nor in anything about us, not in anything external to God Himself. He, and He alone, is the cause and reason, the motive and the end, of His own love to our world. And unless we have grasped that magnificent thought as the foundation of all our acceptance in Him, I think we have not yet learnt half of the fullness which, even in this world, may belong to our conceptions of the love of God-a love that has no motive but Himself; a love that is not evoked even if I may so say by regard to His creatures’ wants; a love, therefore, which is eternal, being in that divine heart before there were creatures upon whom it could rest; a love that is its own guarantee, its own cause-safe and firm, therefore, with all the firmness and serenity of the divine nature-incapable of being affected by our transgression, deeper than all our sins, more ancient than our very existence, the very essence and being of God Himself. ‘He frankly forgave them both.’ If you seek the source of divine love, you must go high up into the mountains of God, and learn that it, as all other of His shall I say emotions, and feelings, and resolutions, and purposes, owns no reason but Himself, no motive but Himself; lies wrapped in the secret of His nature, who is all-sufficient for His own blessedness, and all whose work and being is caused by, and satisfied, and terminates in His own fullness. ‘God is love’: therefore beneath all considerations of what we may want-deeper and more blessed than all thoughts of a compassion that springs from the feeling of human distress and the sight of man’s misery-lies this thought of an affection which does not need the presence of sorrow to evoke it, which does not want the touch of our finger to flow out, but by its very nature is everlasting, by its very nature is infinite, by its very nature must be pouring out the flood of its own joyous fullness for ever and ever!

Then, again, Christ standing here for us as the representative and revelation of this divine love which He manifests to us, tells us, too, that whilst it is not caused by us, but comes from the nature of God, it is not turned away by our sins. ‘This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him,’ says the unloving and self-righteous heart, ‘for she is a sinner.’ Ah! there is nothing more beautiful than the difference between the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a holy being, and the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a self-righteous being. The one is all contempt; the other, all pity. He knew what she was, and therefore He let her come close to Him with the touch of her polluted hand, and pour out the gains of her lawless life and the adornments of her former corruption upon His most blessed and most holy head. His knowledge of her as a sinner, what did it do to His love for her? It made that love gentle and tender, as knowing that she could not bear the revelation of the blaze of His purity. It smoothed His face and softened His tones, and breathed through all His knowledge and notice of her timid and yet confident approach. ‘Daughter, I know all about it-all thy wanderings and thy vile transgressions: I know them all, and My love is mightier than all these. They may be as the great sea, but my love is like the everlasting mountains, whose roots go down beneath the ocean, and My love is like the everlasting heaven, whose brightness covers it all over.’ God’s love is Christ’s love; Christ’s love is God’s love. And this is the lesson that we gather-that that infinite and divine loving-kindness does not turn away from thee, my brother and my friend, because thou art a sinner, but remains hovering about thee, with wooing invitations and with gentle touches, if it may draw thee to repentance, and open a fountain of answering affection in thy seared and dry heart. The love of God is deeper than all our sins. ‘For His great love wherewith He loved us, when we were dead in sins, He quickened us.’

Sin is but the cloud behind which the everlasting sun lies in all its power and warmth, unaffected by the cloud; and the light will yet strike, the light of His love will yet pierce through, with its merciful shafts bringing healing in their beams, and dispersing all the pitchy darkness of man’s transgression. And as the mists gather themselves up and roll away, dissipated by the heat of that sun in the upper sky, and reveal the fair earth below-so the love of Christ shines in, molting the mist and dissipating the fog, thinning it off in its thickest places, and at last piercing its way right through it, down to the heart of the man that has been lying beneath the oppression of this thick darkness, and who thought that the fog was the sky, and that there was no sun there above. God be thanked! the everlasting love of God that comes from the depth of His own being, and is there because of Himself, will never be quenched because of man’s sin.

And so, in the next place, Christ teaches us here that this divine love, when it comes forth among sinners, necessarily manifests itself first in the form of forgiveness. There was nothing to be done with the debtors until the debt was wiped out; there was no possibility of other gifts of the highest sort being granted to them, until the great score was cancelled and done away with. When the love of God comes down into a sinful world, it must come first and foremost as pardoning mercy. There are no other terms upon which there can be a union betwixt the loving-kindness of God, and the emptiness and sinfulness of my heart, except only this-that first of all there shall be the clearing away from my soul of the sins which I have gathered there, and then there will be space for all other divine gifts to work and to manifest themselves. Only do not fancy that when we speak about forgiveness, we simply mean that a man’s position in regard to the penalties of sin is altered. That is not all the depth of the scriptural notion of forgiveness. It includes far more than the removal of outward penalties. The heart of it all is, that the love of God rests upon the sinner, unturned away even by his sins, passing over his sins, and removing his sins for the sake of Christ. My friend, if you are talking in general terms about a great divine loving-kindness that wraps you round-if you have a great deal to say, apart from the Gospel, about the love of God as being your hope and confidence-I want you to reflect on this, that the first word which the love of God speaks to sinful men is pardon; and unless that is your notion of God’s love, unless you look to that as the first thing of all, let me tell you, you may have before you a very fair picture of a very beautiful, tender, good-natured benevolence, but you have not nearly reached the height of the vigour and yet the tenderness of the Scripture notion of the love of God. It is not a love which says, ‘Well, put sin on one side, and give the man the blessings all the same,’ not a love which has nothing to say about that great fact of transgression, not a love which gives it the go-by, and leaves it standing: but a love which passes into the heart through the portal of pardon, a love which grapples with the fact of sin first, and has nothing to say to a man until it has said that message to him.

And but one word more on this part of my subject-here we see the love of God thus coming from Himself; not turned away by man’s sins; being the cause of forgiveness; expressing itself in pardon; and last of all, demanding service. ‘Simon, thou gavest Me no water, thou gavest Me no kiss, My head thou didst not anoint: I expected all these things from thee-I desired them all from thee: My love came that they might spring in thy heart; thou hast not given them; My love is wounded, as it were disappointed, and it turns away from thee!’ Yes, after all that we have said about the freeness and fullness, the unmerited, and uncaused, and unmotived nature of that divine affection-after all that we have said about its being the source of every blessing to man, asking nothing from him, but giving everything to him; it still remains true, that God’s love, when it comes to men, comes that it may evoke an answering echo in the human heart, and ‘though it might be much bold to enjoin, yet for love’s sake rather beseeches’ us to give unto Him who has given all unto us. There, then, stands forth in the narrative, Christ as a revelation of the divine love amongst sinners.

II. Now, in the second place, let us look for a moment at ‘this woman’ as the representative of a class of character-the penitent lovingly recognising the divine love.

The words which I have read as my text contain a statement as to the woman’s character: ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.’ Allow me just one word of explanation, in the shape of exposition, on these words. Great blunders have been built upon them. I dare say you have seen epitaphs-I have-written often on gravestones with this misplaced idea on them-’Very sinful; but there was a great deal of love in the person; and for the sake of the love, God passed by the sin!’ Now, when Christ says ‘She loved much,’ He does not mean to say that her love was the cause of her forgiveness-not at all. He means to say that her love was the proof of her forgiveness, and that it was so because her love was a consequence of her forgiveness. As, for instance, we might say, ‘The woman is in great distress, for she weeps’; but we do not mean thereby that the weeping is the reason of the distress, but the means of our knowing the sorrow. It is the proof because it is the consequence. Or to put it into the simplest shape the love does not go before the forgiveness, but the forgiveness goes before the love; and because the love comes after the forgiveness, it is the sign of the forgiveness. That this is the true interpretation, you will see if you look back for a moment at the narrative which precedes, where He says, ‘He frankly forgave them both: tell me, therefore, which of them will love him most?’ Pardon is the pre-requisite of love, and love is a consequence of the sense of forgiveness.

This, then, is the first thing to observe: all true love to God is preceded in the heart by these two things-a sense of sin, and an assurance of pardon. Brethren, there is no love possible-real, deep, genuine, worthy of being called love of God-which does not start with the belief of my own transgression, and with the thankful reception of forgiveness in Christ. You do nothing to get pardon for yourselves; but unless you have the pardon you have no love to God. I know that sounds a very hard thing-I know that many will say it is very narrow and very bigoted, and will ask, ‘Do you mean to tell me that the man whose bosom glows with gratitude because of earthly blessings, has no love-that all that natural religion which is in people, apart from this sense of forgiveness in Christ, do you mean to tell me that this is not all genuine?’ Yes, most assuredly; and I believe the Bible and man’s conscience say the same thing. I do not for one moment deny that there may be in the hearts of those who are in the grossest ignorance of themselves as transgressors, certain emotions of instinctive gratitude and natural religiousness, directed to some higher power dimly thought of as the author of their blessings and the source of much gladness: but has that kind of thing got any living power in it? I demur to its right to be called love to God at all, for this reason-because it seems to me that the object that is loved is not God, but a fragment of God. He who but says, ‘I owe to Him breath and all things; in Him I live and move, and have my being,’ has left out one-half at least of the Scriptural conception of God. Your God, my friend, is not the God of the Bible, unless He stands before you clothed in infinite loving-kindness indeed; but clothed also in strict and rigid justice. Is your God perfect and entire? If you say that you love Him, and if you do so, is it as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Have you meditated on the depths of the requirements of His law? Have you stood silent and stricken at the thought of the blaze of His righteousness? Have you passed through all the thick darkness and the clouds with which He surrounds His throne, and forced your way at last into the inner light where He dwells? Or is it a vague divinity that you worship and love? Which? Ah, if a man study his Bible, and try to find out for himself, from its veracious records, who and what manner of God the living God is, there will be no love in his heart to that Being except only when he has flung himself at His feet, and said, ‘Father of eternal purity, and God of all holiness and righteousness, forgive Thy child, a sinful broken man-forgive Thy child, for the sake of Thy Son!’ That, and that alone, is the road by which we come to possess the love of God, as a practical power, filling and sanctifying our souls; and such is the God to whom alone our love ought to be rendered; and I tell you or rather the Bible tells you, and the Gospel and the Cross of Christ tell you, there is no love without pardon, no fellowship and sonship without the sense of sin and the acknowledgment of foul transgression!

So much, then, for what precedes the love of Christ in the heart; now a word as to what follows. ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.’ The sense of sin precedes forgiveness: forgiveness precedes love; love precedes all acceptable and faithful service. If you want to do, love. If you want to know, love. This poor woman knew Christ a vast deal better than that Pharisee there. He said, ‘This man is not a prophet; He does not understand the woman.’ Ay, but the woman knew herself better than the Pharisee knew himself, knew herself better than the Pharisee knew her, knew Christ, above all, a vast deal better than he did. Love is the gate of all knowledge.

This poor woman brings her box of ointment, a relic perhaps of past evil life, and once meant for her own adornment, and pours it on His head, lavishes offices of service which to the unloving heart seem bold in the giver and cumbersome to the receiver. It is little she can do, but she does it. Her full heart demands expression, and is relieved by utterance in deeds. The deeds are spontaneous, welling out at the bidding of an inward impulse, not drawn out by the force of an external command. It matters not what practical purpose they serve. The motive of them makes their glory. Love prompts them, love justifies them, and His love interprets them, and His love accepts them. The love which flows from the sense of forgiveness is the source of all obedience as well as the means of all knowledge.

Brethren, we differ from each other in all respects but one, ‘We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God’; we all need the love of Christ; it is offered to us all; but, believe me, the sole handle by which you can lay hold of it, is the feeling of your own sinfulness and need of pardon. I preach to you a love that you do not need to buy, a mercy that you do not need to bribe, a grace that is all independent of your character, and condition, and merits, which issues from God for ever, and is lying at your doors if you will take it. You are a sinful man; Christ died for you. He comes to give you His forgiving mercy. Take it, be at rest. So shalt thou love and know and do, and so shall He love and guide thee!

III. Now one word, and then I have done. A third character stands here-the unloving and self-righteous man, all ignorant of the love of Christ.

He is the antithesis of the woman and her character. You remember the traditional peculiarities and characteristics of the class to which he belonged. He is a fair specimen of the whole of them. Respectable in life, rigid in morality, unquestionable in orthodoxy; no sound of suspicion having ever come near his belief in all the traditions of the elders; intelligent and learned, high up among the ranks of Israel! What was it that made this man’s morality a piece of dead nothingness? What was it that made his orthodoxy just so many dry words, from out of which all the life had gone? What was it? This one thing: there was no love in it. As I said, Love is the foundation of all obedience; without it, morality degenerates into mere casuistry. Love is the foundation of all knowledge; without it, religion degenerates into a chattering about Moses, and doctrines, and theories; a thing that will neither kill nor make alive, that never gave life to a single soul or blessing to a single heart, and never put strength into any hand for the conflict and strife of daily life. There is no more contemptible and impotent thing on the face of the earth than morality divorced from love, and religious thoughts divorced from a heart full of the love of God. Quick corruption or long decay, and in either case death and putrefaction, are the end of these. You and I need that lesson, my friends. It is of no use for us to condemn Pharisees that have been dead and in their graves for nineteen hundred years. The same thing besets us all; we all of us try to get away from the centre, and dwell contented on the surface. We are satisfied to take the flowers and stick them into our little gardens, without any roots to them, when of course they all die out! People may try to cultivate virtue without religion, and to acquire correct notions of moral and spiritual truth; and partially and temporarily they may succeed, but the one will be a yoke of bondage, and the other a barren theory. I repeat, love is the basis of all knowledge and of all right-doing. If you have got that firm foundation laid in the soul, then the knowledge and the practice will be builded in God’s own good time; and if not, the higher you build the temple, and the more aspiring are its cloud-pointing pinnacles, the more certain will be its toppling some day, and the more awful will be the ruin when it comes. The Pharisee was contented with himself, and so there was no sense of sin in him, therefore there was no penitent recognition of Christ as forgiving and loving him, therefore there was no love to Christ. Because there was no love, there was neither light nor heat in his soul, his knowledge was barren notions, and his painful doings were soul-destructive self-righteousness.

And so it all comes round to the one blessed message: My friend, God hath loved us with an everlasting love. He has provided an eternal redemption and pardon for us. If you would know Christ at all, you must go to Him as a sinful man, or you are shut out from Him altogether. If you will go to Him as a sinful being, fling yourself down there, not try to make yourself better, but say, ‘I am full of unrighteousness and transgression; let Thy love fall upon me and heal me’; you will get the answer, and in your heart there shall begin to live and grow up a root of love to Him, which shall at last effloresce into all knowledge and unto all purity of obedience; for he that hath had much forgiveness, loveth much; and ‘he that loveth knoweth God,’ and ‘dwelleth in God, and God in Him’!

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

Wherefore = for which cause, or because her sins are forgiven. sins. App-128.

for = that. This could be seen; and was the sign, not the cause or consequence.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

47.] This verse has been found very difficult to fit into the lesson conveyed by the Parable. But I think there need be little difficulty, if we regard it thus.

Simon had been offended at the uncleanness of the woman who touched our Lord. He, having given the Pharisee the instruction contained in the parable, and having drawn the contrast between the womans conduct and his, now assures him, Wherefore, seeing this is so, I say unto thee, she is no longer unclean-her many sins are forgiven: for (thou seest that) she loved much: her conduct towards Me shews that love, which is a token that her sins are forgiven. Thus the is not the causative particle, because she loved much; but, as rightly rendered in E. V., for she loved much: for she has shewn that love, of which thou mayest conclude, from what thou hast heard, that it is the effect of a sense of forgiveness. Thus Bengel, Remissio peccatorum, Simoni non cogitata, probatur a fructu, Luk 7:42, qui est evidens et in oculos incurrit, quum illa sit occulta;-and Calov., probabat Christus a posteriori.

But there is a deeper consideration in this solution, which the words of the Lord in Luk 7:48 bring before us. The sense of forgiveness of sin is not altogether correspondent to the sense of forgiveness of a debt. The latter must be altogether past, and a fact to be looked back on, to awaken gratitude: the former, by no means so. The expectation, the desire, and hope of forgiveness, the of Luk 7:50, awoke this love; just as in our Christian life, the love daily awakened by a sense of forgiveness, yet is gathered under and summed up in a general faith and expectation, that in that day all will be found to have been forgiven. The , into which we have been baptized, and in which we live, yet waits for that great , which He will then pronounce.

The aorist is in apposition with the aorists throughout Luk 7:44-46, as referring to the same facts.

Remark that the assertion regarding Simon is not , but ; stamping the subjective character of the part relating to him:-he felt, or cared about, but little forgiveness, and his little love shewed this to be so: on the whole, see Bleeks note.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Luk 7:47. , the many, [Engl. Vers. not so well, which are many]) the many sins, which thou, Simon, dost bring forward as objections against her. The article is to be referred to Luk 7:39.-, because, seeing that) That is to say, the forgiveness of her sins, which was not thought of by Simon, is proved by the fruit, Luk 7:42 [where the love of the forgiven debtor is the proof that he has been indeed forgiven], which is evident, and forces itself upon the eyes of all present [is obvious to be seen], even though the forgiveness be hidden [is not to be seen with the eyes]. Add the antithesis which follows in the text, But to whom, etc. In order to refute Simon, there is cited by the Lord that which is the fulfilling of the law, namely, love, as being the criterion of sins being forgiven which was suited to the comprehension of the Pharisee: whereas to the woman herself, her faith (Luk 7:50) is said to have saved her. The former expression has more of an enigmatical character in it: the latter is more strictly literal. The more weight that each assigns to love in this matter above faith, the more like to Simon he is, and the more removed is he from the feeling of the woman, and of the Lord Himself. Love is the criterion of forgiveness, even though he who loves does not so think as to forgiveness.[78]- , but to whom) mildly expressed; not actually saying, though meaning, thou, to whom, as the force of the antithesis implies; otherwise there are not wanting persons who love much, even though great transgressions have not been committed by them previous to their forgiveness.-, little) Speaking comparatively, and after the manner of men, he loves tenfold less; Luk 7:41 [as the debtor who was forgiven fifty pence, a tenfold less debt than five hundred, loved proportionally less].-, loves) but yet he loves, provided only he has obtained forgiveness. The multitude of sins forgiven will exceedingly stimulate in the elect their eternal love towards God.

[78] He does not so dwell in thought on his own acts of love as the pledges of his forgiveness. He dwells rather by faith on what Christ has done, than on what he himself has done.-ED. and TRANSL.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Her: Luk 7:42, Luk 5:20, Luk 5:21, Exo 34:6, Exo 34:7

which: Isa 1:18, Isa 55:7, Eze 16:63, Eze 36:29-32, Mic 7:19, Act 5:31, Rom 5:20, 1Co 6:9-11, 1Ti 1:14, 1Jo 1:7

she: Luk 7:43, Mat 10:37, Joh 21:15-17, 2Co 5:14, Gal 5:6, Eph 6:24, Phi 1:9, 1Jo 3:18, 1Jo 4:19, 1Jo 5:3

Reciprocal: Exo 32:30 – Ye have Psa 32:5 – forgavest Psa 103:3 – forgiveth Isa 29:24 – also Mat 9:2 – be Mat 20:16 – the last Mar 2:5 – he said Luk 1:77 – the Luk 7:41 – the one Luk 15:10 – one Luk 18:14 – went Joh 21:7 – when Rom 4:7 – General Rom 5:16 – but the free Rom 12:1 – by the Eph 1:7 – the forgiveness Col 1:14 – the 1Ti 1:16 – for a 1Jo 2:12 – your

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE RESULT OF FORGIVENESS

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.

Luk 7:47

There is a slight shade of difficulty flung across this part of the most simple and beautiful incident.

I. The root of the mistaken view lies in the wrong punctuation or emphasis of the sentence. It ought not to be, Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven for she loved much; but, Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven. For she loved much. She loved much is rather the reason why He says it, than of the fact that she was forgiven. The reason why we are forgiven is not because we love; but the reason why we love is because we have been forgiven. The test of the forgiveness is love. And the more the forgivenessor, which is the same thing, the more the sense of the forgivenessthe larger will be the love.

II.Forgiven!I do not know when the woman was forgiven. But I think no one in the world doubts that, when she took her place at Christs feet, and began to weep her tears, and with those tears to wash His feet, and then to wipe them with her hair, and kiss them, and to anoint them with the ointment out of the alabaster-box,she had been forgiven. Mere sorrow for sin never did that! Sorrow will weep; but sorrow alone would not kiss the feet, and store the ointment, and wipe away her own tears with her own hair. There was more love than sorrow there; there was more peace and joy than there was sorrow there. Take care that you know the precedence in which these things come. You saypenitence, forgiveness, love. Yes; but much moreforgiveness, love, penitence.

III. Do not be afraid to take forgiveness.Never think of working up to your forgiveness; accept it; lay it as the basis of your spiritual life. It is the great element of your sanctification. You will do very little without it. Your active, useful, honouring life will begin at the date when you rest in the sense that you are forgiven. It is the most wonderful part of all spiritual transformationsthat sin turns into love!

Rev. James Vaughan.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

7

Jesus did not deny that the woman was of the lower class and had many sins. But she was given a higher rating than the debtor who owed five hundred pence. He gave his love after receiving the favor of being forgiven the debt, but the woman loved Jesus because of her sincere faith in him even before having received any favor. In return for that attitude Jesus gave her the great reward of complete forgiveness.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

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.

[For she loved much.] If we consider these two or three things, we shall quickly understand the force and design of the word for; etc.

I. That this was not the first time when this woman betook herself to our Saviour; nor is this the first of her receiving remission of her sins. It is supposed, and that not without good reason, that this was Mary Magdalene. If so, then had her ‘seven devils’ been cast out of her before; and at that time her sins had been forgiven her, our Lord at once indulging to her the cure both of her body and her mind. She therefore, having been obliged by so great a mercy, now throws herself in gratitude and devotion at the feet of Christ. She had obtained remission of her sins before this action: and from thence came this action, not from this action her forgiveness.

II. Otherwise the similitude which our Saviour propounds about forgiving the debt, would not be to the purpose at all. The debt is not released because the debtor loves his creditor, but the debtor loves because his debt is forgiven him. Remission goes before, and love follows.

III. Christ doth not say, She hath washed my feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and anointed me with ointment, therefore her sins are forgiven; but for this cause I say unto thee, Her sins are forgiven her. He tells Simon this, that he might satisfy the murmuring Pharisee. “Perhaps, Simon, thou wonderest within thyself, that since this hath been so lewd a woman, I should so much as suffer her to touch me: but I must tell thee that it is very evident, even from this obsequiousness of hers, and the good offices she hath done to me, that her sins are forgiven her: she could never have given these testimonies and fruits of her gratitude and devotion, if she had still remained in her guilt, and not been loosed form her sins.”

Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels

Luk 7:47. Wherefore I say to thee. Because of these exhibitions of love, in recognition of them, I say to thee. Our Lord gives the reason for His saying that she is forgiven, not for the forgiveness itself. The latter sense is ungrammatical, as well as out of keeping with the parable.

Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, have been and are forgiven.

For she loved much. Not: because she loved much, as though her love were the cause of the forgiveness. This sense is directly opposed to the parable (Luk 7:42), which represents the debtors as unable to pay and the forgiveness free; to the next clause, which plainly makes the forgiveness the ground of the love, not the reverse; and also to Luk 7:50, which represents faith, not love, as the antecedent of forgiveness, on the side of the person forgiven. The clause is to be explained: since she loved much, i.e., Her sins which are many are forgiven (as you may conclude according to your own judgment, that much forgiveness produces much love), since she loved much (as these manifestations indicate). The word loved refers to the acts spoken of in Luk 7:44-46. The assumption that the woman was Mary Magdalene is used to support the false view mentioned above; the gratitude being regarded as called forth by the casting out of the demons, and the forgiveness of sins as first granted after this display of love. The aptness of the parable is destroyed by this interpretation.

Little is forgiven, etc. One who feels little need of forgiveness is meant. Our Lord does not apply this directly to Simonbut leaves that to his conscience.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

7:47 Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; {f} for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, [the same] loveth little.

(f) That is, says Theophylact, she has shown her faith abundantly: and Basil in his “Sermon of Baptism” says, “He that owes much has much forgiven him, that he may love much more”. And therefore Christ’s saying is so plain in light of this that it is a wonder to see the enemies of the truth so badly distort and misinterpret this place in such a thorough manner in order to establish their meritorious works: for the greater sum a man has forgiven him, the more he loves him that has been so gracious to him. And this woman shows by deeds of love how great the benefit was she had received: and therefore the charity that is here spoken of is not to be taken as the cause of her forgiveness, but as a sign of it: for Christ does not say as the Pharisees did that she was a sinner, but bears her witness that the sins of her past life are forgiven her.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Jesus next drew a conclusion from what He had just said. The woman’s great love showed that she had received great forgiveness. Jesus did not mean that she had earned great forgiveness with her great love. Her love was the result of, not the reason for, her forgiveness. This is clear from the parable (Luk 7:42-43) as well as from Jesus’ later statement that it was her faith, not her love, that had saved her (Luk 7:50). As a maxim, the intensity of one’s love tends to be proportionate to his perception of the greatness of his forgiveness.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)