[AI translation] The table of grace is set before us again. All that is on it: the bread representing the body of Christ and the wine representing His blood, proclaim what Jesus said to this sinful woman in the parable, "Your sins are forgiven you!" Lk7,48.The great good news that our sins are forgiven is sealed by the Lord's inviting us to a holy feast and seating us at His table, saying, "All of you who hunger and thirst for justification, eat and drink of this, partake of it.
Before the invitation to this table is made, and before the familiar declaration is made, "I proclaim to you the forgiveness of your sins," let the Word of God speak to us about forgiveness of sins, the necessity, reality and consequence of forgiveness.
I.
There are two people in our Word before Jesus: a Pharisee and a sinful woman. There are things in which they are similar and things in which they are different. But they are similar and different in very different ways than one might at first think.
Above all, they are alike in that they are both in debt. "One creditor had two debtors," says Jesus in the parable Lk 7,41. Although one owes 50 coins and the other 500, it does not matter now, nor is the amount important. What matters here is the fact that both are debtors. Since Jesus is using these two debtors as a parable of the Pharisee and the sinful woman, this means that both are debtors, both are guilty. So is the Pharisee. And this is what every Pharisee must first very seriously acknowledge, that he is also a debtor. He also owes God. Let us now understand the word Pharisee as it was understood in Jesus' day: a Pharisee meant that this is the most a man can do religiously, in zeal for God, in loyalty to his church. No more can be expected of a man, no more religious zeal, than the Pharisee has fulfilled.
In today's parlance, we might say that the Pharisees were churchly, biblical, moral, sacrificial, well-meaning, zealous men.
So what was their debt? They were in debt to conversion. They were impeccable, great, good people, and therefore they believed that they did not need to repent. Why should they repent, when they had always believed in God and served him with great zeal?! Let such sinners as this vile woman in our Word repent. Such a one has much to repent of. But we, Pharisees?
They saw an essential difference between themselves and public sinners. They distinguished between people in this way: there are we, the godly, the righteous people, and there are the sinners, the unbelievers. This is typical Pharisaic thinking.
"And when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, 'If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what kind of woman this is who is to him, that he is a sinner'" Lk7,39. As the other Pharisee prayed in the temple in the well-known story: "God, I thank thee that I am not like other men ... as this publican is" Lk18,11.
To look down on the vile sinner, and not to notice that the virtue, the honesty, the piety with which he distinguishes himself from the vile sinner, makes him so haughty and presumptuous, so self-righteous, that all his virtue and piety become detestable at once.
Oh, how right Jesus is when he lumps the Pharisee, this respectable, distinguished man, in with the ragged, sinful woman, and says: they are both debtors. The Pharisee doesn't even know how much he is in debt. To be a Pharisee today is to behave as if I were not in debt to Jesus, but as if He were in debt to me. Even this Pharisee in the parable did not observe the most elementary courtesy towards Jesus: he did not wash his feet, kiss him, pour oil on his head, but almost thought that Jesus should feel honoured to sit down at the table of such a respectable man.
Let the Word of God ask your heart now: Do you feel, do you know, do you acknowledge that you are a debtor to the Lord, just as that great sinner whom you despise, whom you despise, and have you not some of that Pharisaic pride that God owes you because you have suffered so much, or because you are not so reprobate, so godless, you pray, you cling to your faith. Thou mayest justly expect God to look upon thee differently, and to deal with thee differently from the great sinners.
But it would be well if you were now burdened with this statement of God's Word, that you are in debt. And it doesn't matter how much.
For in the parable, too, the debt was not the amount, but the fact that "they had not wherewith to pay it." Lk7,42. So, though there was a great difference in the amount, yet they were exactly alike in that neither could pay what he owed. So, although another may have a much greater debt to God than you, you cannot pay your small debt any more than the other can pay his great debt. So the result is the same whether one is a small sinner or a big sinner.
Just as it makes no difference to the result whether you arrive at the station a minute late after the train has left or half an hour late. So the real burden of the debt that you have is not that you have fifty or five hundred, but that you cannot pay it, and that you are ruined by it, that you are destroyed by it. No matter how small, it's unpayable. No matter how much you devote yourself, no matter how much you pray, no matter how much you torture yourself, no matter how much you suffer, all of this is not a valid means of payment in heaven for the repayment of your debt. Jesus, speaking of the two debtors, says that they had nothing to give. Neither did the Pharisee. They have nothing. We can't produce anything that can be counted toward repayment.
And the two debtors are alike in this, that the creditor will not execute on either, but forgives the debt to both. So there is no other solution for the devout, religious man than for the great corporate sinner: pardon. The most upright, the most zealous, and the most honest man among us is as much in need of God's grace as the most faithless. The small sin can only be redeemed in the same way as the great sin: by forgiveness.
The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sins, from the smallest, the most insignificant, the most insignificant, the sin that every man has, the sin that is so common that man cannot imagine himself without it: from that, too, only the blood of Jesus can cleanse us, and nothing else. So the blood of Jesus is just as necessary for this, just as indispensable as it is for the greatest, the most mysterious. For you, too, whatever you owe, there is only one solution: the cross of Christ. To Pharisee and sinful woman, to worshipper and blasphemer, to the virtuous and the immoral, what Jesus says here is equally true: the heavenly creditor forgives the debts of both.
II.
But now comes the great difference between the two debtors: although both have had their debts forgiven by the creditor, yet for only one has this forgiveness become a happy, liberated reality. Only one of them was actually freed from his debt, and that was the one who had the greater debt on his soul, the one who was more heavily burdened, the one for whom the debt was more unbearable.
This does not mean that one must now necessarily be a "great sinner" in order to experience the liberating effect, the reality, of forgiveness of sins - just as Jesus did not mean to express the magnitude of the burden of sin by the debt of fifty or five hundred coins, but the magnitude of the guilt, the degree of knowledge of sin. So with this parable Jesus is not saying in the end that there are great sinners and small sinners, but that one has much guilt and consequent repentance, the other little. I could say: one man's debts hurt, the other's do not. The one was humiliated to the depths of Christ's feet by the knowledge of his unworthiness and his great shame, the other thought he had nothing to be ashamed of. One looked up to Jesus from a very low place, the other wanted to look down on Christ from an imaginary height. To both the creditor forgave the debt, or rather, declared that the debt was forgiven, but this declaration meant real liberation only to the one who knew and suffered that he was a debtor, - and the greater the debt that was forgiven, the greater his liberation.
The remission of sins is complete, for all that is "done" for it that is necessary for God to give freely and freely to anyone, but it can only be received by stooping very low: by humbling under the weight of guilt, in the depths of repentance. This is where one hears with the heart this liberating declaration, "Thy sins are forgiven thee!" Lk7,48 So the attitude expressed by the weeping of the sinful woman, kneeling at the feet of Jesus, is not a condition for forgiveness of sins, because it is unconditional. The condition is that Christ's death has already taken place. So, the depth of repentance is not a condition for forgiveness, but a place for it. It is here that it becomes a reality, a blessing, a joy, a power that works repentance, a force that gives new life to the life of man. Everyone who is now in this depth should know that it is to him, to him personally, that the Lord says: "Your sins are forgiven you!" Lk7,48
III.
Do you know what this means? It means that if you're burdened with debt and you've realized that you can't pay, you should now take note of the great good news that you don't have to, because someone else has already paid it all for you. When you didn't have the money to pay your heavenly debts, someone came along, the only Someone here on earth who did have the money to pay, and what he had, he gave it all, completely, to settle all debts once and for all in heaven.
The precious blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross, is the only currency, the only means of payment valid in heaven, that will be accepted there to pay our debts. That's why God could forgive your debt, because Jesus Christ paid it for you.
So the grace of forgiveness is free, but not cheap: at the cost of the shedding of the holy blood of Jesus Christ. This blood, with which God paid for you, is the strongest bond by which He now binds you to Himself. He who has had many sins forgiven him loves more, and he who has had few forgiven him loves less," says Jesus. You know who really loves Christ? The one who owes the forgiveness of his sins to him. Forgiveness of sins is the strongest bond that binds a person to God. Every sin that God has forgiven me is one more strand in the bond that binds me to Him.
The believer's guilt, his sense of sin, is constantly growing. Even as he deals with the Word, more and more of his sins are exposed, and so he sees with ever-increasing amazement how great was the debt that Christ paid in his place. So more and more of the debt already paid is revealed. And the more my debt grows, the more my indebted gratitude and love for the Christ who paid it for me grows. The more I must love Him who has treated me so. So forgiveness of sins does not make me irresponsible for sin, but the more I receive it, the more I am indebted to it.
God disciplines His children by forgiving them and reminding them again and again of this fact of grace. He who has had his debts forgiven does not seek to do good and avoid evil because he fears punishment, but because he knows that his sins have been forgiven him.
God wants to free you too, through forgiveness of sins, so that you may henceforth live fully for Him.
I wish there were as many of us here today to whom Jesus says what he said to that sinful woman: 'Your faith has saved you. Go in peace." Lk7,50.
Amen
Date: 25 June 1950.