One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” (Luke 7:36-39)
My first thought about this passage was to thank our Father in heaven for making his word real to his children. While skeptics mock it and reject it, God opens the eyes of the blind so we can see what he has written. He opens the ears of the deaf so we can hear “what the Spirit is saying to the churches”.
And so it stood out that Luke’s “orderly account” brought out the contrast between the way Jesus constantly used God’s word (Scripture) to teach and affirm what he was doing, while the religious elite judged him by their own personal notions and presuppositions.
Because this Pharisee, Simon, was convinced that the Messiah would never have let a “sinful” woman touch him the way he and his guests had all witnessed, and because the Pharisees were the religious teachers of the people, it is very telling that Simon judged Jesus based on personal preferences rather than the Scriptures!
This made me explore again what the Scriptures of Simon’s day (what we now call the Old Testament) said that would have made perfect sense of what was happening with Jesus and the sinful woman.
The passage in Isaiah 53 is very clear about the Messiah’s association with sinners. It is sadly fascinating that the Jews of our day are just as ignorant of that chapter of the Bible as Simon was 2,000 years earlier!
In fact, in videos I have watched of Jewish believers in Jesus sharing the gospel with the Jewish people, when they read from Isaiah 53, most Jewish people think that is from the New Testament because they realize right away that it sounds like Jesus! They are shocked to find that it is their Bible (called “the Tanakh”) that described what the Messiah would do. They are then bewildered by the realization that they knew it was talking about Jesus!(1)
When we consider how the prophets spoke of a Savior who would so associate with our sins as to bear them on himself, and then consider what God says about being close to the “broken and contrite in heart” (Psalm 51:17), it should be no surprise that Jesus who was “God with us” would let a sinful woman touch him in worship because she had experienced the forgiveness of her sins.
One of my favorite expressions of God’s association with sinners in the Old Testament (Tanakh) is God’s own testimony about himself,
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isaiah 57:15).
Just as much as God “dwells” in the high and holy place of heaven, he “also” dwells with sinners who are “contrite and lowly in spirit”. The Pharisees should have recognized that Jesus was showing us what this looks like in person!
I will conclude with one more Scripture that shows what this Savior would look like when he came into the world to save sinners.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
(Isaiah 40:11)
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
(Isaiah 40:11)
I am quite sure that Jesus did not see a “sinful woman” worshiping him that day. He saw a sheep who was responding to the Shepherd who found her. He saw a lamb feeling that he had already gathered her into his arms and carried her close to his heart.
She, in fact, knew what the Messiah would be like better than a Pharisee whose hard heart saw nothing good at all. And I would rather be thought of as a sinner who has no right to be amongst the religious elites than a religious hypocrite who doesn’t even know what God’s word says about our Savior coming into the world to save sinners.
(1) Here is a link to the “So Be It!” YouTube page that has many videos showing Jewish believers in Jesus (Messianic Jews) sharing the gospel with fellow Jews. https://www.youtube.com/c/SoBeIt32ad#:~:text=Welcome%20to%20SO%20BE%20IT%21%2C%20a%20video%20project,conversations%20about%20Jewish%20life%20with%20faith%20in%20Jesus.
© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
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