“MANY SINS” – “MANY SONS”
D. Robertson
At the end of Luke’s gospel we read of repentance and remission of sins being preached, and that has characterised this dispensation. God has been preaching repentance and remission of sins. In this woman in Luke we have a fine picture of one whose heart has been softened by repentance. It is a fine thing when God works in persons and brings about repentance, softens their heart. Simon’s heart is not softened. He is a picture of a man whose heart is filled with pride and prejudice. He is critical of the woman; he knows all about her, and he is critical of the Lord’s attitude to her. His heart was quite untouched by the great fact that the Vessel of divine grace is in his house. It says, “For the grace of God which carries with it salvation ... has appeared”, Titus 2: 11. It was there in Simon’s house in the Person of Jesus, and his heart was unmoved by it. I suppose his interest in Christ was really merely an idle curiosity. He would have heard about Him, heard of certain facts, and he wanted to see for himself. As we know, he did not even treat Him with the common courtesies that visitors ought to be treated with. He was disrespectful to the Lord, and he certainly completely misunderstood the Lord’s attitude to this woman.
I have often thought that Simon would be the kind of man that would write a book about himself. He speaks about the woman being a sinner, but he does not mention anything about his own sins. There are people like that; they write autobiographies. Sometimes it takes more than one book to tell about themselves, volume after volume. I suppose if Simon had written a book he would have written of the good upbringing he had, of his caste—a Pharisee—of his respectability, of his rectitude. He perhaps would have looked for a very eminent person to write the foreword; he would have looked for one who was maybe a Pharisee of the Pharisees to write a good foreword for him, somebody like Saul before he was converted, but you can be assured that in that book there would be no mention of his sins; he was not a repentant man. A repentant man can speak about his sins. A heart that is softened by divine grace can speak about its sins. I suppose this woman could have written a book about herself too. It might have been quite a long book; she had quite a sinful history. In one way there was no need for the woman to write a book, for everyone knew about her anyway, but the Lord Jesus sums up the woman’s history in two words “many sins”, “many sins”.
That is true of you and it is true of me. There is no need to write books about ourselves, no need to spread abroad the kind of people we are. What covers our histories, all of us, is “many sins”; but the Lord Jesus adds something, “Her many sins are forgiven”. How beautiful; what grace!—“Her many sins are forgiven”. Oh that it could have been said about Simon! The Lord longed to be able to say it about Simon. He equally longed for Simon’s forgiveness as for the woman’s; but of the woman He said, ‘Yes, she has many sins’. The woman was not covering up, neither was the Lord. Then He says, “Her many sins are forgiven”. One’s heart is full, beloved. Is everyone here conscious of the forgiveness of sins?
I wonder if you too have been conscious, first of all, that God has operated in your heart on the principle of repentance and softened it. Softened it so that you are able to be brought into the appreciation of God’s wonderful, grace that would extend the forgiveness of sins to you. There was no one who understood her sins like the Lord, her many sins.
How many there were I do not know, but the Lord knew them; you can rest assured: He knew them all. You say, ‘How do you know that?’ Well, I will tell you. He was going to be that woman’s Substitute. He is every repentant sinner’s Substitute, and these many sins that He speaks about, they were borne by Him on the cross. The judgment of God that was due to us was borne on the cross. Peter says, He “bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Peter 2: 24.
Think of that; that is the believer’s sins. Substitution is preached to the believer. I trust I am speaking to persons who are believers, who have known and found the divine highway into blessing, “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ”, Acts 20: 21. It is of such a person that the Lord, can say, “Her many sins are forgiven”, and it is to such a person that we can say that the Lord Jesus Christ, this holy Saviour, was your Substitute on the cross of Calvary. All those sins!—Think of what it meant as the Lord Jesus in those three hours of darkness, endured God’s wrath on account of them. Every one of those sins would be named on His head and judged, judged unsparingly by God in the Person of Jesus at that time of suffering. Think of the cry of that holy Sufferer, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46)—the abandonment, a total matter; with no mitigation. Some people try to weaken the thought of the abandonment by saying that the Father would not abandon Christ. He was abandoned by God in a total sense, and in those hours of darkness He bore in His own body the sins of all who put their faith in Him.
Could you measure it? Could you understand it? You think of the sins of the redeemed. We were thinking today of all those who are dead in Christ—think of their sins all being forgiven; who could compute them? There would not be a computer in the world great enough to compute the sins of the believers, those who have put their trust in Jesus; but for every one of those sins, the price has been paid and paid by Jesus. He was there vicariously, for you and for me, and all the question of our sins was completely dealt with in those three hours of darkness at that time of suffering. And so He says, “Her many sins are forgiven”.
That ought to have touched Simon, you know; it ought to have touched him. It touches me; it should touch all our hearts that the Lord Jesus Christ, representing the grace of God, can utter such words in such simplicity. She well understood something of the glory of the Saviour. It is remarkable that the woman does not speak about her sins. Forgiven sinners do not speak about their sins, they do not make much of themselves. I remember a man, an important man in his own eyes, an important man in our town, and he said, ‘If I was a believer, I would be a great man for Christ’—‘ I would be a great man’. Oh, that is just self, bringing yourself forward. This woman is not like that, she is making much of Christ. That really is the secret; the secret of the forgiven sinner’s life is to make much of Christ.
O, dear friends, what a joy it is to experience the luxury—one uses that word—the luxury of the forgiveness of sins. There is nothing like it. We are in a time of luxury; men want this and they want something better the next day, they want something more luxurious. I tell you, the greatest luxury is the forgiveness of your sins. I do not think there is anything that pains the heart of God more than to see a creature, one of His creatures, going about this earth with a conscience laden with the burden of his sins. The death of Jesus, the sufferings of Jesus, have opened the way for God to forgive the sinner, and repentance and remission are being preached. They are not being preached aimlessly, they are being preached that you and I might be brought to know the simple joy of the forgiveness of sins. It is a blessed thing. We sing sometimes, and it is something we should sing often, ‘Happy day! happy day! When Jesus washed my sins away!’ Sometimes, as we get older, we get jaded and we become a little formal, we become a little religious in our outlook.
Ah, let us get back to these blessed realities, the reality we knew when first we put our trust in the Saviour. You young men and women, have you trusted the Saviour? Are you conscious of having the forgiveness of your sins? Is your heart a softened heart? I trust there is no heart here filled with pride and prejudice; that would only hinder you and keep you from the blessing. A proud heart would say, ‘I do not need it; I am as good, as the next man’. You know, you are in need of the forgiveness of your sins, and the way to it is repentance towards God’ and, faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, I have spoken of the Lord disclosing this woman’s history in two words, “many sins”. I wanted to link that with the next verse I have read. It is not “many sins” there, but it is “many sons”—“many sons”. What a contrast!—many sins and many sons! I think Hebrews 2: 10 takes us on to the eternal scene. What is going to be there before God is not persons with many sins. It is persons who have had their sins met, and met to God’s complete satisfaction, but it is persons who are sons, sons of God. It says, “For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory”—that is, God acting for Himself. Luke 7 is God acting for the sinner, and that is the dispensation we are living in. God is still acting for the sinner—that long look some of us have been speaking of in these days, when the cherubim are looking out for men to come in all their need into the house and find an area of relief and satisfaction so that their hearts can pour forth to God in responsive affection. Think of what eternity will be, the presence of God filled with persons who are entirely suitable to it. That is what sonship is.
We say sonship is the highest form of Christian blessing. So it is, but you know, sonship is really for God. That is what it is for. Sonship is for the satisfaction of the heart of God. I want to leave that simple, word with all of us. Think of the contrast to “many sins”. Oh the divine triumph! it says, “But where sin abounded grace has over-abounded”, Romans 5: 20.
Think of the triumph of grace, “many sins”, but “many sons”, and sons secured in conformity, to God’s own Son, like Christ, to be in the presence of God in a holy way and to be engaged in responsive praises and outbursts of joy. I think eternity will involve that. There will be the spontaneity of holy outbursts of joy to God. Christ will ensure that. Christ as Man will ensure it. The blessed Son of God, the Mediator. He will ensure that eternity will involve a holy and spontaneous outburst of affection to God. That, I think, is what the many sons involves. May God bless the word.
Preaching at Kirkcaldy
13 August 1989