39 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.” 40 And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have

something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.” 41 “A certain

moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.

42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love

him more?” 43 Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger

debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” (Luke 7:39-43)

Yesterday, we established that peace comes by living to please Jesus, not people. The

program of “people pleasing” is emotional “fools gold.” Feeling the adoration and praise

of others may bring a measure of fleeting peace but there’s always an expiration date

with the approval of others. Today, we discover another important principle for

cultivating peace in our lives:

Peace comes by taking OUR sin to Jesus, instead of the sins of others

Simon and the sinful woman both had sin that they wanted Jesus to consider. Both the

religious leader and the prostitute were interested in engaging Jesus on the issue of

immoral thoughts, desires and behaviors. The only difference is that the prostitute

wanted to talk to Jesus about the sin which remained in her heart, while Simon wanted

to discuss the sin that he sees in other people.

One of the reasons that so many of us lack peace is that we are more concerned about

the sinful thoughts, desires and actions of other people than the sin which remains in

our own hearts. In fact, we sometimes use the sins of others to provide ourselves with a

false sense of assurance… “at least I’m not as bad as so and so” we tell ourselves.

Even worse, is our propensity to use the sinful things people have done to justify our

lack of engagement with Jesus or the church.

Think about it…this sinful woman could have easily thought to herself “I’m not going to

step foot in Simon’s house or approach Jesus because I know what all those religious

hypocrites think about me.” However, her focus was not on the sins of Simon or anyone

else at Simon’s house. Her only concern was dealing with the sin which remained in her

own life. As this woman’s awareness of her sin grew so did her love for Jesus, which is

the central point of Jesus’ short narrative regarding the two debtors.

By Jimmy Carter