One On One: 100 Days With Jesus--Ministry YearsSample

Forgiven: The One who sees your soul

“Party-crasher” was hardly the worst name she had been called. Other names: whore, slut, prostitute, hurt way worse. No one grows up aspiring to such a vocation. And no one outlives it.

It’s better than starving, some would justify. She wasn’t so sure. When circumstances turned on her, selling what should have been treasured was the only way she knew to survive.   

That day she crashed the party, she knew something that the men in the room had forgotten. The label “sinner” is not judged on a scale. They think some sins are worse than others. Some can be forgiven; others not. But she knew sin was the great equalizer. She knew better than they did how much she needed to be forgiven and off-screen somewhere recently, she had found mercy in the heart of Jesus, her Messiah and Savior. 

So never mind the rude chatter that swept the room, Jesus saw her. He saw her gratitude. 

Thank You for rescuing me, Jesus. For bending down when no one else cared. You took this beat up life and made me new. Forgiveness: received. The beauty of it made her weep.

And Jesus didn’t stop her. He knew everything about her, what “kind of woman she   was” and it moved Him even more. “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven,” He said to the room. She used to be bought cheap, now she’s been bought back. And the only appropriate place to be right now was at His feet. 

But if that wasn’t shocking enough to the room, she unfurled her long hair (the   cultural equivalent of undressing), and covered Jesus’ feet with her kisses and tears and dried them with her hair. 

Normally, a host would see to the common courtesy of washing his guests’ tired and   dusty feet. Jesus was quick to meet His host’s indignant, accusing stare with, “No one else washed My feet . . .” 

Everything about her humble act told Jesus she understood the depth of her sin and that His mercy went deeper still. She was the only person in the room who understood exactly who she was without His forgiveness and who she is now because of it. 

We learn quite a lesson in her beautiful act: the intensity of our love for Jesus is in direct proportion to our realization of how much we’ve been forgiven.  

 Tomorrow: One on one with Jesus in His grief