“Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”
Luke 17:3-4

It is impossible to go through life without being offended or hurt by someone else. The Lord Jesus said, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come” (Lk. 17:1)! Earlier in Luke, the Lord Jesus likened forgiveness to the canceling of a financial debt (Lk. 7:36-47).

While having dinner in Simon the Pharisee’s house, a sinful woman came in and washed our Lord’s feet with her own tears, wiping them with her hair and anointing His feet with fragrant oil. Her affection for who the Lord was and her realization of what she was are obvious in the passage. But this was not so with the Pharisee; Simon judged both the Lord Jesus and the woman.

Knowing what was in Simon’s heart and what he was thinking, the Lord Jesus said, “There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?” Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.”

Then our Lord pointed out what she had done for Him and what Simon, as the host, had failed to do. He then declared, “Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.”

The lesson here seems clear: sin always incurs a debt that must be forgiven. The more aware we are of how much we have been forgiven, the more love we will have toward the One who cancels the debt. Another outflow of this story is that when this woman, who had been forgiven of her sins, left the house that day, the aroma of the fragrant oil she had used went with her in her hair. We might say that the fragrance of forgiveness followed her!

Anchor For Today:
The fragrance of our forgiveness ought to follow us as well when we encounter those who sin against us. Offenses will come, but our Lord’s instruction is to “take heed to yourselves” and forgive them. It is easier to do when we remember how much we have been forgiven.