Minimal forgiveness = minimal gratitude

Ironic, isn't it? The account of the harlot annointing Jesus' feet at the home of the Pharisee. When Jesus tells the Pharisee the parable of the two debtors, one who owed more than the other. Is He really saying that the harlot had more sin to be forgiven than the Pharisee? Am I not as grateful to Jesus as some others in the kingdom, because I have not sinned as much as they? Or perhaps my sins along with the sins of the Pharisee just happen to not be as grievous?

Lord, have mercy on us in our arrogance. Forgive the attitude in our hearts that boasts how lucky You must be to have us on Your team.

Of course, my sin is as great as that of the harlot. So then the question must be, if my sin is so great therefore making my forgiveness abundant, why then the prideful heart instead of extreme gratitude?

Perhaps the words of Edna Long could help answer this, "Few of us have looked long enough into ourselves to see that what seems to us and to others as normally attractive is acutally as graceless as a scarecrow and even repulsive."

Or as Oswald Chambers once wrote, "When one really sees himself as the Lord sees him, it is not the abominable sins of the flesh that shock him, but the awful nature of the pride of his own heart against Jesus Christ. When he sees himself in the light of the Lord, the shame and horror and the desperate conviction come home."

"It is the things that are right and noble and good from the natural standpoint that keep us back from God's best. To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God is to bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ...... Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence."

Perhaps the difference between the harlot and the Pharisee (and myself) is that she first saw Christ for Who He really was/is thus enabling her to see her wickedness and need for forgiveness. Much like Isaiah in the year of King Uzziah's death, when he saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted . What was his response? "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." (Isaiah 6: 1-8)

As Kay Arthur stated, "When I see Him - really see Him - in His holiness, in His power, in His blazing purity, I see myself for what I am. And what I see isn't lovely at all."

Then and only then am I taken to my rightful place as the harlot who has been forgiven many, many sins, and so is very, very grateful. Indeed!