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Some questions in life are easy to answer. For example, the question, ‘Are you married?’ Whenever I ask people that they say, ‘Yes’ or, ‘No.’ I’ve never had anyone say, ‘I’m not sure,’ or, ‘I try to be,’ or, ‘Well, I do go to weddings.’ Whereas when I ask people, ‘Would you say you’re a Christian?’ they find it harder to answer, and I’ve often had people say, ‘I’m not sure,’ or, ‘I try to be,’ or, ‘Well, I do go to church.’ Which shows there’s a lot of confusion about what makes someone a Christian. Some people think if you’re born in this country – a supposedly ‘Christian country’ – it makes you a Christian. But that isn’t actually true. Some people think if your parents are Christian and brought you up in a certain way, that makes you a Christian. But that isn’t true either. Some people think that if you try to live a good life that makes you a Christian. But plenty of people who believe nothing about Jesus do that, so that can’t be true either. And then some people think that if you go to church that makes you a Christian. Well, I was made to go to church - or - chapel, six times a week at school and I can say that although it made me graffiti more hymn books than I care to remember, it didn’t make me a Christian.

So what does make someone a Christian? From time to time we have a sermon to answer that question and help each of us work out where we stand with Christ. Because there are always plenty of us here Sunday by Sunday who are just investigating and thinking through what we believe. And that may be you. You may be just coming on Sundays – just wanting to listen and be anonymous. Or you may have been on one of our Christianity Explored courses and still be processing what you heard. Or you may be here as a new student facing the question, ‘Is the Christian faith of your background actually your faith – or are you now going to leave it behind like the more embarrassing posters in your bedroom back home?’

Well, the best way to get clear where we stand in relation to Jesus is to look at him in the pages of one of the four Gospels. Tonight we’re going to look at the part of Luke’s Gospel which we had read earlier. So I wonder if you’d turn to that with me. It’s Luke 7.36-50. This is an incident which really happened 2000 years ago in Jesus’ life where two people make big discoveries about where they really stand with God. One is a man - who thinks he’s in relationship with God but discovers that he’s not. The other is a woman who’d have thought God couldn’t possibly relate to her but discovers that he wants to. And maybe you need to make one of those discoveries about yourself tonight. So let me read verse 36:

“Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table.”

THE ‘BE-GOOD-ENOUGH’ IDEA OF GOD

Now the Pharisees, as you may know, tried to obey God’s law very seriously. To help themselves keep the Old Testament Sabbath law, they came up with a list of 39 things you shouldn’t do on a Saturday – including cooking anything, carrying anything and even tying or untying a knot. And one of them, called Simon, invites Jesus for dinner. And in those days they didn’t sit on chairs. Like it says, ‘they reclined at the table’. It would have been a low table, like one of our coffee tables, and they lay down with their heads towards it, propped up on elbows, and their feet pointing outwards away from the food (for obvious reasons). So verse 37 and 38:

“When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.”

Now when Luke says she’d ‘lived a sinful life’ he means a particularly notorious sinful life – maybe she’d been a prostitute; or had a whole series of sexual partners; we don’t know. Whatever it was, she was the person regarded as morally the lowest of the low. In our culture I guess that would be the paedophile. Anyway, she hears Jesus is at this meal; she gathers up this incredibly expensive bottle of Chanel no.5 – the only really valuable thing she owns – and comes to blow it all in one go on Jesus, as a gesture of love. And this Pharisee looks at her like something the cat’s dragged in. But he’s not first and foremost passing judgement on her, but on Jesus. Look at verse 39:

“When the Pharisee who had invited [Jesus] saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner.’ ”

I.e. if Jesus really was from God in some way, he wouldn’t dream of associating with a woman like this. Now just stop and think for a moment: what idea of God lies behind that kind of thinking? Surely it’s the idea that God accepts people if they’re good enough. It’s the idea that you can arrange the human race along a line. And at the bottom end are the really bad people – like paedophiles. And up the top end are the really good people – like doctors working for the Red Cross in war zones. And there’s a cut-off point along the line above which God says, ‘You’re good enough for me; I accept you’, and below which God rejects you. That was Simon’s idea of God. And needless to say he thought he was safely up the good enough end of the line, and that this woman was right down the reject end, with no hope of ever making it above the cut. That was Simon’s idea of God - and it may be yours as well. And you can sum it up like this: Be good enough... and God will accept you. And that idea of God leads either to pride or to despair.

If you kid yourself that your life really is good enough in God’s eyes, it’ll lead you to pride and to getting a sense of moral security from looking down on others. There was a very shrewd column in The Times a while back about why paedophiles make such high profile news. It said, ‘We love our paedophiles because they make the rest of us feel secure. If we can brand one group of people as evil, we can reassure ourselves that we must be in a different category altogether.’ That’s what pride does.

On the other hand, if you’re more honest with yourself, this be-good-enough idea of God will lead you to despair. I came to faith in Jesus at the school I mentioned earlier - where they made us go to chapel six times a week. And looking back, what we heard there was a watered-down version of Christianity - because the message was not Jesus, the message was basically, ‘Be good.’ And I tried to be. I tried to change in line with how God says he wants us to live in the Bible - and I found I couldn’t. I found I couldn’t actually stop being arrogant and jealous and sharp-tongued and all the other things I was. And I remember thinking, ‘If the Christian message is simply, ‘Be good enough for God’, that is an impossible task - and you might as well give up in despair right now.’

But the message of this part of the Bible is that this ‘be-good-enough’ idea of God is totally untrue. A friend of mine was brought up going to church and he says that Sunday by Sunday he refused to listen to the sermon because he knew all the preacher would do was tell him to be good - which everyone else was telling him anyway, so he didn’t see why he needed to hear it yet again. So instead of listening, he counted bricks in the wall at the front. And during the average sermon he’d get up to somewhere between 900 and 1000. And it was so boring that one Sunday he thought to himself, ‘The sermon can’t be any more boring than counting bricks, so just this once I’ll give it a listen.’ And I remember him saying, ‘I got the shock of my life. Because all those years I’d been assuming they were telling me to be good. When all along they’d been trying to tell me what Jesus did to bring me back into relationship with God.’

And that’s what the rest of this part of the Bible is about.


WHAT GOD IS REALLY LIKE

So look down to verse 40. Simon’s just thought to himself, ‘If Jesus was really from God, he’d never accept a woman like this.’ And verses 40 to 42:

“Jesus answered him, ‘Simon, I have something to tell you.’ ‘Tell me, teacher,’ he said.‘Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii [£50,000], and the other fifty [£5000 – adjusting for today’s prices]. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?’ ”

Well, what would you say? In my experience, my parents have been the great debt-cancellers: throughout student days and since they’ve often bought me things or taken me on holidays where the idea was that I’d pay them back – but in the event they’ve torn up my cheque. And their doing that has made me want to love them more - and show it. So which of the debtors will love the debt-canceller more? Verse 43:

“Simon replied, ‘I suppose the one who had the bigger debt cancelled.’ ‘You have judged correctly,’ Jesus said.

And now he holds up that little story – or parable – of the debtors as a mirror so that Simon can see the truth of the situation (if he’s got eyes to see). Verses 44 to 47:

“Then he [Jesus] turned toward the woman and said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. [I.e. you didn’t offer me any of the basic courtesies of the day – didn’t take my coat, didn’t offer me a drink – nothing – whereas this woman made this extraordinary gesture of love.] Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.’ ”

Now Jesus is not saying there, ‘Because this woman has shown me this great love, therefore as a reward I’ve forgiven her sins.’ He’s saying, ‘This love she’s shown me is evidence that I’ve already forgiven her – on a previous occasion – and what you’ve just seen is her response to that. You’ve just seen the evidence that I’ve cancelled her moral debt, because, Simon, like you’ve just said, you know who’s had their debt cancelled by whether they love the debt-canceller.’

So let’s do a bit of reconstruction of the story. This woman, verse 37, ‘had lived a sinful life’ – up until recently, that is. But now she was a changed person. Because she’d met Jesus on a previous occasion, heard that God his Father had sent him to bring people back into relationship with him – and responded. And she’d basically heard both the bad news and the good news from Jesus.


THE BAD NEWS FROM JESUS: SOMETHING TO ADMIT

The bad news is that every single one of us is morally in debt to God – i.e. we each ‘owe’ God a life lived the way he wants it lived and we’ve each failed to ‘pay’. That’s why, in his little story, Jesus begins, ‘Two people owed money to a certain money-lender.’ The money-lender stands for God, and what Simon needs to see is that there are actually two sinners in his dining room – not just this woman, but him as well. Now, obviously, he’d sinned differently to her – but the point is, he’d still sinned. Your moral debt and my moral debt will look different to other peoples’ – and even relatively minor if we compare ourselves to an ‘easy target’ like a paedophile. But we’re still moral debtors, because we’ve got to compare ourselves not with other people but with how God says he wants us to live in the Bible. And when Jesus was asked to sum that up he said this:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ [i.e. at every moment and in every area of your life, live consciously to please God. And then he added:] ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ [i.e. in every encounter with every other person, treat them as you would want to be treated.]” (Mark 12.30-31)

So, hands up all the non-sinners here tonight.

I remember being driven down the motorway by a friend and noticing he was doing about 85mph and I said to him, ‘What about the speed limit?’ And at that moment a Porsche shot by at a good 100mph. And my friend said, ‘Well what about him?’ To which of course the answer is, ‘Well, what about him? You’re speeding and he’s speeding. The only difference is: he’s speeding at a different speed because you’ve only got a Vauxhall Cavalier that wouldn’t know what 100mph was.’ (I didn’t say that.) The point is: what we’ve got to compare ourselves with on the motorway is 70mph. And what we’ve got to compare ourselves with when it comes to God is how he says he wants us to live in the Bible. And the bad news – which deep down in our consciences we know anyway – is that every single one of us is morally in debt to God.

And this woman heard that from Jesus and admitted it to herself and to God. And the question is: have you admitted it? Will you admit it?


THE GOOD NEWS FROM JESUS: SOMETHING TO BELIEVE

But then she also heard the good news from Jesus. Because she heard him saying on behalf of God his Father, ‘I will forgive you everything I should hold against you; come back to me as your rightful King.’ And that is still God’s promise and call to each of us. And this woman heard that promise and believed it. So that if you look down to the last verse – verse 50:

“Jesus said to the woman, ‘Your faith [i.e. your believing what I’ve promised] has saved you [i.e. saved you from a life without God and heading for judgement – to a life in friendship with God and heading for the certainty of heaven when you die].”

Now many people would say you can’t be certain like that. So, for example, Muslim friends have told me that Allah will weigh our good deeds and our bad deeds in the balance and be merciful depending on the outcome. But that isn’t mercy at all – since, by definition, mercy is being given what you don’t deserve. That’s just another way of saying, ‘Allah will accept those who are good enough.’ It’s that ‘be-good-enough’ idea of God, of working to deserve God’s acceptance, which you find in all the human religions of the world and all the watered-down versions of the Christian message.

What’s unique about Jesus is that he offers certainty about where we stand. So look at how he assures this woman in verse 48:

“Then Jesus said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ [i.e. be assured that everything wrong in your past has been forgiven. And verse 50:]Jesus said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’ [i.e. be assured that you can go into the future knowing that God is at peace with you, that he won’t hold future sins against you, either – but will forgive you whenever you need it.]”

And between those assurances comes the obvious question. Verse 49:

“The other guests began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ ”

I.e. what right does Jesus have to say you’re forgiven? And the answer is: he has the right because he’s God’s Son, and because he came into the world to cancel our moral debt. That’s what Jesus did as he died on the cross: the one man who ever lived a sinless life, the one man infinitely ‘in credit’ with God his Father, paid off our moral debt so that we could be forgiven.

And this woman believed that Jesus had the right to forgive her. And again the question is: do you believe that? Will you believe that?

And if and when you do, and you share this woman’s experience of being forgiven and accepted by God, that’s what changes you where you can’t change yourself. I remember someone in my last church who wasn’t yet a believer but asked if he could meet up with me once a week to tackle his questions and problems with the Christian message. So we spent most of a year covering all the obvious questions from, ‘How can you trust the Bible?’ to ‘Would I have to stop getting drunk if I became a Christian?’ And finally it seemed there was nothing else to cover. So I said to him, ‘Why don’t you go away this week and try to work out what’s stopping you becoming a Christian, and come back and tell me?’ So he came back the next week and said, ‘There are two things stopping me: I’m not good enough. And I couldn’t change.’ And I said, ‘Well, on the first one, you’re absolutely right – which is why forgiveness is such good news.’ And I said, ‘On the second one, it’s precisely being forgiven and accepted by God that changes you and makes you want to live for him in a way you didn’t before – makes you want to love him in a way you didn’t before. And you see that in this woman. And the same would be true for you. We can’t change ourselves. But relationship with Christ can and does.


THE QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF

I said at the start that my aim tonight was to answer the question, ‘What makes someone a Christian?’ and to help each of us work out where we stand with Christ. And the question you need to answer is not, ‘Do you have a Christian background? or, ‘Do you go to church?’ or ‘Have you signed up for Hall Group or Focus?’ or ‘Have you been through Christianity Explored?’ The question is simply this:

Are you sure your sins are forgiven,
and is your heart’s desire to love Jesus?

I know that’s really a two-part question, but the parts go together: the more sure you are that Jesus has forgiven your sins, the more you find yourself wanting to love and live for him. But I wonder what your answer would be? If your answer is ‘Yes’, as it was for this woman, then the Bible would say you’re a Christian – in relationship with Christ. But if you find your answer is ‘No’, it may be that you’re not yet a Christian – or that you’re a Christian who, at the moment, is lacking confidence in your forgiveness for whatever reason. But if tonight you’ve worked out that you’re not yet a Christian – not yet in this relationship with Christ – then that’s an important step along the way. When I was hearing that watered-down Christianity at school, I remember being confused about what brings you into relationship with God - and thinking that maybe I was, when in fact I wasn’t. And it was so helpful to hear a talk like this which got me clear on where I stood. Because once I realised I didn’t have this relationship with God they were talking about, then I could answer the question, ‘Do I want it?’.

Now you may be much further back in your investigating and thinking about the Christian message and you may still need to ask lots of questions. In which case, can I warn you off saying to yourself, ‘I’ll think about it later’? I say that partly because if you think about it later – let’s say five years later – and you respond to Christ then, you’ll kick yourself that you wasted another five years of your life living as if he wasn’t there – as if he hadn’t died for you and wasn’t your rightful King. But I say that mainly because you probably won’t think about it later. Because if you say, ‘No’ to any opportunity God gives you to seek him – like the one he’s given you by bringing you here tonight – it becomes easier to keep saying, ‘No’. So please come again and please use whatever goes on in this church that will help you.


RESPONDING TO GOD’S CALL: ADMIT, BELIEVE, COME

But you may be one of those people who’ve done enough investigating and thinking. You know it’s true. And you know enough – not everything, but enough. And if that’s you I want to say: God is calling you through the gospel to respond to him. He’s saying, ‘I will forgive you everything I should hold against you; come back to me as your rightful King.’ And I’m going to end with a prayer that would help you to respond to his call – if, tonight, you’re ready and wanting to do that. Here is the prayer, so that you can think whether it would be appropriate for you to pray:

Father God,
I admit that I am I sinner and deserve your judgement.
But I believe the good news that your Son died for me,
that I might be forgiven.
I now come to you and ask you to forgive me,
and to help me live for you as my King from now on.
Amen

You may be much further back and not ready to respond like that. Or you may already have begun a relationship with God with a prayer like that and don’t need to begin again. But if that prayer is appropriate for you, you could echo it in your mind to God.

If you’ve prayed that prayer and meant it, then rest assured that God has heard and answered it. In which case, those words of assurance which Jesus spoke to the woman in Luke 7 are words that now apply to you, too: “Your sins are forgiven.” (verse 48), “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (verse 50). I.e. if you’ve just truly prayed that prayer for the first time, you came here unforgiven and you’re going home forgiven. You came here at odds with God and you’re going home at peace with him, having begun a new relationship with him.

And if that’s you, can I encourage you, finally, to do two things? One is to pick up a copy of the booklet Why Jesus? from the Welcome Desk – which goes over the step you’ve just taken. The other is to tell another Christian what you’ve just done so that they can give you some idea of what will help you to grow in the relationship with God you’ve just begun.