Luke 7:37-38

TEARS OF PENITENCE

‘And, behold, a woman in the city … began to wash His feet with tears.’

Luke 7:37

The sweet grace of penitence put forth all its fruits in one rich cluster in that woman’s soul. The self-abandonment is perfect. She has found Jesus in all, and all in Jesus.

I. How ‘tears of penitence’ come.—Do not think that a mere sense of sins will ever draw a ‘tear of penitence.’ There is no instance of it on record. The three great examples which we have of ‘tears of penitence’ are David, St. Peter, and the woman in the text. There is a great deal of hope, there is a great deal of forgiveness, there is a great deal of peace, there is a great deal of love, there is a great deal of Christ in ‘penitential tears.’ The eye must pass from the sin to Jesus. And, still more, from Jesus to the sin—to make repentance. The sin and the Saviour strangely meet in the heart at the same moment. You never wept till you had some feeling—‘Christ is mine!’ Many cannot understand why it is that they cannot cry for their sins. Let them see some token that God loves them. Let them believe that Christ looks upon them pityingly and tenderly. Let them hear a voice whispering, ‘Thy sins are forgiven.’ That will bring the ‘tears.’

II. Forgiven sinners make weeping penitents.—Christ made this quite clear respecting the woman. He traced back the links of a chain. ‘She has done great sin, and she is forgiven.’ How do I know that she has done great sin and is forgiven? ‘She wept much.’ Why did she weep much? Because ‘she loved much.’ Why did she love much? Because she has been ‘forgiven much.’ ‘Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.’

III. At the feet of Jesus.—What I should advise you is to go and put yourself at the feet of Jesus, and first take a look up into that meek, kind, gentle, pitying face, and then, under the beam of that light, take one sin—a besetting sin—a habit of sin in particular. Pull that sin to pieces, and examine it in its detail. Especially see it with its background. Its background! all the aggravations of the when, and the where, and the how. All it resisted! But look most at God, more than at your own heart.

Happy those who so obey the law of ‘tears’ in this world, that, this life ended, ‘they may come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sadness shall flee away!’