Luke 7:40-43

The Parable.

If this man wanted a proof of the prophetic gift of Jesus, he received it instantly in the following parable, which so exactly meets his thoughts and secret questions. The form of the following conversation is kindly, familiar, and even slightly humorous. It is just the tone of the Socratic irony. The denarius was equivalent to about three farthings; the larger of the two sums amounted, therefore, to about £16, the smaller to 32s. The former represents the enormous amount of sins to which this sinful woman pleaded guilty, and which Jesus had pardoned; the latter, the few infractions of the law for which the Pharisee reproached himself, and from the burden of which Jesus had also released him. ᾿Ορθῶς ἔκρινας : “ thou hast rightly judged; and in judging so rightly, thou hast condemned thyself.” It is the πάνυ ὀρθῶς of Socrates, when he had caught his interlocutor in his net. But that which establishes such an immeasurable distance between Jesus and the Greek sage, is the way in which Jesus identifies Himself, both here and in what follows, with the offended God who pardons and who becomes the object of the sinner's grateful love.