Thursday, March 10, 2011

Much love

I was reading Luke 7, one of my favorite chapters, and at the end of the chapter after all of the great things that Jesus does He sits with the Pharisee Simon to eat. During the course of the night there comes a woman who crying bathes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair and anoints Him with oil. Simon is troubled that Jesus would let this go on knowing that the woman touching Him is unclean, and the Savior precedes to give Him one of the greatest parables about love I know of. 

There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?
Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.

I always find it interesting since returning from my mission to find people that love the Savior in varying degrees. We all owe the Savior an infinite amount. There is no one that can say, "Well I've never broken the law of chastity or the word of wisdom or killed anyone and this person has done all of that, therefore I need to repent of less than they do." All of the sin in the world is just as damning as the single smallest sin in regards to entering the Kingdom of God. There is no varying degrees within righteousness. We are either clean or we are dirty. Therefore we all need forgiveness equally. The difference of the people in the parable then is not one of quantity of sin for the quantity is the same, one. the difference between the two people is the one justified that he only owed his debtor fifty pence while the other accepted that he owed the full amount. If we claim that we have overcome sin "on our own" and therefore are the owners of it then we do not owe the debt of gratitude to the Savior for that sin. The truth is that Christ has already purchased all of our sin. We give it to Him and in return He gives himself to us. That was the trade in the Garden that night of Atonement and it is the trade today. The Son of God for the sins of the world or our world. If we realize how much Christ has done for us then we love Him that much more. If we feel that we come into anything on our own then we automatically love Him less. 
So it is with others. If we truly love someone then we think about what we owe them. We realize that everything good in life comes from them for they are sent into our lives from Heavenly Father and Jesus from whom all good gifts come. We realize that and it increases our love of God and of that person. We then seek to do everything we can for them and for God. Which in turn deepens our ability to love. 
Much love everyone.

No comments:

Post a Comment