Extravagant Love-Luke 7:36-50

Key Verse: 7:50, “And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

There’s a big difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone. Knowing about someone means you’ve got the facts. You know their name, their reputation, maybe their LinkedIn profile. But it’s all from a distance. It’s like knowing about a celebrity. Knowing someone? That’s up close and personal. That’s relationship territory.

Now, in this passage we get introduced to two very different people. First, there’s Simon the Pharisee. He is accomplished, respected, a certified pillar of society. The kind of guy who definitely had the best seat at every dinner party… and knew it. Then there’s an unnamed woman. The text calls her a “woman of the city” and a “sinner”. This wasn’t a compliment. While Simon was collecting admiring looks, she was collecting side-eyes and whispers. Rich vs. poor. Respected vs. scorned. They couldn’t have been more different.

The real gap? Simon knew about Jesus. The woman knew Jesus. And that difference? It showed up in a big way in how each of them responded when the Messiah walked through the door. In this passage, we will learn three aspects of love. First, Love that is extravagant, Second Love that is paid in full, Third, Love that saves.

First, Love that is extravagant

Look at verse 36: “One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table.” Jesus gets invited to Simon the Pharisee’s house for dinner. Now, Luke doesn’t tell us why Simon invited him. For most of Jesus’ ministry, the religious leaders weren’t exactly fans. They were watching him, testing him, looking for a reason to discredit him. And there were other guests at the table that night too, all of them curious about this man named Jesus.

So they’re eating, and then something happens. Look at verse 37: “And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at a table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment.”

Who is this woman? Luke doesn’t give us her name. He just calls her “a woman of the city” and “a sinner.” And in that culture, everyone at that table knew exactly what that meant; she was a prostitute. When she heard Jesus was at Simon’s house, she made up her mind to visit Jesus. She barges into Simon’s house without an announcement. She comes before Jesus, kneeling with an alabaster flask of ointment.

Now, here’s what we might expect: she walks up, thanks Jesus, maybe shakes his hand, hands him the jar, and leaves. That would’ve been fine. That would’ve been appropriate. But that’s not what she does.

Look at verse 38: “…and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.”

She displays an amazing display of extravagant love. Extravagance is an adjective describing actions, costs, or displays that exceed what is reasonable, normal, or necessary. First, she weeps. Her tears fall on Jesus’ feet. She had no water, so her tears became water. Second, she had no towel, so she used her hair. Now, Paul tells us a woman’s hair is her glory. Women spend billions on it hair care alone. It’s a profitable $75–$80 billion industry globally today. She takes that glory and uses it like a rag to dry the feet of Jesus.

Third, she kisses his feet. Jesus’ feet must have been dirty and smelly. We would have a hard time kissing others’ feet. Fourth, she anoints them with the ointment. That alabaster flask wasn’t just a nice gift. The perfume inside was worth around 300 denarii. It was nearly a full year’s wages. In today’s money, we’re talking somewhere between $50,000 and $65,000. But there’s more. In that culture, an alabaster jar was part of a young woman’s dowry. When a man came to ask for her hand in marriage, she would break the jar at his feet as an act of honor and devotion.

What amazed me about this woman was that she didn’t reserve anything for herself. She didn’t care what the dinner guest thought about her. She didn’t care if she humiliated herself.  She gave her most prized possession to Jesus. Jesus was deeply moved. But not everyone in the room was moved by her actions.

Look at how Simon responds, verse 39: “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” Simon was disgusted at this woman. To him, this woman had no business being there. She wasn’t a person. A mess that needed to be removed. He felt nothing for her. Absolutely no pity, no compassion, just contempt.

And notice what he called Jesus in front of everyone: a prophet. That was a trap! If Jesus welcomed her, he would be disqualified as a prophet since she was ‘unclean’. If Jesus rejected her, it would contradict his preaching about love.

Jesus said, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” Simon says “Say it, to ALL OF US!” Simon thought Jesus would say “YOU ARE RIGHT! She doesn’t belong here.”

But Jesus would turn the table on Simon and his guest. Simon came to examine Jesus. However, the table turns. Jesus looks at him and says in verse 40: “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And Simon says, “Say it, Teacher.” Perhaps he expected Jesus to agree with him and say she is a sinner and tell him to kick her out. Simon came to put Jesus on trial. Now Jesus is about to put Simon on trial.

Second, Love that is Paid in full

Right there in the middle of dinner, Jesus tells a short parable. It’s brief, but a lot to unpacked. Look at verses 41–43: “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answers: *”The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” Jesus says: *”You have judged rightly.”

Five hundred denarii was roughly 500 days of work. Fifty denarii — fifty days. That’s a massive gap. But here’s what Jesus wants you to notice: neither one of them could pay. It didn’t matter if the debt was big or small — both men were broke, both were helpless. Nowadays, if you can’t pay your debt, you can declare bankruptcy. But in the ancient world, not paying debt once has dire consequences. You will be imprisoned, your family will be sold into slavery, your possessions will be taken away and social shame. However, the moneylender in the parable canceled their debt. Both walked away completely free.

What’s the point of the parable? The parable is essentially about the forgiveness of the moneylender. Jesus wanted to help Simon understand that love is proportional to how much you understand forgiveness.

Most of us measure gratitude by what we have. Good job. Kids that listen. Money in the account. A nice home. And for Simon, a good reputation. Friends who respected him. A seat at the right table. He was a good person by every standard that mattered in his world, and that felt like enough reason to be thankful.

Look at verses 44–46: “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.”

When an honored guest came into your home, there were basic customs that are expected, not optional. A servant would wash the guest’s feet. Why? Because people walked on dirty, dusty, often filthy roads in open sandals. You didn’t let an important guest sit down with dirty feet. Then you’d greet them with a kiss. Whether  on the hand or the cheek. It was a sign of honor. And you’d anoint their head with oil as a gesture of respect and welcome.

Surprisingly, Simon did none of it. Not one. He invited Jesus to dinner, sat him down, and skipped every act of common courtesy. He wasn’t honoring Jesus. He was just going through the motions. Now look at what the woman did in contrast. She washed Jesus’ feet — not with water, but with her own tears. She wiped them, not with a towel, but with her hair. She didn’t just greet him with a kiss. She kissed his feet, repeatedly, from the moment she walked in! And she didn’t anoint his head with ordinary oil. She poured expensive perfume on his feet.

Every single thing she did broke some kind of social rule. Letting her hair down in public? Shameful. Touching a man she wasn’t married to? Taboo. Touching a rabbi? Unthinkable. Kissing his feet with her lips? No servant would even go that far. And pouring perfume worth a year’s wages on someone’s feet? That looked, to everyone watching, like pure waste. One of them understood what forgiveness cost.

Third, Love that Saves

Look at 47-48 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” 48 And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

In these verses, Jesus explain WHY SHE LOVED MUCH! It was the canceled debt of SIN. Here’s what Jesus is saying through the parable: sin isn’t just a mistake. It’s a debt. Something was violated, and that violation demands payment. This woman knew exactly what she owed. Five hundred denarii.

Jesus’ short parable teaches us that sin causes debt. The point of the parable is that sin creates debt because it involves a violation that demands payment. The woman knew she incurred the debt of 500 denarii. In the Lord’s Prayer, he teaches us to pray “forgive us our debts” (Matthew 6:12). Sin isn’t just a mistake or a misstep. It’s a moral obligation you’ve incurred and cannot pay off on your own.

But here’s where it gets heavier. Paul tells us in Romans 6:23 that the wage sin pays out. The final bill is death. And even before it gets there, sin is already doing damage. It’s like cancer. You might look fine on the outside. You might be functioning, showing up, going through the motions, but on the inside, it’s eating away at your conscience. And it locks you up. Shame. Anger. Fear. Guilt. These aren’t just feelings — they’re shackles. And a lot of people are walking around in chains they can’t even name. How do we pay for the debt of sin we incurred?

The moneylender cancels the debt. He doesn’t pretend it didn’t exist. He takes the loss himself. That’s costly grace. Forgiveness isn’t cheap, it’s absorbed by the one doing the forgiving. This is exactly what the woman understood. She wasn’t weeping out of guilt alone. She was weeping because she understood that someone had taken on an enormous loss on her behalf. The bigger your debt, the more staggering it is when someone says it’s gone.

Jesus looked at her and saw everything, not just who she was, but who she had been, and all the ways life had broken her down to get there. She wasn’t always this woman. Once, she was just a girl with big dreams. Just like every little girl. She wanted to fall in love. She wanted her prince. She had an alabaster jar set aside, waiting for her wedding day, because she believed that day was coming.

But somewhere along the way, something happened. Dreams have a way of getting smashed by reality. Life backed her into a corner, and she had to make a choice — not really a choice at all, more like survival. Women and children had almost nothing in that world. No safety net. No backup plan. So she did what she had to do. She became a prostitute. That alabaster jar got tucked in a corner. And her dreams went right along with it.

The years that followed were brutal. She was used and abused. Shame became the air she breathed. Guilt was her constant companion. Respectable society wanted nothing to do with her, and the religious leaders made sure she knew it. She had no one in her corner — not a single friend.

Then one day, something shifted. Just a crack of light, really, breaking into a very dark place. She heard Jesus speak. His words got in. Past the walls she’d built, past the shame, past the wounds — they got all the way in. The Holy Spirit moved in her broken heart, and for maybe the first time in years, she felt something she thought was gone forever: forgiveness.

In this parable, God is the moneylender. And think about it — He had every right to look at us and say, ‘You owe me. Pay up.’ But that’s not what He did. In His great mercy, He looked at our debt and said, ‘I’ll take care of it.’ The debt didn’t just disappear. It had to be paid. Somebody had to cover it. And God loved us so much that He sent His own Son to the cross to settle what we could never pay ourselves. Paul puts it beautifully in Colossians 2:13-14. He says when you were dead in your sins — dead — God made you alive with Christ. He forgave every sin. He took that list of everything you owed, everything that stood against you and condemned you, and He nailed it to the cross. It’s gone. Cancelled. Paid in full. That’s not just good news — that’s the best news you’ve ever heard in your life.”

She was the woman who owed five hundred denarii. The debt of her sinful life weighed her down in darkness, despair and anger. But when she truly met Jesus, she felt the debt lifted. Somehow, she knew that debt would be paid by Jesus.  She was no longer a ‘woman of the city’, but a ‘pure virgin bride.’

Look at verse 49-50 “49 Then those who were at table with him began to say among[a] themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” Those in the room didn’t understand the devotion of the woman. 50, “And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Notice what Jesus said “Your faith has saved you.” He didn’t say, “Because you cried, you’re saved.” He didn’t say, “Because you wiped my feet with your tears — you’re in.” He didn’t say, “Because you brought that expensive perfume and anointed me.” No. None of that. It was her faith that saved her. Faith in the One who could cancel her debt. She believed the gospel, and that belief changed everything.

And that’s the point for us too. We are not saved by anything we have done. We are saved by what Jesus did — on the cross, in our place, for our sin. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And this faith — this same faith that saves us — is also what gives us peace.

In this passage, we have to ask do we truly know Jesus or we just know about Jesus. I have known people who have grown up in the church since their youth, heard 100s of sermons, but they have no idea of the canceled debt of our savior. They are not touched. They only know about Jesus. In our busy lives, let’s have some quite time to remember Jesus paid it all!

May God help us to show extravagant love to our friends, family and community. We also learn ultimately gratitude is not about being a good person or the nice stuff you have. Rather it is the deep of understand of the canceled debt you received through Jesus.