A Great Love For the Savior

I’ve often wondered about the story told in Luke 7:37-50 when Jesus was in the house of a Pharisee name Simon.  While there, a woman “which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.”  The Pharisee was offended at this because he judged this woman to be “a sinner” and thought Jesus should have known not to let such a woman come and do this.  Jesus then asked this question to Simon: “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 that it was “he, to whom he forgave most” and Jesus confirmed his response.  He then commented, “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little” (Luke 7:47).  The question I’ve had in pondering this story is this: do I need to have great sins I’m forgiven of to develop great love for the Savior? 

               The question itself of course seems absurd—surely we can love the Savior with great devotion without having serious sins to be forgiven of.  In fact, no matter what sins we have committed, our debt to the Savior is infinite.  As King Benjamin put it, even for the righteous, “Ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?” (Mosiah 2:24)  The question is not whether we have committed significant transgressions but rather whether we understand how sinful we really are and how much the Savior has done for us.  When we understand that and see ourselves in a true light, we can grow in our love for Christ and His salvation.  As President Benson said, “Just as a man does not really desire food until he is hungry, so he does not desire the salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs Christ.”  We must come to understand what the Savior has done for us in order to love Him as the woman in this story did.  Surely the Pharisee Simon had many of his own failings to repent of and work through with the Savior, but he didn’t see them because he focused so much on the woman who washed Jesus’s feet.

               Nephi is a good example of one who was not guilty of any serious sins and yet who loved the Lord with all His heart and understood his great debt to Him.  Overcome by his own weaknesses he cried out, “O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities….  O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation. O Lord, wilt thou redeem my soul?” (2 Nephi 4:17, 30-31)  Nephi turned to the Lord in his sins and weaknesses and had the same kind of devotion to Him as the woman who washed the Savior’s feet.  Nephi did not need to commit great crimes to do so; he simply needed to understand the greatness of God as compared to his own weakness before Him.