"Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you." "Tell me, teacher," he said."
Luke 7:40 (NIV)
Our Lord’s approach to Simon is very similar to Nathan’s approach to David as recorded in 2 Samuel 12. David and Simon had the same problem, not the same sin of course, but the same problem. Their problem was that they couldn’t see their own sin. The Bible refers to this inability to see your own sin as blindness. We question this blindness in the account of David, for we cannot imagine how a man of God – a man whose heart is after God - could commit adultery and murder and not be able to see his actions as sin. Yet spiritual blindness can be self-inflicted, and once we have this blindness we need God’s help; we need His healing.
It is interesting that Nathan's story uses David’s ability to recognize grievous sin in others to bring him to his senses. This ability to recognize sin in others and to condemn them for their sin, is also apparent in Simon, for he writes off the sinful woman. Our Lord warned us in the parable of the splinter and the log (Lk 6:41,42) that this ability to spot sin in other people, is a sign that we have sin in ourselves that we need to deal with.
David was forced by the story to see his actions through the eyes of his Holy God, and when David’s eyes saw what God saw, he immediately identified his actions as sin. He admitted to Nathan and God that he had sin. He agreed with God’s verdict on his actions. This is confession, and lest you wonder if it was just going through the motions, we have Psalm 32 and 51 to reveal David’s journey and heart through this period of spiritual blindness and then deliverance.
We don’t know what happened to Simon. I have great hope for him, based on David’s recovery, yet we are not told because that is not the point. The point is that a person can know the Bible, can live a righteous life, can be hospitable to Christians, can do all the things they are supposed to do, and yet be completely spiritually blind; not see their sin and live their entire lives in a state of unforgiveness. Oh friend, may we not be among them! May the prayer of David be our prayer each and every hour: Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. (Ps 139:23)
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