“For centuries, traditional morality had us – all of us - in its suffocating grip. Year after year the same old rules, chained to the past, heaped shame on ordinary men and women (and boys and girls) whose only crime was being different.

Enemies of the human spirit, these bankrupt ideologies befriended bigots and encouraged the spiteful. They nurtured a seedbed of hypocrisy and offered safe havens to perpetrators of abuse.”

In a few powerful sentences, writer Glynn Harrison captures the mood of the sexual revolution. And it is utterly familiar to us because the social-sexual revolutionaries have been brilliant in their communication and relentless in their activism. All this isn’t new. But what might be new to you is the Bible made the same point more than 2000 years ago.

Traditional morality in the Bible

In Luke’s Gospel, chapter 7 we read this story.

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and Jesus went into the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 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.

Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “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.”” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”

Simon represents the traditional moralists of his generation, the Pharisees. His condemning and bigotted attitude ooze out of his heart. His sense of superiority over the woman is searingly clear. She is that sort of woman. It’s not just the things she has done, it is who she is. She is a sinner. She belongs in the class of people who are not good enough for him.

And we see, not good enough for a whole community of people, the Pharisees. That’s why Simon is identified first as a Pharisee and only later do we discover his name.

Here is the same claim of the sexual revolutions and the Bible. There is a moralism that crushes and destroys. But what is a critique of it doing in the Bible? Isn’t the Bible the book that many argue fosters and breeds this dark condemning attitude? And the questions only intensify because Jesus is about to give Simon the verbal equivalent of a slap.

Will the life of freedom give us what we want?

But before we hear Jesus’ expose of Simon’s heart, there is something else to see here about the woman. Simon accuses her of being a sinner, a known sinner, a public sinner. This leads many Bible readers to suspect she may have been a prostitute, plying her trade on the streets.

But whatever she has done, there is no doubt it hasn’t worked out for her. She may have rejected the dead hand of traditional morality of her time with all its hypocrisy and guilt. But, this hasn’t been good for her either. It hasn’t led to her freedom or flourishing and, she knows it.

She stands behind Jesus’ 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 is a woman, broken and in need. That’s why she has come to Jesus.

So then, neither moralism, which leads to condemnation and even hatred, works. But nor does living as if anything goes. The life of so-called freedom that ignores God’s good purposes for our lives turns out not to be freedom.

No moral code?

Now, some might argue that the way forward is to recognise that there is no moral code. And if the woman could just do that: recognise that there is no moral code and she isn’t bound to anyone or anything, then her guilt would just float away.

Is that right? Thinkers point out that all of us have experienced the grief and sadness of not meeting our moral obligations. Even across different cultures and ages, we experience a sense of moral obligation that points to a moral standard outside of ourselves.

And this matches with what Jesus thinks. The offer of forgiveness from Jesus only makes sense because Jesus thinks that God has a standard that can be broken: right and wrong truly exist. And the reason Jesus knows this is that he is God the Son, incarnate. So, he knows the very mind of God. (To explore that claim now is would blow the length of this post out of the water but see some of the links below.)

Jesus offers forgiveness

It is clear for this woman she needs something she doesn’t have. Sexual freedom hasn’t given her her freedom. And so, Jesus tells the woman – that though her sins are many – they are forgiven. And in a beautiful moment of restoration and rebuke, Jesus looks at the woman while speaking to Simon.

“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. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

Simon is a moralist because he doesn’t think he has a debt to God. He condemns the woman. And even Jesus, 'if this man were a prophet..' This is the profound problem of moralists that the Bible puts its finger on. They think they meet God’s standard. But, they don’t. To meet God’s standard, they redefine it to suit themselves. This allows their sins to remain unexposed. And so, wickedness and sin are hidden under moralism. They have no idea of their true debt to God. In an ironic twist, they too are trying to make their own freedom.

On the other side, the woman has lived her life without reference to God. She has sought freedom. We don’t know how this started but we know the result has been a disaster. And the woman knows it. And so, she knows that she needs Jesus, and she shows her need by her love for him. With a scandalously intimate act, she wets his dirty feet with her tears and cleans them with her unbound hair. She loves Jesus for she knows Jesus came, to seek and save the lost.

And this love for the lost, whether they be the condemning moralist or the freedom seeker is what takes Jesus to the cross. And the cross event reveals that no one, of themselves, meets God’s standard. If we could meet God's standard then Jesus didn’t need to die to make forgiveness available. He could have just taught the true moral standard of God. But instead, Jesus offers forgiveness because by his death he made forgiveness possible.

This is the new life of freedom. Through forgiveness we are given the true freedom and peace we need. This is a scandalous offer of freedom: freedom from oppressive morality and freedom from our failed search for freedom.

See the passage here on Bible Gateway.

Related
Did Jesus claim to be God? A response to Bart Ehrmann