Luke 5:30-32
Verse 30. Why do ye eat and drink, &c.] See what passed at this entertainment considered at large on Mt 9:10-17; Mr 2:15-22. Luke 6:32-34
Verse 32. For sinners also love those that love them.] I believe the word αμαρτωλοι is used by St. Luke in the same sense in which τελωναι, tax-gatherers, is used by St. Matthew, Mt 5:46, 47, and signifies heathens; not only men who have no religion, but men who acknowledge none. The religion of Christ not only corrects the errors and reforms the disorders of the fallen nature of man, but raises it even above itself: it brings it near to God; and, by universal love, leads it to frame its conduct according to that of the Sovereign Being. "A man should tremble who finds nothing in his life besides the external part of religion, but what may be found in the life of a Turk or a heathen." The Gospel of the grace of God purifies and renews the heart, causing it to resemble that Christ through whom the grace came. See Clarke on Lu 7:37. Verse 34. Of whom ye hope to receive] Or, whom ye expect to return it. "To make our neighbour purchase, in any way, the assistance which we give him, is to profit by his misery; and, by laying him under obligations which we expect him in some way or other to discharge, we increase his wretchedness under the pretence of relieving it." Luke 7:34
Luke 7:37
Verse 37. A woman-which was a sinner] Many suppose that this woman had been a notorious public prostitute; but this is taking the subject by the very worst handle. My own opinion is, that she had been a mere heathen who dwelt in this city, (probably Capernaum,) who, through the ministry of Christ, had been before this converted to God, and came now to give this public testimony of her gratitude to her gracious deliverer from the darkness and guilt of sin. I am inclined to think that the original word, αμαρτωλος, is used for heathen or Gentile in several places of the sacred writings. I am fully persuaded that this is its meaning in Mt 9:10, 11, 13; 11:19; and Mt 26:45. The Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners, i.e. is delivered into the hands of the heathens, viz. the Romans, who alone could put him to death. See Mr 2:15-17; 14:41. I think also it has this meaning in Lu 6:32-34; 15:1, 2, 7, 10; 19:7; Joh 9:31. I think no other sense can be justly assigned to it in Ga 2:15: We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles. We Jews, who have had the benefit of a Divine revelation, know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ, (Ga 2:16,) which other nations, who were heathens, not having a Divine revelation, could not know. It is, I think, likely that the grand subject of the self-righteous Pharisee's complaint was her being a heathen. As those who were touched by such contracted a legal defilement, he could not believe that Christ was a conscientious observer of the law, seeing he permitted her to touch him, knowing who she was; or, if he did not know that she was a heathen, it was a proof that he was no prophet, Lu 7:39, and consequently had not the discernment of spirits which prophets were supposed to possess. As the Jews had a law which forbade all iniquity, and they who embraced it being according to its requisitions and their profession saints; and as the Gentiles had no law to restrain evil, nor made any profession of holiness, the term αμαρτωλοι, or sinners, was first with peculiar propriety applied to them, and afterwards to all others, who, though they professed to be under the law, yet lived as Gentiles without the law. Many suppose this person to be the same as Mary Magdalene, but of this there is no solid proof. Brought an alabaster box] See Clarke on Mr 14:3. Luke 7:39
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