The gospel will mean we’re compelled to love and reach out to the lost, both the good and the bad, no matter where people put themselves on that ladder we reach out to them.  We seek the lost as Jesus did.  We live our life out in front of them. There are times when we may have fewer non-believing friends as maybe some come to faith, as maybe others move away, as things change.  But we’ll always be looking to build friendships, to live out the gospel, to share Jesus.

Luke again shows us Jesus passion for the lost and his expansive grasp and grip on the grace of God and the reach of the gospel.  It’s worth noticing where Jesus is, in ch5 he’s eating with tax collectors and sinners, but now he’s eating with the religious, the good people.  Why?  Because everybody needs salvation and the gospel can reach anyone as Jesus makes clear to Simon.
Jesus has a reputation for welcoming sinners, this woman(37), notorious though she is, knows she can go to Jesus for forgiveness.  It would be great wouldn’t it if that could be said of our churches?
We had a lady come to church, until her family were evicted and relocated.  She had a bit of a reputation, when her neighbours heard she and her family came, and were accepted, welcomed and loved, their response was, ‘Well if she can come, so can we.’  That ought to be the norm.  Church is where no perfect people are allowed, and no pretence at perfection is allowed either.
Jesus doesn’t turn this lady away.  He knows the depth of her sin in a way Simon doesn’t, he also knew what it would cost him to forgive her in a way Simon didn’t and yet he knows the gospel is a call for all those who repent to come and find forgiveness.
(41-47)We see Jesus understanding of the gospel as he tells this story to Simon.  What do you notice about the two men?  They both owed money and neither could repay it – they are the facts.  Both are debtors both incapable of paying the debt they owe.  These aren’t insignificant sums of money a Denarii was about a days wage – so one man owes two months wages and another about a year and three quarters.
The shock in the story is in how the money lender reacts. You didn’t just write off debts, yet these two men are forgiven their un-payable debts.  The story is a shock story, it’s unbelievable!  But what’s Jesus point?
We live in a society that loves to compare don’t we.  We compare exam results, we compare achievements, what you’ve read, who you know, there’s even a website where you can compare salaries with other people.  But we also do it with morality.
It’s a bit like a ladder we put people like Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King near the top, then at the bottom are people like terrorists, murderers…
Where would you put yourself?  When we think about that, we go through a process like this; I’m better than so and so, but not as good as them.
That’s exactly how Simon is operating here.  He’d be up here and she’d be down there.  But do you see what the biggest shock is? Jesus says wherever you are the debt is un-payable – “neither could pay him back.”  Simon’s little sin, as he sees it, leaves him just as lost as the woman’s big sin, just as incapable of rebalancing the scales.
Jesus words were shocking then and they still shock now, it tells us we owe a debt we can’t repay, that being right with God isn’t comparative with one another.  You and I were never nice.  We didn’t just need a bit of tidying up round the edges, a quick make over.
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To say wrath is not a divine perfection because there are no objects of wrath toward which wrath may be expressed within the self-existing ontological Trinity proves too much. Such a criterion would undermine other divine perfections such as holiness, mercy, creativity, patience etc.

God is a simple being or he is not. If God is not a simple being, then he is a composite of parts, in which case God’s attributes would be what he has rather than is, making his attributes abstract properties that self-exist without ultimate reference to God. God would be subject to change and evaluation against platonistic forms without origin. Yet if God alone self-exists, then God is a simple being. As such, God is identical to what is in God.
There are at least four traps or ditches we must avoid when considering divine simplicity. One is to say that each attribute is identical to each other because God is his attributes. Another trap to avoid is the denial of divine simplicity on the basis that “God is love” obviously means something different than “God is holy.” A third trap to avoid is trying to resolve the conundrum presented by the first two ditches by positing a kind of penetration or infusion of attributes using propositions like, God’s holiness is loving holiness. Although helpful and in a sense unavoidable to a point, the infusion of attributes eventually breaks down when we consider, for instance, omniscience and spirituality, or more strikingly love and wrath. Attempts to qualify attributes with other attributes do not save divine simplicity but instead, if taken too far, end in its denial. And finally, a fourth trap to avoid, which is an advancement of the first, is that of saying x-attribute is identical to y-attribute in God’s mind even though the transitivity of attributes is unintelligible to human minds. That particular mystery card reduces each attribute to meaningless predicates when played. Attributes become vacuous terms. The law of identity was never intended for such abuse.
Like creation ex nihilo divine simplicity is derived negatively, not positively. (Creation ex nihilo is deduced by the negation of eternal matter and pantheism.) Given that divine simplicity is entailed by God’s sole eternality, God is not comprised of parts. Accordingly, God’s revelation of his particular attributes is an accommodation to our creatureliness. It’s ectypal and analogical, not archetypal and univocal.
When we consider God’s attributes we must be mindful that we are drawing theological distinctions that pertain to the one undivided divine essence that eternally exists in three modes of subsistence or persons.
Given our finitude we cannot help but draw such theological distinctions, but we should be mindful that such doctrinal nuance, although proper, does not belong to any division in God.
As a simple being, God has one divine and univocal attribute, which is his essence. Notwithstanding, the God who is not composite we only know analogically, discretely and in part, but that is because God’s simplicity is too complex to take in all at once due to the creator-creature distinction. God is knowable and incomprehensible.
With that as a backdrop, we may consider that many of God’s revealed attributes are further distinguished by their relation to creation, which are sometimes called relative attributes (or secondary attributes, which is not the happiest of terms). Although all God’s attributes are eternal and ultimately one, at least some of God’s revealed perfections are inconceivable to us apart from considering them in relation to something other than God. For instance, God is long-suffering, but what is it to be pure patience in timeless eternity without objects of pity? That an attribute such as long-suffering is revealed in the context of created-time and patience toward pitiful creatures does not imply that God is not eternally long-suffering in his being. The same can be said of God’s holiness, for what is holiness without created things? God cannot be separate from himself; yet God is eternally holy. That is to say, God does not become holy through creation, or long-suffering through the occasion of sin and redemption. Is omnipresence a spatial consideration dependent upon creation or is it an eternal reality that is expressed or not expressed apart from creation?
We are limited in our creaturely understanding, but we can be certain God’s Trinitarian self-love includes love of his relative attributes, such as his patience towards sinners he’d instantiate, and his creativity apart from having yet created. God loves himself for who he is, not what he does (or what we might imagine he was eternally doing).
We understand this even by analogy. One reason I love my wife is because she is a self-sacrificing servant of God and his people. My love for her as a servant isn’t released by her actions of serving. I love her as the servant she is even when she is not serving or even being served. I love her for who she is, not what she does.
Wrath is an attribute no less than long-suffering and holiness. It’s a perfection of God without which God would not exist. If it is not, then what is it?
I’ll now try to address some common rejoinders:
1. To say wrath is not a divine perfection because there are no objects of wrath toward which wrath may be expressed within the self-existing ontological Trinity proves too much. Such a criterion would undermine other divine perfections such as holiness, mercy, creativity, patience etc.
It also confuses God as timeless pure act with a notion of God’s timeless doing. That there’s no potential with God does not mean God’s existence entails an eternal expression of his divine attributes – for our only conception of expression entails time-sequence, which in turn entails creation! So, that God does not “express” wrath in the ontological Trinity in a way that we can understand does not undermine wrath as a divine perfection, for neither can we begin to conceive how love is expressed in a timeless eternity! So, just as relative attributes are only understood in relation to things outside of God, what are classified as absolute attributes (e.g., Love) cannot be conceived other than analogically and relatively.
Since time is created, and eternal expressions of love in the ontological Trinity are human contemplations of the eternal in temporal terms, it’s special pleading to dismiss wrath as an eternal perfection while simultaneously affirming love as an eternal perfection. To do so on the basis of analogical contemplations of time-function intra-Trinitarian expressions of non-temporal Trinitarian existence is philosophically arbitrary and inconsistent. It ends in Social Trinitarianism by introducing time into the eternal life of God.
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My old mentor brings hope. He got through the tough stuff and knows the way! He’s already taken the machete and blazed a trail. I need to follow his path. My old mentor connects me to a significant generation. He helps me understand the oldest in my congregation. I can ask him questions without fear of offending him.

“Sometimes the being is more important than the doing.”
My mentor shared this wisdom at our last meeting. He’s in his late-80s, almost 50 years ahead of me. He retired from a church in Indiana and moved to Bradenton several years ago. I inherited him with my church when I was called as pastor a few years ago. Unfortunately, he recently moved back to Indiana to be closer to family.
God gave me a spiritual heavyweight of encouragement with him. He sat a few rows from the back—prayerfully listening every week. He held no formal leadership position in our church. He did not need it because his prayers moved mountains.
Every young pastor needs an older mentor. I know that’s not a new thought. I press the point because it’s hard to overstate the value of wisdom from someone 50 years older than you. Unfortunately, young pastors tend to dismiss the oldest generation of leaders. Not overtly, of course. Few would explicitly state they don’t want to hear from someone older. The dismissal comes more in the form of time.
Our ears can only listen to so much before words start melting together.
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