Luke 7:36-50 gives us the proper perspective to answer one important question: Does the quality of your love for Christ correspond to the riches of his grace that you have received? Among other things, this text will demonstrate that there is a direct correlation between a comprehension of how Christ forgave your sins and our love for Christ. To state it in the negative: If there is a serious lack of love for Christ in your life, then that is the evidence of a gross misunderstanding of how much you have been forgiven OR perhaps you have not yet experienced the forgiveness of sins from Christ.
Obviously this topic is of grave importance, so it will be imperative that we establish ways to evaluate whether or not we do love Christ. As we establish those ways, we’ll discover that there’s actually a way to have Jesus in your life, yet not love him. There’s a way to be interested and intrigued by who Jesus is, but not love him. Lastly, there’s a way to look like you are loving and serving Jesus, but you are really loving and serving yourself.
Conversely, as we see modeled in the text, true Christian love must cost you something. It doesn’t necessarily mean giving up something material, but it could be a sacrifice of your image or expectations or interests or preferences. True Christian love will minimally cost you earthly reward and recognition, because the pure motive is to please Christ and receive reward from God on that final judgment day.