Neither have we any information as to the reason or reasons which induced Christ to accept this invitation. Several reasons might be imagined. He may have hoped, as the opportunity was specially favourable, to bring a blessing to the Pharisee's heart. Men are never more open, or more submissive, or more susceptible to the word of love, than when they themselves are showing kindness in the form of the hospitalities of home and of the family circle. Perhaps, too, He may have felt that to decline the invitation would be to lay Himself open to an accusation on the part of the Pharisees that He neglected or spurned them, whilst He could put Himself in close communication with "publicans and sinners." At any rate, we have here a beautiful instance of the self-denial of His love. He knew what awaited Him, and yet He went. And now we have to notice that when Jesus had passed over the threshold of the Pharisee's house the door was open to "a woman who was a sinner." How was this? The simple and sufficient answer is that Jesus was there. Otherwise she would not have dared to enter within the perfumed respectability and sanctity of such a place. That would have been a terror to such a fallen one as she. But redeeming love had already begun its work upon her heart, so that she could come without misgiving, could enter with a holy confidence. When Christ appears, grace bears the sceptre, and the law loses its power to alarm. We may take this incident, therefore, as a striking illustration of the spirit of Christ and of His true followers, as contrasted with Pharisaism in its suspiciousness, its blindness, its narrowness, and its ascetic scrupulosity. The woman, probably under the pressure of gratitude for some act of compassionate love already received from Christ, is full of the holiest and tenderest emotions. In a fine, sacred humility, she weeps, and washes His feet with her tears. True tears they are, for they are the tears of penitence--and not of penitence only, but of thankfulness also. Confused and bewildered, perhaps, she wipes the feet on which they have fallen with her hair, and then kisses them, and anoints them with costly ointment! Such is the gratitude of the pardoned--deep, strong, irrepressible. And she expresses it in touchingly significant ways.