In the gospel accounts of both Matthew and Mark, Jesus’s rebuke of the Pharisees for their neglect of their hearts (Matt.15v10-20; Mark7v14-23) is immediately followed by His encounter with the Canaanite/ Syrophoenician woman (Matt.15v21-28; Mark 7v24-30). The juxtaposition of the woman next to the Pharisees is telling, for she lacks the qualities they value – yet she has the qualities that Jesus values and they lack.
Not only is she a Gentile; she is a Canaanite, of the traditional enemies of Israel. “Cursed be Canaan,” declared Noah in Genesis 9v25. The book of Zechariah ends with the thundering denouncement that on the day of the Lord there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty (Zech.14v21). Yet, having heard of Jesus, she seeks Him out for help, showing a startlingly perceptive appreciation of Jesus’s identity. “Lord, Son of David,” she calls Him (Matt.15v22).
Few in the Gospels showed such recognition. Having heard of Christ, already she displays signs of a faith that Jesus will then go on to draw out. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” He tells her (Matt.15v24). Undismayed, she comes and kneels before Him, saying, “Lord, help me” (v.25).
At this, Jesus delivers what sounds like an insuperable obstacle to all her pleas: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (v.26). Yet all is not as it seems – Jesus, who had demolished all the cunning arguments of the scribes and Pharisees, is allowing her to display her faith by overcoming these hurdles. Instead of retreating, she agrees with his judgement, answering: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (v.27).
Where the Pharisees, believing in their own health, felt no need for a doctor, this woman knew her need and came to Him. It was her very lack that drove her. And so was fulfilled what Mary had sung: “He has filled the hungry with good things, / and the rich he has sent away empty” (Luke 1v53).
The woman’s sense of her own unworthiness fits with a standard and seemingly essential feature of times of spiritual renewal through church history. Writing of the awakening that had happened in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734– 1735, Jonathan Edwards recorded: “Persons are first awakened with a sense of their miserable condition by nature.” This new self-knowledge the people found in their appreciation of the depths of their own sinfulness may sound off-puttingly gloomy, but it was precisely what enabled them to value Christ’s redemption. For with that self-understanding came “a sense of the greatness of His grace, and fullness of Christ, and His readiness to save.”
As John Calvin observed in his Institutes, our knowledge of ourselves and our knowledge of God are intertwined. We cannot know God in His mercy, love and righteousness without some understanding of ourselves as sinful creatures in need of mercy. And we cannot understand ourselves – either the glory of being in the image of God or the sheer perversity of our sinfulness – without knowing God in the beauty of His holiness and goodness.
This too was Martin Luther’s discovery in those pivotal years as he edged ever closer to understanding God’s grace. The clearer he perceived the lavishness of God’s kindness, the deeper he sensed our degeneracy. After all, if our problem is only small, what need of much grace? Only when Luther fully appreciated the depth of his sin could he see that salvation cannot be a cooperative effort in which God merely helps the weak be stronger. Only then could he see salvation as a true rescue of the helpless, abandon his self-reliance, and rely on the all-sufficiency of Christ. Only when he recognised himself as a great sinner could he enjoy Christ as a great Saviour.
