From this we now see:  1. How, at that time, church discipline among the people of God had come into disuse, and the divine ordinance had been almost completely forgotten.

The Lord God had given an earnest command in Deuteronomy 23:17, “No harlot should be found among the daughters of Israel.” But we hear in this text about a woman who was a well-known sinner. In John 8:3, they bring a woman to the Lord Christ who was caught in open adultery, and their first question was what they should do with her, as if God’s commandment had been entirely buried.

This all came from the deception and seduction of the devil. He had not only seduced God’s people at that time into idolatry, which is spiritual adultery, but had also popularized among them the sins of harlotry and adultery, even as spiritual and physical harlotry are often found together, the defilement of the soul through false teaching and the defilement of the body through unchastity, zeal for idolatry, and the evil burning for harlotry.

Even as it was before the first coming of Christ that, among many other sins, harlotry and adultery were particularly in vogue, so it also goes now before the second coming of Christ, where the horrible, awful sins against the Sixth Commandment threaten to come crashing in like a flood, spurred on by the fact that such sins are not punished with just and proper zeal by the government. Just as the Sodomites were burning with lust when their downfall was right at the door, so that they had to be burned up with fire and brimstone from heaven (Gen. 18), so also will similar sodomite sins be running rampant when heaven and earth are about to be burned up with fire (2 Pet. 3:10).

(Sermon for Mary Magdalene-July 22, Postilla Volume 3 by Johann Gerhard, Repristination Press, page 108-109)

{In Luke 7:36-50} Therefore, with a heart hungry for grace, with a thirsty soul, with the longing of faith, she hurried to Christ. She became hostile to her former sins. She experienced genuine contrition and grief. But she had a believing trust and a fervent love for Christ, as she testified with outward actions. For when she came to Christ in the Pharisee’s home, she brought a jar of oil and costly perfume and knelt down at His feet.

She was hesitant to appear before Christ’s holy sight. Until that moment, she had been turned away from God through sin, and so she now also turned away from the sight of men. She began to weep bitterly. Her heart was troubled and oppressed, causing tears to flow from her eyes, and to flow so freely that even Christ’s feet were wetted with them. Then she dried Christ’s feet with her own hair. She made her hair, with which she had formerly made herself beautiful, into a foot cloth and a wash towel. She also kissed Christ’s feet out of true humility, considering herself unworthy to kiss His hands. Finally, she anointed Christ’s feet with the costly perfume, considering herself unworthy to anoint Christ’s head with it, as was otherwise customary in the East.

(Sermon for Mary Magdalene-July 22, Postilla Volume 3 by Johann Gerhard, Repristination Press, page 108)