Which of the Two Would Be More Grateful? (Luke 7:36-47)

OK, I admit it -- this question has me puzzled! Am I completely missing the point of this lesson? I assume that we are not being encouraged to commit more sin so we appreciate Christ's grace more. Are we to avoid the troubles of the Pharisees -- getting caught up in legalism, and having a holier-than-thou attitude?

So, instead of presenting the passages that I found meaningful, I present to you my trouble spots.

Luke 7:47: If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.

From Mere Spirituality, by Mike Yaconelli: "Messy spirituality is a good term for the place where desperation meets Jesus.... 'Church people' often label 'desperate people' as strange and unbalanced.... People who are desperate for spirituality very seldom worry about the mess they make on their way to be with Jesus."

From Between Noon and Three, by Robert Farrar Capon: "Whenever someone attempts to introduce a radically different insight to people whose minds have been formed by an old and well-worked-out way of thinking, he or she is up against an obstacle. As Jesus said, their taste for the old wine is so well established that they invariably prefer it to the new.... 'precluding the conversion of species in an argument' will do for a name for this teaching technique that Jesus uses in healing on the Sabbath, and that I have used in presenting you with grace in the context of an adultery.... they (the Pharisees) would have envisioned Jesus as the kind of Messiah they were ready for (a victorious and immortal one) and not as the kind he knew himself to be (a suffering and dying one)."

From The Wild Man's Journey, by Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos: "There are two ways of being a prophet. One is to tell the enslaved they can be free. It is the difficult path of Moses. The second is to tell those who think they are free that they are in fact enslaved. This is the even more difficult path of Jesus."