In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
“Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Lk 15:7)
Last week we heard about Jesus eating with Pharisees and teaching them with the Parable of the Great Banquet. While the Pharisees were devout and law-abiding, they tended to be self-righteous: much too certain of their own ability to keep God’s Law. As a result, they tended to be lacking in repentance (something that we Christians must be very cautious of in our own lives).
And in spite of the fact that they repeatedly tried to entrap Jesus, He was always willing to accept their invitations, eat with them, and teach them. Most of them didn’t believe Jesus. Nor did they believe that He was the promised Messiah. But Jesus took on human flesh to call sinners to repentance – that we might be saved by faith in Him – so Jesus proclaimed Law and Gospel to the Pharisees just the same.
But the Pharisees weren’t the only group of people that Jesus associated with. Jesus kept company with those who were widely known in the community to be sinners: like prostitutes and thieving tax collectors.
Not only did Jesus talk with them … and eat with them (something scandalous and unthinkable to the self-righteous who thought they were perfect in every way), but His message to such openly sinful people was also the same as it was to the Pharisees: none of you are righteous before God on account of your own merits; none of you have kept God’s Law perfectly enough to earn God’s favor – indeed, you can’t – for all of you are sinners. And this message applies just as much to us as it did to the openly sinful and the stubbornly self-righteous sinners that Jesus spoke with during His public ministry.
Because we’re sinners, God’s Law condemns us. By God’s grace and the working of the Holy Spirit may we repent and believe the Gospel – that Christ came to save us from our sins – both
the ones everyone knows about like the thieving tax collectors and prostitutes and the ones known only to you and God as with the Pharisees who only appeared blameless on the outside.
Jesus teaches us today in His Holy Word: tearing open the self-righteousness that we think we have to reveal the sinfulness that infects our thoughts, words, deeds, and very nature, but then offering to us the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, newness of life, strengthening and growth in our lives of faith and sanctification in this life, and the certain hope of eternal life in His heavenly kingdom.
Jesus told sinners of all kinds – sinners like each of us – to repent and believe the Gospel (Mk 1:15) and many did. Many were drawn to Christ’s Word and our Lord never turned any of them away. In fact, seeing Jesus intentionally associating with known sinners was seriously troubling to the Pharisees. They were beside themselves with shock and indignation saying: “This Man receives sinners and eats with them” (Lk 15:2).
They couldn’t believe that. It was inconceivable for the self-righteous Pharisees. For all their outward works, the Pharisees had no time for such obviously sinful people: no comfort to speak to them, no mercy to offer them, even if they were broken by their sin and were desperate for comfort and forgiveness. Does this characterize our own thinking? Do we think we’re too good to speak the mercy and comfort of the Gospel to those who are openly sinful?
The self-righteous Pharisees thought that their good works justified them before God and that there was essentially no hope for the likes of tax collectors and other known sinners. The Pharisees didn’t believe that God could ever bring such blatantly sinful people into the household of faith.
This is the context in which Christ tells the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin.
If a shepherd has a hundred sheep and one of them strays from the flock, any faithful shepherd would leave the flock in search of the one that has become lost.
In other words, God doesn’t want those who stray from Him to be lost eternally. As He says through the Prophet Ezekiel, He has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from his way and live” (Ez 33:11). Clearly the Pharisees don’t understand God’s love and mercy.
God is persistent in seeking out those who wander from His sheepfold: those who are worshiping their false gods of career and possessions, those who’ve been led to embrace the gluttony and lust of this world we live in, those who act out of malice or contempt toward their neighbors, and even those who’ve been seduced by the call of secularism that tells them they can do what they want, think what they want, and be what they want because of the heinous lie that ‘we can decide our own truth.’ God would have His good and wise Law and His healing Gospel proclaimed to all.
God’s love and mercy is such that, in spite of all of these and our many other sins, He calls us to repentance by His Word and Spirit: to turn from our own ways and live. He sent Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to seek out sinners, proclaim forgiveness and salvation in His name, and suffer and die for the sins of the world as the once-for-all sacrifice: atoning for the sins of sinners like you and me.
And Jesus continues to seek out His lost sheep through the preaching of the Gospel. His Church proclaims the message throughout the world: turn from your lives of sin and take refuge in Christ who bore your sins on the cross. Believe in Christ and be clothed with His perfect righteousness.
You know the struggle, the hardship, the suffering of this sinful world. Hear the voice of Jesus as He promises you that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matt 11:30) for in Christ you have the gift of forgiveness from all your sins. “Though your sins are like scarlet [says the prophet], they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Is 1:18).
On account of Christ, God the Father is lovingly disposed toward you. Even though He knows all the evil you’ve done, He will still receive you into His sheepfold and make you holy in His sight through faith in Christ.
“And when he has found [the lost sheep], he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost'” (Lk 15:5).
When Christ’s Word and Spirit call sinners like us to repentance – and we thereby repent and believe the Gospel – He rejoices. And not Christ only, but even the holy angels and all the saints with Him sing out in praise of God’s grace, mercy, and steadfastness toward His sheep who like to wander.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not rejoicing and singing out in praise when the tax collectors and other sinners were gathering around Jesus. In the mind of the Pharisees, heaven was only for self-righteous people like them who, at least in their own minds, had no need of repentance. Jesus corrects this thinking: “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Lk 15:7).
He then continues His teaching with another parable: a woman who had ten silver coins but lost one and diligently searched the house until she found it. Jesus makes it clear that no person is worth more or less than another. Every soul is precious to God and worth saving.
Christ shed His cleansing blood for all people and sees to it that the Gospel of salvation in Him is preached throughout the world “that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).
God the Son became Man, spent His life teaching sinners, forgiving the repentant, and eating with them. He sacrificed His life for lost sinners like us, and now rules at God’s right hand: sending the light of His Gospel into the world, searching for every lost soul that they might be enlightened with the gift of faith in Christ.
Both of today’s parables show just how serious God is about seeking and saving the lost. He doesn’t reject anyone who comes to Him for forgiveness and healing.
While this is most sure and most precious to us, it’s also true that as the redeemed and forgiven people of God, we’re not called to sit idly by. That’s why St. James exhorts us, saying: “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (Js 2:17).
In other words, we should value the gift of salvation that Christ has won for us so highly that we follow Him into His kingdom in the way that we vowed at our Confirmations when we vowed that we would “faithfully conform all our life to the rule of the divine Word, to be diligent in the use of the means of grace, to walk in a way that is worthy of the Gospel of Christ, and in faith, word, and deed to remain true to the Triune God, even to death.”
It’s only by God’s grace and His gift of faith that we can believe or trust in Him for forgiveness and salvation. And it’s only by God’s grace through faith that we can even begin to “conform all our life to the rule of the divine Word”. That’s why here, in the midst of His Church, Jesus calls us back to Himself. It’s here where He searches us out and finds us through Confession and Absolution, through the remembrance of our Baptism, through the proclamation of the Divine Word, and through the Holy Supper. And as we receive Him by faith, He rejoices over the lost sheep that He has returned to His sheepfold.
Let us cast all our cares upon Him who died and rose again: knowing that He’s sought us out in the dust of our afflictions, and will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish us unto life everlasting.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Pr. Jon Holst