The Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Lost Son

Luke 15 starts out by describing the reaction of the super-righteous Jews (Pharisees and Scribes) to Jesus socializing with the worst sinners of Jewish society. They criticized Jesus and felt morally superior to him.

Jesus then tells three stories; the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. There’s a progression in these stories.

A sheep wanders off, the shepherd leaves 99 sheep to go look for the one that was lost and when he finds it there is great rejoicing. Of course everyone knows that.

A woman loses one of her 10 coins. She searches the house to find it and when she does she is over joyed and tells her friends and they rejoice. Of course she does.

A man has a rebellious son (one of two sons) who leaves the family and goes to a far country and lives a live of debauchery and sexual misconduct. The son repents and comes home and the father rejoices and throws a big party in celebration. Some understand this and some don’t.

The super self-righteous Jews criticized Jesus for caring about the lost children of God. Their spirituality was messed up. They mistakenly thought that God’s children couldn’t have anything to do with those whose lives were sullied by sin.

Perhaps they thought those lost should repent first and clean their lives up and then and only then could there be any social contact. Sound familiar?

They were spiritual failures. They didn’t understand that God loves all his children and is anxiously awaiting the day that they would repent and that repentance always, 100% of the time results in great rejoicing in Heaven. Maybe, not always on earth but always in Heaven.

They didn’t understand the process of bringing people to repentance. They didn’t understand the need for social contact to demonstrate care and concern and correction for the ultimate well-being of those who are lost in sin.

When I’m working with someone I have to ignore a lot. I have to ignore bad language, bad behavior, bad jokes, immodesty, etc. So I can build a relationship to show Christ living in me so that they will look at their own lives and want something better. If I condemn every little thing I lose my chance to address the greater things.

I’ve seen that process work.

Jesus worked hard with the morally bankrupt of Jewish society… should we do less?