Bible Text: Luke 15:1-32 | Preacher: Rev. Andrew Richard
Today’s Gospel presents us with the heart of Christianity: that sinners are freely justified by Christ’s grace as a gift. Every other religion on earth leaves us looking to the work of our own hands for assurance of salvation, an assurance that is no assurance at all and leads only to despair or pride. But with Jesus there is true assurance of the forgiveness of sins, of righteousness before God, of eternal blessedness in heaven. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (Jn. 3:16-17).
At the beginning of the reading the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to Jesus to hear Him. Everyone hated tax collectors. Tax collectors had contracts with the Roman government to collect a certain amount of taxes, and the tax collecting agency that claimed to be able to get the most tax money got the bid. Then individual tax collectors would overcharge people and pocket the extra. This is why, when tax collectors came to John the Baptist, were baptized, and asked, “What shall we do?” he said, “Collect no more than what is appointed for you” (Lk. 3:13). This might mean they could barely scrape out a living, but it was the right thing to do, and the repentant tax collectors were willing to do it. The sinners were notorious sinners, people known for living lives of open sin: prostitutes, adulterers, drunks, swindlers, and so forth. Yet while these sins might characterize their past, that’s changing. They’re purposefully approaching Jesus to hear His words, and His words don’t approve sin, but call it what it is. The Word of Jesus exposes hearts and reveals sin, and the sinners listen to Him, because He doesn’t just tell them the hard truth about themselves, but because He speaks grace and forgiveness to them, comforts their consciences, tells them that though they are unrighteous, yet He is righteous, and He has come to bear their sins, have mercy on them, change their hearts, turn them away from death, and grant them eternal life.
The Pharisees and scribes grumbled against Jesus, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” They slander Jesus, saying that He is guilty by association. But they get it exactly backwards, and this is the glory of the Gospel. It’s not that Jesus is guilty by association with us. It’s that we’re innocent by association with Him! The Pharisees say, “This man receives sinners” in order to find fault, but we rejoice in this and wouldn’t have it any other way. If Jesus didn’t receive sinners, who among us could be saved? But thank God, Jesus does receive sinners! The Church has even taken this so-called charge against Jesus and turned it into a hymn, which is our closing hymn today, “Jesus Sinners Doth Receive”: “I, a sinner, come to Thee / With a penitent confession. / Savior, mercy show to me; / Grant for all my sins remission. / Let these words my soul relieve: / Jesus sinners doth receive” (LSB 609:4).
But the Pharisees and scribes are bringing this charge against Jesus publicly. Jesus never takes these charges personally. When people call Him names, like Samaritan, He doesn’t defend Himself. But when people say things against Him that would call His grace into question, He never lets that sit unanswered. Picture the tax collectors and sinners standing there, picture yourself standing there, and Satan comes along and says, “Jesus is just dirtying Himself by being with you. You’re not gaining anything, and He’s just ruining His own reputation. You’re hopeless.” Jesus is not silent, but upholds His grace toward you so that you do not doubt but believe all the more firmly that your sins are forgiven. This charge against Jesus prompts the three parables that follow, wonderful parables that highlight the mercy of our Lord.
At the core of each of these parables is the truth that Jesus receives sinners. Indeed, the climax of the parable of the prodigal son is that, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” The father throws a feast for his son. But it’s not just that Jesus receives sinners: it’s that He goes out of His way to pursue sinners, to find sinners, to rescue sinners, and He goes to lengths that seem far-fetched and unbelievable, except that they’re true. Jesus starts the parable of the lost sheep, “What man of you…” which is a way of saying, “Isn’t this the obvious course of action that all of us would take?” In the previous chapter of Luke, for example, Jesus had said, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” (Lk. 14:5). Everyone would do that, even those who were accusing Jesus of breaking the Sabbath, and that was His point. But listen to this: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?” (Lk. 15:4). I mean, who wouldn’t abandon ninety-nine sheep in the middle of nowhere in order to go after the lost one? And the Pharisees are standing there thinking, “Uh, I wouldn’t. Ninety-nine sheep are better than one sheep. You cut your losses and move on.”
But that’s not Christ’s attitude toward you. Jesus is not thinking about you as a businessman thinks about his warehouse. Jesus is thinking of you as if you individually are all that matters to Him. If you were the only person who ever lived, or if everyone else on the face of the earth were righteous and you were the only one who needed redemption, Jesus would have suffered all that He suffered and shed all the blood that He shed for your sake alone. There He is, tearing through the brambles and bleeding, fighting off wolves and incurring injury, breathing hard and running through the black of night in order to find you. There He is, crowned with thorns, the blood streaming down His face, bearing your sins, warding off Satan, hanging on the cross in darkness, and breathing His last, and all for you. In this parable Jesus makes it clear that if He had to go through His whole Passion for each one of us individually, He would have.
This puts joy in our hearts, as David the Psalmist teaches us to sing in the first and last verses of Psalm 32: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit… Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Ps. 32:1, 11). The Pharisees and scribes stand there hurling their accusations, and yet our heart sings, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” (Ps. 4:7). Jesus sinners doth receive, thanks be to God.
This joy of salvation forms our hearts and makes them willing to confess and say things that the unregenerate heart only finds degrading and humiliating. We’ll focus on three things that come up in the reading. The joy of salvation makes us willing to see our inability to save ourselves, makes us willing to admit we’re wrong, and makes us willing to forgive the sins of our brother. We’ll go through these in turn.
The joy of salvation makes us willing to see our inability to save ourselves. The sheep was lost and could not find its own way back, but could only wander further and further in the wrong direction. The coin, an inanimate object, could not find or recover itself, but could only lie there like a dead man until someone else came along and picked it up. Now you’re not a dumb beast or an inanimate object, and yet you possess no more ability to save yourself than the sheep or coin did. Our flesh finds this insulting. We don’t want to be that helpless or dependent on someone else. The pride of our heart wants to be independent and self-sufficient. But who in the reading was independent and self-sufficient? The prodigal son, or at least he thought he was. He used what he had received from his father to convince himself that he was independent and self-sufficient. He still had nothing of his own, and the same is true of us, as the Apostle Paul says, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7). But the prodigal could only use his so-called independence and self-sufficiency to dig his own grave. Even the prodigal’s return to his father was not ultimately his doing. God drove him to it by afflicting him. God made him suffer so that he would see the folly of his sins and hate them and desire to go back to how things used to be. Thank God that He makes sin hurt. If He didn’t then far fewer people would repent. All of this shows that our salvation is not our doing. But the joy of salvation in Christ makes us grateful that salvation has nothing to do with us. We wouldn’t have it any other way. “You were dead in trespasses and sins,” it says in Ephesians 2 (Eph. 2:1). You were a coin, lying helpless on the ground. “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ―by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4-5). The joy of salvation makes us willing to confess our insufficiency and give all glory to Jesus.
The joy of salvation also makes us willing to admit we’re wrong. Admitting you’re wrong is perhaps the hardest thing in the world to do. Again, this is because of our sinful nature, which always wants to be right, even when it obviously isn’t. Admitting you’re wrong almost feels like a taste of hell, and in a sense it is, because hell is what our sins deserve. But when we have the joy of salvation in Jesus, then suddenly it isn’t the end of the world to be wrong. I can say, “I have sinned, and I’m truly sorry, and thanks be to Jesus, He has taken that sin away.” The joy of salvation allows you to swallow your pride and see the log in your eye and repent. Because of Jesus, you have nothing to lose. And it helps to know that the angels rejoice over this as well. Picture this: You’re in an argument with someone, and you’re so far into it that regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong you’ve both sinned and are going to keep sinning if you continue. And the angels of God are in heaven watching, and like the prodigal son you come to yourself and realize, “This is just hurting. Why would I continue?” And you pause, and the angels lean forward in expectation, and you say, “I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” And all heaven erupts in joy and celebration, and Jesus calls all the saints together and says, “Rejoice with me!” and there’s music and dancing and feasting. Repentance only hurts our sinful nature, and we want the old man to die anyway. The new man in Christ looks at repentance as throwing a party for heaven. So when you’re wrong, just admit you’re wrong. Jesus forgives your sin and gives you joy in place of grief, and all heaven rejoices over you.
Finally, the joy of salvation makes us willing to forgive the sins of our brother. If we were saved by our own works, then we would have a leg to stand on when thinking we’re more righteous than our brother. But the simple fact is that we’re not saved by our works, and the only legs we have to stand on are the legs of Christ’s grace, and those are the same legs on which our brother stands. There’s no such thing as wanting grace for yourself but not for others. Again, our sinful nature is stupid and doesn’t realize this. It wants mercy for itself and justice against everyone else. But when you have the joy of salvation and realize that you live by the grace of Jesus alone, then you are perfectly willing to forgive your brother’s sins, because Christ has forgiven your sins. I’m a dumb, straying sheep, I’m a helpless coin, I’m pig-trough-licking sinner whose father has received him back and clothed him with the best robe of Christ’s righteousness. If my brother needs to live by the same mercy by which I live, then I’m glad to have him in the family. Slaughter the fattened calf and let’s feast and delight together in the grace of Christ. That’s the attitude of the redeemed sinner, and the joy of salvation makes us eager to receive sinners, just as Christ was eager to receive us.
“This man receives sinners and eats with them.” Yes, yes He does. “Who is a God like You, [O Jesus,] pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Mic. 7:18-19). Thanks be to God. Amen.