Seeing From God’s Perspective
Luke 15:1-10
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 15:10 “Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… How do you see yourself in relation to God? Do you see yourself as worthy or unworthy? Do you see yourself as loved or unloved? Do you see yourself as in favor or out of favor with God? Or do you see yourself as somewhere in between? How you see yourself will also have an effect on how you see other people in their relation to God. But I suggest to you that the more important question is this: how does God see you? And, how does God see the people around you? What is God’s perspective of all this?
Well, that is what Jesus reveals to us in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees saw themselves as high up on God’s list of favorites; but they saw the tax collectors and sinners who were coming to Jesus to hear Him as being permanently erased from God’s list of favorites. So Jesus reveals to us the sinner from God’s perspective.
Our text indicates that all the tax collectors (at that time, the notorious liars, thieves and cheaters of their fellow Jews), and the sinners (the well-known prostitutes, adulterers, and otherwise immoral people) – these people drew near to Jesus. They drew near to hear Him. But what did they hear? What was His message to them? That’s an important question.
Was Jesus telling them, “It’s all right to cheat and steal and have sex outside of marriage”? Was He telling them, “It doesn’t matter; God accepts you just as you are”? Certainly not. Jesus acknowledged their sinfulness and their lostness, something they probably knew well enough already. These were Israelites, after all; they knew the Ten Commandments. What’s more, John the Baptist recently had done his job of pointing out the sinfulness of everyone in Israel, including the tax collectors and the sinners. Not only that, but Jewish society at that time was very clear about these things. Open, public sins like prostitution, adultery, and fornication were recognized as evil; and cheating and stealing from your neighbor were understood to be inexcusable wrongs. These tax collectors and sinners weren’t even trying to pretend to be righteous or justified in their lifestyles. They knew they had ruined things between themselves and God.
Now Jesus comes along, claiming to have been sent from God, announcing a message from God, showing the sinner from God’s perspective: God isn’t done with you. God still loves you. In fact, God loves all men. He wants all men to be saved. He wants all to be brought to repentance. He doesn’t expect you to earn His favor. In fact, He forbids you to try. No, God is willing to forgive you; He is willing to forgive everyone, freely, by grace. And Jesus, the Son of God, is the one for whose sake God the Father is willing to do that. That is the message the tax collectors and the sinners were hearing from Jesus.
And after all that, all the Pharisees and scribes could do was to sneer at Jesus in disgust: “This man receives sinners and eats with them!” From their perspective, the sinners didn’t deserve to be forgiven. From their perspective, God should rejoice to be rid of them, and Jesus should spend His time with the worthy, praising them for how worthy they were, telling them how they, above other men, had indeed earned God’s favor.
So, Jesus told three parables, two of which we heard in our Gospel today. Those parables explained lost things from God’s perspective. Those parables explained exactly how God sees the sinner.
God certainly knows and cares about each and every sinner – that is, each and every person. God sees the sinner as a sheep that has gone astray, that has left the flock and the pastures and the protection of its shepherd. It doesn’t matter how big or little, how public or private the sin is. As Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way.”
Hmm. “All we like sheep have gone astray.” “Each one.” That’s what God’s Word says. So, in reality, there aren’t 99 “righteous” sheep who haven’t gone astray and who don’t need to repent. Everyone is a sinner. Everyone needs to repent. The 99 in Jesus’ parable simply represent those who think they’re righteous, those who think they have earned God’s favor, those who think they don’t need to repent. Such were the Pharisees and scribes in our Gospel.
So, what does the shepherd do? He leaves the 99 and goes after the one sinner, the one sheep that had gone astray. And he doesn’t just go after him. Always keep Isaiah’s prophecy in view. It continues, “we have turned, every one, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him” —on the Christ! — “the iniquity of us all.”
There are many options available when it comes to buying online, many people are concerned https://www.unica-web.com/archive/2019/unica2019-entries.html buy cialis online about safety. This drug has no direct relaxant effect on isolated human corpus viagra canada pharmacies cavernosum and has no effect in the absence of an actual medical condition, simply because the normal flow of urine. A person called richardo he was first time user and have experienced the pill first time to deal with impotence ever again. levitra properien by increasing the blood flow to the reproductive organs. The mistake best prices on viagra Prices most men make is that they double the dose for instant result but little do they know that these gadgets can work for a certain time period and if you don’t find ways to reduce the tension, you can become permanently impotent. Not included in this parable but always in view in the Scriptures is the fact that Jesus didn’t just go looking for us all. He gave His life for us all. He bore the sins of us all and suffered for them all and died for them all. The journey this Shepherd took to find His sheep wasn’t just difficult. It was deadly, as He knew it would be. But it was the only way to buy the sheep back from its wanderings, and it is the only message that will bring the sheep to repentance. Your God cared about you, His sinful, rebellious sheep, enough to lay down His life for you. And now He sends out His Gospel to find you, to preach repentance and the remission of sins through faith in Christ Jesus.
And when He finds His sheep with His Gospel, when His sheep repent and believes the good news, He is like the shepherd who hefted the sheep onto his shoulders and rejoiced as he returned home and celebrated with all his friends and neighbors the success of his mission, the return of the one sheep to his fold. That is how God sees the sinner. That is God’s perspective.
And the parable of the lost coin is similar to that of the lost sheep. It emphasizes the fact that there is value to the sinner in God’s eyes, and just as much value in the one who has gone lost as in those who haven’t (although all have, as we’ve already seen). The one silver coin that was lost is worth no more or no less than each of the other nine coins; whereas the Pharisees thought of themselves as far more valuable in God’s sight than the tax collectors and sinners. No, says Jesus. No one can earn a place of value in God’s sight. Everyone has already been assigned an equal value by God Himself. And when God finds a lost sinner and brings him or her to repentance, He sees all the effort He spent in searching as being well worth it. He rejoices to get back His coin.
Since God is most definitely joyful over the one sinner who repents, we should say a word here about what repentance is. This is what our Lutheran Confessions say about repentance, and it is dead-on correct: “Now, strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven. It comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror. Then good works are bound to follow, which are the fruit of repentance.” (AC XII)
Dear friends, this is what God seeks in each and every human being. He sends out His terror-striking Word to all those who deny their sinfulness, like the Pharisees in our Gospel, and to all those who are indifferent or unconcerned about their sinfulness, so that both kinds of sinner are brought to shudder before God’s judgment seat. He sends out His terror-striking Law to accuse us of our sins of adultery, fornication, lying, cheating, speaking ill of others, dishonoring parents, mistreating children, condoning behaviors that God forbids. And while we are always to pray for those caught in sin, we are never to condone it, much less devote an entire month to take pride in sexual immorality and desecrating the rainbow which was originally a divine sign and promise! Repent.
And God also sends out His comforting Gospel of His willingness to forgive sins freely for Christ’s sake through faith to all those who repent, to all who are shuddering in terror. He sends out His preachers to tell of Christ’s willing, obedient, loving self-sacrifice of suffering and dying for all those horrid sins and their guilt. Christ took your sins with Him to the cross and there paid for every one of them, even the ones you have yet to commit.
And when God’s Word has accomplished the goal of preaching Law and Gospel, He then forgives and justifies those who by faith alone believe in Christ’s work, and He welcomes them into His home, where there is rejoicing every day over the one sinner who repents…even me, even you.
It is not that we all stray from God’s house or go lost every time we sin; there are many sins that we commit in ignorance or in weakness that do not extinguish faith or drive out the Holy Spirit. But can you imagine a day going by in which you can honestly say, “I’m more worthy of God’s favor than those sinners over there. Today I need no repentance”? God forbid that you ever fall into such blindness and pride.
Instead, see yourself from God’s perspective; see yourself as God sees you. That is, see yourself as always sinful and undeserving of His favor and eternal life, and yet always desired by Him, always precious to Him. See yourself as daily urged by Him to live in contrition and repentance, to recognize and mourn your sins, and at the same time trusting in His gracious promise to forgive you freely for Christ’s sake, into whom you have been baptized. And then, with God’s help, struggle against sin to sin no more.
This, dear fellow redeemed, is what God wants for you. This is what God wants for everyone. And this is why God calls people not only to be baptized, but to join themselves to a Christian congregation where they can keep coming to Jesus, as the tax collectors and sinners did, to hear His Word and His instruction, to receive His absolution, and also to receive regularly the seal and pledge of His mercy and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Christ’s very body and blood.
From God’s perspective, all of you here are were worth seeking and finding and bringing to repentance, and all of you, as you repent and as you live daily in repentance, are a cause of great joy and celebration in heaven.
Now you get to live your lives from God’s perspective, and not your own. And you get to see both yourselves and your neighbor as God sees you: as sinners for whom Christ died, and with whom our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yearns to spend eternity.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
