Luke 15:11-32

The third parable, rather an example than a parable illustrating by an imaginary case the joy of recovering a lost human being. In this case care is taken to describe what loss means in the sphere of human life. The interest in the lost now appropriately takes the form of eager longing and patient waiting for the return of the erring one, that there may be room for describing the repentance referred to in Luke 15:7; Luke 15:10, which is the motive for the return. Also in the moral sphere the subject of the finding cannot be purely passive: there must be self -recovery to give ethical value to the event. A sinning man cannot be brought back to God like a straying sheep to the fold. Hence the beautiful picture of the sin, the misery, the penitent reflections, and the return of the prodigal peculiar to this parable. It is not mere scene-painting. It is meant to show how vastly higher is the significance of the terms “lost” and “found” in the human sphere, justifying increased interest in the finding, and so showing the utter unreasonableness of the fault-finding directed against Jesus for His efforts to win to goodness the publicans and sinners. Jesus thereby said in effect: You blame in me a joy which is universal, that of finding the lost, and which ought to be greater in the case of human beings just because it is a man that is found and not a beast. Does not the story as I tell it rebuke your cynicism and melt your hearts? Yet such things are happening among these publicans and sinners you despise, every day.