Luke 15:1,2

5. The Parables of Grace: chap. 15.

This piece contains: 1 st. A historical introduction (Luke 15:1-2); 2 d. A pair of parables, like that of the previous chapter (Luke 15:3-10); and 3 d. A great parable, which forms the summing up and climax of the two preceding (Luke 15:11-32). The relation is like that between the three allegories, John 10:1-18.

1 st. Luke 15:1-2. The Introduction.

If Weizsäcker had sufficiently weighed the bearing of the analytical form ἦσαν ἐγγίζοντες, they were drawing near, which denotes a state of things more or less permanent, he would not have accused Luke (p. 139) of transforming into the event of a particular time a very common situation in the life of Jesus. It is on the basis of this habitual state of things that the point of time (aor. εἰπε, Luke 15:3) is marked off when Jesus related the following parables. Holtzmann finds nothing in this introduction but an invention of Luke himself. In any case, Luke places us once more, by this short historical introduction, at the point of view for understanding the whole of the following discourse.

What drew those sinners to Jesus was their finding in Him not that righteousness, full of pride and contempt, with which the Pharisees assailed them, but a holiness which was associated with the tenderest love. The publicans and sinners had broken with Levitical purity and Israelitish respectability; the former by their business, the others by their life. They were outlaws in Israel. But were they finally lost on that account? Undoubtedly, the normal way of entering into union with God would have been through fidelity to the theocracy; but the coming of the Saviour opened another to those who, by their guilt, had shut the first against them. And that was exactly the thing which had exasperated the zealots of Levitical observances. Rather than recognise in Jesus one who had understood the merciful purpose of God, they preferred to explain the compassionate welcome which He gave to sinners by His secret sympathy with sin. Προσδέχεσθαι, to receive with welcome, refers to kindly relations in general; συνεσθίειν, to eat with, to the decisive act in the manners of that time by which He did not fear to seal this connection.