Having wanted to speak about "More Joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, than over 99 just persons who need no repentance", our class ended up interacting over whether the 99 sheep who needed no repentance were really Christians or not. It is my conviction that Jesus was speaking to the scribes and Pharisees who He had said that they had the 100 sheep. And then one of them then went astray. He said to them, which one of you would not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one which is lost until he finds it. This he posits with them. It would be their thought that the 99 sheep did not need repentance. They were supposedly safe in their care. But actually, Jesus is not saying that there is such a thing as sheep who need no repentance. All sheep, all men, need repentance. Even Christians need repentance. He is saying that the scribes and Pharisees believed that they were "Just" men who needed no repentance, and they thought that their flock, the 99 needed no repentance because they believed in themselves as being just.
The whole flock of 100, of the scribes and Pharisees sheep needed repentance. One realized that he was a sinner and lost. That one represents the tax collectors and sinners who drew near to Jesus. The 99 any person who might try to be justified by their own works. Jesus would go to seek and find the one who was lost and bring him salvation. The one who was lost would trust in Jesus and not in his own righteousness. He would understand that he was not righteous. The scribes and the Pharisees thought that they were righteous, but they did not see their need of Jesus, or the kind of repentance that God would be pleased with.
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Pastor Paul Rendall was born in November of 1951, and grew up in Davenport, Iowa. He went to college at Drake University and the University of Iowa where he received a B.A. degree in Social Work and History in 1974. Paul searched for truth in all the wrong places in college, but...
