As I read today’s text, three thoughts kept surfacing in my mind:
First, Jesus resists the religious who keep trying to show how religious they are. Anytime the religious mindset makes us start to think that we have been good, or performed well, and therefore that God owes us, Jesus turns things on their head and shows how impossible it would be to get God to be indebted to you. I am thinking here of the Pharisees in chapter 13 and 14. The Pharisees wanted to show how much better they were than anyone else. Jesus puts them in their place, saying “your best is not enough.”
Second, Jesus embraces the outcast, people who have been forgotten and lost, or people who have made a mess of their lives - in Luke 15, “tax collectors and other notorious sinners”. He eats with them, he teaches them, he makes room for them.
Third, repentance is necessary for all. Jesus does not allow anyone to stay where they are. You must turn from your sin, or from your religion and embrace the mercy of the Savior. The prodigal son in Luke 15 has to come to his senses and go home. But when he does, he is not brow-beaten or rebuked for his foolish decisions. He is welcomed.
Second, Jesus embraces the outcast, people who have been forgotten and lost, or people who have made a mess of their lives - in Luke 15, “tax collectors and other notorious sinners”. He eats with them, he teaches them, he makes room for them.
Third, repentance is necessary for all. Jesus does not allow anyone to stay where they are. You must turn from your sin, or from your religion and embrace the mercy of the Savior. The prodigal son in Luke 15 has to come to his senses and go home. But when he does, he is not brow-beaten or rebuked for his foolish decisions. He is welcomed.
Some of us need to repent of our sins. Others of us need to repent of our religion. In both cases we need to come to our senses and realize that we are not accepted because of how good we are, how faithful, how much we sacrifice, how committed we are. Our best is not good enough.
But we are accepted because God is merciful. He owes us nothing. And yet his forgiveness and favor is freely given if we will simply turn and embrace him.
Lord, I turn to you today. I repent of everything else I have been trusting in and put my confidence in you. You owe me nothing, so everything that comes to me today is a gift. What I do with it will be my gift back to you. Amen.
But we are accepted because God is merciful. He owes us nothing. And yet his forgiveness and favor is freely given if we will simply turn and embrace him.
Lord, I turn to you today. I repent of everything else I have been trusting in and put my confidence in you. You owe me nothing, so everything that comes to me today is a gift. What I do with it will be my gift back to you. Amen.
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