The titles of the three parables in Luke 15 are usually listed in study Bibles as “The Parable of the Lost Sheep”, “The Parable of the Lost Coin”, and “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”. These titles focus our attention on the “lost” thing or person. This is symptomatic of our tendency to focus on ourselves and not on the Lord.

These days, when people say that they are proclaiming the gospel, what they usually proclaim is something along the lines of “God loves you so much”. They portray Jesus as on an urgent mission to tell people how much God loves them and how precious they are to God.

But in fact, Jesus’ reason for telling these three parables is as a specific response to a specific comment from a specific group of people. We see this in Luke 15:1-2:

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’”

The Pharisees and the scribes had been carefully watching Jesus since Luke 5:17-26. Jesus healed a paralytic in the presence of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, pronouncing his sins forgiven. On account of this, they begin to suspect Jesus of blasphemy.

Later, Jesus called the tax collector Levi and began to recline at table with tax collectors and others. At this, the Pharisees and scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

The Pharisees and scribes’ question is not a question focused on themselves: “What does Jesus think about me?” Their question is: “Who does this man think he is?”

The parables of Luke 15 are Jesus’ reply to that question.

Who does Jesus say he is in these parables?

In the first parable, he hearkens back to Ezekiel 34 and claims to be the true shepherd of the sheep, the Lord God, who looks for the lost sheep which have been lost by the neglectful shepherds of Israel.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law think that Jesus is a blaspheming man, the crowds who are following him are sinners, and they themselves are God’s servants. But in Jesus’ parable, he identifies everyone differently. In Jesus’ parable, Jesus is the good shepherd, the crowds are the sheep who belong to him, and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are hypocrites who only serve themselves.

God’s search for us is not driven by our value. Our love and God’s love are different. We love things that are valuable. But God loves his enemies and, by his love, we become valuable. Having turned away from God to idols, we have become worthless (cf. Jeremiah 2:5).

The early church leader Athanasius said that we were created in the image of God. But sin destroyed that image in us. God the Son becomes incarnate and restores the image of God to humanity so that all who Christ calls who enter his death through baptism will also be restored to the image of God on the last day when he raises them from the dead.

This is what it means to be saved. It means that we are rescued from worthlessness and restored to the image of God.

God does not save us because we are worthy. Our salvation is what restores our worth. This is why Jesus did not say, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what is valuable.” Instead, he said, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

In Jesus’ parable of the coin, the coin is not valuable; the coin is lost. The coin is restored to value by the woman who searches for it and finds it.

This is why Jesus’ message to the crowds was not, “I have come to die for you because you are so precious.” Instead, the message that Jesus preaches—the gospel—is that the day of final judgment is coming soon. God will come in person on that day—in Christ—to judge and punish his enemies. A short time remains, during which time God is offering his mercy through Christ to save anyone who is willing.

The problem: few are willing!

Jesus laments over Jerusalem that is was not willing (Luke 13:34). And, in the parable of the great banquet, the invited guests were not willing, so the master of the house invited anyone who could be compelled to come (Luke 14:12-24).

That is who we are— the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame, who have been compelled by the master and his servants to come to the banquet because there is space available.

That is why the characteristic attitude of the authentic Christian is not that we know how precious we are and thus we love ourselves so much. It is that we know how worthless we are and thus what great mercy we have received from God.

These days there is a counterfeit gospel that says that our problem is our lack of self-acceptance. We don’t love ourselves. In this false gospel, God’s love is God’s acceptance of us, which enables us to accept ourselves. This then enables us to accept others.

But in the actual gospel, our problem is not a lack of self-love but idolatry. There is something or someone (or a bunch of things) in place of the one true God in our lives. Christ comes not to accept us but to warn us that God’s judgment against us will come suddenly and fully. He dies not because we are so valuable and he doesn’t want to live without us. He dies because his death and resurrection is how God makes a way for us to be saved from our idolatry. This, says Jesus in John 3:16, is how God loves the world. We love God because he shows us this mercy. We love others because of the mercy God shows to us. As for loving ourselves, we, along with our other brothers and sisters in Christ, have been made the permanent temple of God and the bride of Christ, and so we treat our bodies, souls, and spirits accordingly.

One question remains which still needs to be resolved in today’s scripture is this: Why do the Pharisees and scribes look at the crowd and call them “sinners”?

The answer is very important: The Pharisees and scribes understood sin as a moral issue. They believed that what made someone a sinner is that that person broke the law and is not in good standing with the temple because they have not made the proper sacrifices there to atone for their sins.

The Pharisees and teachers of the law believed that only God could forgive, but that God had given them the list of what counts as sin and put them in charge of administering the system of how we repent and receive forgiveness for those sins.

According to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law—and then also for the temple authorities, as we will see later in Luke and then also in Acts—the crowd that gathered around Jesus had not repented. They had not taken the right steps to receive forgiveness for their sins. Those steps were only available through the law (as interpreted by the Pharisees and the teachers of the law) and the temple (using the sacrifices administered by the temple authorities).

But beginning with John the Baptist, God revealed that that system could no longer make people right with him. It no longer mediated his presence. In the beginning, in the time of Moses, God gave the law and the tabernacle as the means by which his presence could go with the people. But over time, the law and the tabernacle no longer mediated his presence. It obscured and distorted it. That is because those who interpreted the law and those who operated the temple claimed to be representing God, but they were actually representing themselves and their interests. They claimed that the tax collectors were bad, but they themselves were no different than the tax collectors. They were driven by greed and a desire to exploit their positions for their own power.

In the book of Ezekiel, God’s presence left the temple. The religious authorities had distorted the law and the temple so much that, when Christ came according to God’s promises, the authorities called him a blasphemer and put him to death.

Jesus is the way that God comes. He sent John the Baptist ahead of himself to baptize and let people know that the law and the temple were temporary mediators until God came himself in Christ. From that point, repentance would be mediated through Christ alone.

Through Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus was revealed to be God through the voice of the Father and the Holy Spirit’s descending on him. And the fact that he was baptized together with sinners (unlike the religious authorities) revealed that he came to seek and to save the lost (cf. Luke 7:24-34).

The religious leaders were blind guides who could not see who Christ is or what God’s purpose was for themselves. They could only follow Jesus around and grumble. They were like the children of Israel in the wilderness.

When Christ came, he revealed the true nature of sin. Sin is not a moral violation. It is not a breaking of the law. Sin is the breaking of relationship with God. It is the rejection of God and replacing God with something or someone else. It is idolatry.

So how does someone repent? They receive Christ when He comes to them.

Christ’s coming signals the end of the age. The present age is characterized by God’s mercy and man’s disobedience. This age, the age of mercy, will end on the Day of the Lord. That is the day on which God’s enemies will be punished and condemned and the people of God will be saved, raised bodily from the dead, and restored to life on the renewed earth.

Keeping this in mind, the parables in Luke 15 make perfect sense. All three parables are about Christ searching for and finding the lost. To be lost means to be out of connection with Christ. That disconnection is caused from the human side, not from God. It comes from human rebellion and idolatry.

When someone is out of connection with Christ, the connection can only be restored by Christ.

IIn times past, the connection with God was mediated by the law, the prophets, and the temple. But in these last days, God has come in Christ, as the fulfillment of the law, the prophets, and the temple. Those who had gathered around Christ were forgiven because they had repented, which means that when Christ came to them, they welcomed him and followed him and recognized him as Lord. They were no longer lost. Their sins were forgiven.

We don’t come to Christ and then confess a list of moral sins. In the so-called “Parable of the Prodigal Son”, the lost son tried to come to a list of sins to confess to his father. But the father cuts him off and receives him. This is because sin is not at root a moral problem, but repentance is at root a restoration of relationship.

Christ has come to you today, directly. He comes to you in his word. His word is his own direct speech. His word does not require me or the study notes in your Bible to mediate it for you or explain it to you. He teaches us directly, through his Holy Spirit, who was given to us at our baptism. He comes to us in the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is not mediated by pastors or priests. It does not require a special people to consecrate it or to serve it to you. At that table Christ comes to you directly. That is what a sacrament means: Christ’s direct presence without mediation. And when he offers himself through his word and through the Lord’s Supper, and you receive these in his name as his very word and his very presence, then you are no longer lost.

And your sins are forgiven.