Right in the middle of the gospel of Luke we step into some interesting family drama. Jesus tells a story about a father who has two sons. And what we find is God’s heart toward those in need of grace.
Because this story in situated in the middle of the gospel (Luke 15:11–31), it will be helpful for us to gain some background for what is happening leading up to Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son.
It’s a moment when the Pharisees and scribes are grumbling, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2). This word “receives” (prosdechetai) is deeply relational. Think companionship. Think to welcome someone in a warm way. Think to receive someone with hospitality.
Grace Receives Sinners with Hospitality
In other words, what Jesus is doing is not repudiating the sinners but receiving them in a friendly manner. The sinners likely already knew what the law said about their lifestyle or behavior. They also likely knew what Judaism or this new way of following what Jesus had to say. However, what was uncertain was whether (or not) someone would still love them. Thus, Jesus enters their worlds, not to condone, but to befriend. He chooses to dwell with them.
Grace Receives Without Condoning Sin
This is what grace does; it does not ignore or overlook sin, but rather grace meets us right where we are so that we might have a relationship with God.
Now it makes a little more sense why it bothered the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus would receive these people. They would never grace such people with their presence. And since they were the theological experts, they were certain God felt the same way.
Grace Receives the Rejected
Then as Jesus often does, He begins to tell stories. And each of these parables serves to illustrate what it means to love people. Particularly those whom the religious elites have refused to love.
This is what Christian love looks like. It’s the ability to love those whom everyone else has rejected. Christian love looks at the world and pays close attention to everyone who has been rejected and cast aside and decides in the name of Jesus to love them.
But why?
Because when we were unlovable, God graciously loved us.
Loving those who are easy to love does not distinguish Christian love from any other love. Jesus says, “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?” (Matt. 5:46). Jesus adds that even the tax collectors can do the same. Christian love is determined by how well we love those that the world has deemed unlovable.
Then right after Jesus is questioned by the Pharisees and scribes about befriending sinners, Jesus tells a parable (Luke 15:4) about a man who loses one of his sheep. “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?”
Grace Receives the One Who Is Lost
Those listening to Jesus would have been well aware of the correct answer. They would have left the ninety-nine in pursuit of the one lost sheep. And Jesus even describes that when the man returns with his once lost sheep, how his friends and neighbors join in rejoicing over finding this sheep (v. 6).
Grace Receives with Joy, Not Reluctance
What’s the point of this story?
It is intended to point the reader back to why Jesus even told the story in the first place.
The Pharisees and scribes were upset that Jesus would welcome sinners. That He would share a meal with them (v. 2). Yet Jesus goes on to say, “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (v. 7).
Jesus is spending time with these “sinners” that the Pharisees and scribes don’t want to associate with. They want to tend to the ninety-nine righteous people, but Jesus would rather look for that one lost sheep. God graciously spends His time looking and doesn’t give up until He finds you.
Then Jesus tells another story, but this time about a woman who loses one of her ten silver coins. In this parable Jesus asks a question. He asks in Luke 15:8, “What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?”
The assumption for Jesus is that she will look everywhere. And when she finds the coin, just like the shepherd above, she will celebrate with friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost” (v. 9).
Thus far, Jesus is stringing together a series of stories that are helping explain why it is that He would spend so much time with sinners. Why He would eat with them.
To the Pharisees, this seems like wasted time. Yet the grace of God never wastes time. Jesus then reaffirms, “I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (v. 10).
According to the Pharisees and scribes, righteous people do not entertain, nor associate with sinners.
Grace Receives What Religion Avoids
Jesus wants to change this.
In another gospel, Jesus is described as sitting reclined at the table of a tax collector. Mark describes the scene like this: “Many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples” (Mark 2:15). Just as before, the Pharisees and scribes were questioning this behavior from Jesus. “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (v. 16).
There it is again.
Notice Jesus’ response to the Pharisees and scribes this time. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (v. 17).
God’s grace is always interested in that one. The outcast. The lost. The sick. The vulnerable.
God’s heart is always to find us.
Grace Receives and Keeps Searching
Here’s a question: Do you think Jesus didn’t know where the lost sheep was? Or how about the coin, do you think Jesus didn’t know where it was?
Of course, He knew. He is God. He knows everything. So why encourage them to keep looking until they are found?
Grace Receives Before It Reveals
Because we aren’t Jesus. We don’t know what He knows. We don’t know where the lost sheep are. We don’t know where the lost coin is. But according to Jesus, that’s okay. As Christians, the most effective way to find sinners to is receive them. To eat with them. To befriend them.
In other words, it is God’s ministry to reveal where the good soil is. Just like with the sheep and coin in Jesus’ parables, we don’t know where the good soil is.
But notice how Jesus’ lesson to the disciples isn’t how to find the good soil and then only sow seed there. That would require a kind of knowledge only God possesses.
Think about it; if sinners had that kind of knowledge, it could be troublesome. Who knows? Maybe we’d become like Jonah and decide that Nineveh is not the good soil. That the sheep will never be found. And that we should give up looking for the coin.
Instead, Jesus’ desire is to sow Him everywhere.
Grace Receives Sinners Through the Church
Don’t worry if the Word of God falls along the path, or on the rocks, or among the thorns. Don’t bother yourself with things that God isn’t worried about. God’s grace is able to endure the elements, and ultimately, the seed will fall on the good soil.
But we won’t know where the good soil is until God reveals it to us. That’s why Jesus teaches the disciples to sow Him to everyone. That’s why we are to leave the ninety-nine. And why we are to turn the house inside out looking for the coin.
It is God’s ministry to reveal where the sheep and lost coin can be found, and where the good soil is. And until the Lord reveals, the disciples are to keep looking. The disciples are to keep sowing seed everywhere. This is what it looks like to graciously receive sinners.
Adapted from Grace Beyond Salvation: Revealing God’s Love from Genesis to Revelation by Kyle DiRoberts (© 2025). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.
KYLE DIROBERTS (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary) is the department chair and associate professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Arizona Christian University in Glendale, Arizona, adjunct professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, and pastor of the Minister-in-Residence program at Scottsdale Bible Church. Kyle is the author of The Secret to Prayer. He and his wife, Lolly, live in Scottsdale and have three boys.
