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Seeking and Finding Christ
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"I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance." (Luke 15:7)
Our subject is: What is repentance, and why is it so vital?
This is a very misunderstood verse. One should be suspicious of the words if taken literally, because they cannot be literally true.
Consider it: if there really are ninety-nine just persons—just, meaning accepted by God, acceptable in His sight—then their sins have been forgiven, they've been given new life, they've been reconciled with God. They walk with Christ, they pray to Him, they receive His blessings. He has worked in their lives, changed their nature and their character. They are heaven-bound and loved by God with an immeasurable, undiminishing love.
The love of God cannot faint, fade, or diminish. They are always loved the same. So in a sense the words don't make sense—that one could be loved more than ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.
I remember asking this in a group Bible study many years ago, among young adults. Their answer was: "They're presumably Christians—people who've been converted, forgiven, whose lives have been changed."
Wrong answer. If that were true, they wouldn't be loved—all ninety-nine of them—less than the one who repented. They would all be loved the same.
The passage itself tells us who they are, right at the beginning of the chapter.
"Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." (Luke 15:1–2)
The publicans and sinners were outsiders—people shut out of the synagogues for some sin. They drew near to hear Him. But the Pharisees and scribes, the clergy of the day, murmured scornfully: He can't be a prophet, He can't be the Son of God, He can't be Messiah, because He eats with people who are off the track.
Then verse three tells us: He spake this parable unto them—the scribes and the Pharisees.
Whenever Christ speaks a parable to the scribes and Pharisees, they always feature in it. Sometimes they even perceive that He spoke against them. He speaks to convict them and to show them their errors.
They had been hounding Him over and over in the preceding chapters. For example:
"And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her... he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day." (from Luke 13:11–14)
They thought themselves righteous because they kept the rites and ceremonies to the letter. They went way over the top, adding rules of all kinds, and misunderstood the Lord's Sabbath. So they ruled Christ out because He healed on the Sabbath. It happened once, then again, then a third time—and finally, here in chapter 15, He speaks this parable against them.
They are the "just persons" who have no need of repentance. Of course they were not just—this is divine irony. Of course they desperately needed to repent, but not in their own eyes. In their own estimation they were accepted by God.
No true believer would ever say he needs no repentance. We need to repent, to be saved, to be changed, to be reconciled with Him—and we go on needing to repent throughout life. But these people were so self-righteous. Actually, they were great sinners; the Bible tells us they included adulterers and all kinds of sinners. They didn't bother about personal righteousness. To them, their imagined righteousness lay in the exactness with which they followed the ceremonies.
It's rather like a child. Parents know this. You say, "You need to wash, you need to bath," and the child says, "I don't need to." Of course the child does. What he means is he doesn't want one. He doesn't think he needs one. That's what is going on here—people who consider themselves just, who think they need no repentance.
How many people here need no repentance? You see no need of repentance. To you it's nonsense talk. Repentance? What good will that do me?
Obviously you have no need of repentance if you don't even believe in God. If there's no God, to whom would you repent? So you have no time for it, no use for it. That is one sense in which we may understand the parable.
But you may have some belief in God—even if only instinctual. The rational explanation for existence doesn't ultimately satisfy. For years and years people thought the theory of evolution answered it all: life started somehow on earth and just developed.
Well, now the scientists don't hold to that anymore. Life in its simplest, simplest, simplest form on earth is too complex to have started here. It must, they say, have started somewhere else and been transported here. So we're back to square one.
The people who used to tell us there's not one scintilla of evidence for God are now compelled to say there's not one scintilla of evidence for the origin of life here on this planet. It's in some distant constellation, and it somehow made it through all the destructive forces of space.
So we're back to square one—and you know it. There's no rational explanation for order, for life, for human beings and their immense difference from all other animals: the power of reason, consciousness, affections, and the complexity of human emotions. There's far more to it than a mere rational explanation.
If you still see no need for repentance, you don't understand that the Creator of all things, the infinite divine Being, is holy and faultless and pure. You don't understand the history of the human race—that we are a fallen race, disobedient to God, and that sin and separation have entered in.
In order to be reconciled with God, we need new life, and obtaining new life involves repentance. If you knew how high and lifted up and holy and remote God is, and how corrupt, fallen, and darkened in understanding we are, you'd grasp the need for repentance and for the salvation of God to come into your life.
There may be another reason you see no need for repentance. This may be your trouble: like the scribes and Pharisees, you are a self-righteous person. Maybe nobody's ever suggested this to you.
In your estimation, you're all right. If there is a God, you'll be in good standing when you die. Millions of people think like this. It's a disaster and a delusion.
When celebrities die, people write in the papers or go on television and say, "Oh, he's in heaven now, because he was a good chap—he's looking down on us all." They assume this person was good enough. Isn't that a reasonable assumption? No—it's a disastrous assumption.
It's like walking into a university when you've never qualified, imagining you can, and getting a rough reception. You cannot just walk into heaven. It is a place of purity and glory and holiness, and we are corrupt and fallen.
We love our sins more than we love God. We give Him no worship, no love, no service, no obedience—and yet we think we can walk in. We make our fortunes here. We do everything for number one, for ourselves. We enter into any sensation we want, whether sinful or pure, and don't care. We trample down our conscience—and we think we're going to heaven?
We are self-righteous. Because we've seen people in this world who are even worse than we are, we kid ourselves that we're all right and fit for God—when we're nothing like it, without seeking Him, without repentance.
The Greek word translated repentance literally means to think differently. Some preachers have misunderstood this. They say all you have to do is think differently about God—where once you had no time for Him, now think better of Him, believe He exists, acknowledge Him.
But in the New Testament the word repentance is used strictly in conjunction with another word: remission. Christ went everywhere—into the cities, the towns, the villages—preaching repentance and remission.
When you tack that word on, you get a quite different meaning. Remission means taking away—forgiveness, the removal of guilt, the removal of sin.
Repentance and remission means changing your mind not just about God, but about sin—about who and what you are living for, and about what you are doing. It means:
We are capable of good as well, capable of nice thoughts. But these other things contaminate and ruin us for God.
Repentance is: "I see it, Lord." It is the Lord who enables us to see it. It is God's Word that convicts and challenges us, so that we see our desperate state—poor and pitiable and blind and naked spiritually in the presence of God, as the book of Revelation says.
What is repentance?
That's repentance. It's very deep, very sincere. You can't do it in a second. You've got to feel it: "Oh Lord, I am ashamed of my life, I am ashamed of my sin."
And as soon as the excuses arise—"I'm better than others; there's a reason why I lose my temper; I was unreasonably aggravated; anybody would"—no. I am the sinner. My heart is the selfish heart. I am the one who's hurt people. I am the one who's been unfaithful. That is me. I am rightly condemned by God and shut out of heaven.
If I live in my sin, I shall die in my sin, and under judgement. I acknowledge, I confess, I regret, I call out for forgiveness. And above all, I must depend upon Christ, who came from heaven to take the punishment for me which I should have taken myself.
"I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth."
Why is there joy in heaven? Because God has worked a miracle. It is a miracle that any sinner ever repents. We are so attached to our sin, so caught up in its entanglements, so naturally hostile to God.
It is a miracle that proud men, women, and young people confess their sin to the Lord, own it, and acknowledge it. He must have worked in that heart—that hardened heart that made every excuse and wouldn't listen—so that it goes quietly and meekly to God and says, "Lord, forgive me. This is me. Change me. Rebuild my life."
Whether you are reading the Bible, listening to the preacher, or thinking about what you've heard—it is God who humbles you within. It is God who opens your eyes so that you see how much you need Him. It is God who shows you what Christ has done on Calvary's cross to bear away your sin.
Have you ever asked: Why did God have to come into the world? Why did Christ have to die on a cross? Couldn't the infinite God, with all His infinite genius, have devised some other way of saving men and women?
Here is the answer: God must punish sin. Sin must be paid for. God is so holy that He cannot, even for a second, overlook sin. Just as a dazzling light must light up everything in its path—it cannot choose not to shine here or there, for it is its nature to shine—so God's holiness must destroy sin.
Have you ever heard of the impassibility of God? It's not a word used generally in English, but it's a strong theological word derived from Scripture. It means that God has neither bodily parts nor passions. God cannot suffer.
Suffering injures, takes away, inflicts. Nothing can be inflicted upon God. God cannot die. God cannot be diminished. God cannot be weakened by any blow. Yet, in a divine way, He feels—but He cannot suffer.
In order to suffer, to bear the punishment of sin, God had to become incarnate. The second person of the Godhead, the Lord Jesus Christ, equal with the Father, had to assume human flesh—to be conceived and to be not only God, but man as well.
So that as a man He could suffer for me, on my behalf. As a man He could redeem us. God alone never knew suffering, loss, and death. God cannot die. But becoming not only God but man as well, assuming a body, He could taste death for every man who would be saved and forgiven and converted.
What induced Christ to come, to be a man, and to take my punishment? In the parable of the lost sheep you see the shepherd going out into the wilderness, going to great lengths to find the lost sheep.
Here you see the eternal Son of God. He was never born—He is the eternal Son of God, coming into time and into human flesh, all the way to earth, suffering terrible humiliation. That shepherd going out into the wilderness: He came into the world and suffered and died in my place—and not only in my place, but bearing the punishment of millions and millions. What intensity of suffering, to purchase salvation for all whom He would bring to Himself!
It is a miracle that any one of us is ever brought to repentance. Oh friends, cry out for a miracle and come to Christ. Believe in Him with all your heart.
See Him, even in your imagination in a shadowy way, nailed to a cross and suffering—but think of the invisible suffering in His holy soul as He bore your guilt and your punishment. If you trust in Him and give yourself to Him, you will soon know that He has changed you as a person, that you are His child. You will love Him, pray to Him, and live to Him, until He takes you into eternal glory.
That is our verse tonight. What is repentance? Why is it vital? It brings you to the living God.
Let us pray together.
Oh God our gracious heavenly Father, look upon us, move in hearts this night, draw us to Thyself, save lost souls. O Lord, we pray that Thou wilt show tonight Thy great mercy and Thy mighty power in the miracle of conversion to Christ. Bless us and draw us, we ask it in our dear Saviour's name, for His sake. Amen.
