Luke 15

Luke 15:7

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.

The sinner, that goes on in a course of wickedness, may well be given for lost, by angels and men: when such a one therefore repenteth, and converteth unto God, it must needs be much more cause of joy to all that tender the glory of God, than the inoffensive proceeding of those, which gave no cause of fear of their miscarriage. So verses 8, 9, 10. XV. 11, 12, 13, &c. And he said, A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. It is with God, and the two sorts of men in the world, the sinful and professedly righteous, as it is with the father that had two sons. The younger, which was wild and debauched, would needs spend his patrimony riotously; and, at last, being pinched with want, returns home to his father, miserable but penitent; and is graciously, though unworthy, received to favour, with much joy for his recovery: the elder keeps on a harmless and inoffensive course; and, though well accepted always, yet is not so much rejoiced in, at any one time, as his unthrifty brother, which was accounted but as dead and lost, by his wise and loving father. Right so it is with God in his carriage towards civil and well ordered persons, on the one side, and those that are reclaimed from a lewd and scandalous life, on the other.