NO MERIT ≠ NO MEANINGPastor-Teacher NO MERIT ≠ NO MEANINGGod’s plan throughout all the ages is that He might be glorified by the grace that He dispenses to undeserving creatures. the lost sheep, LUK 15:4-7, God is love and out of His compassion He saves and restores people for their sake. Hos 2:19-20 A parable is a story that places one thing beside another for the purpose of teaching. In particular, in the Bible, a parable is a comparison between a familiar fact and a spiritual truth. Look for the CENTRAL truth of the parable, making sure that any other truths gleaned from the parable are in harmony with it. Don’t use the parables to formulate new doctrine.
The central truth of the parable is the joy God has over the change in status of a believer from lost to found, from “dead” to “alive”. Or in a word, “restoration” or what our Lord calls in verse 7 “repentance”. He acts for His own sake, and yet He has joy when He gets a positive response from one of His sinning, weak, yet thinking creatures. There is no merit in BELIEVING. NO MERIT All the merit belongs to God, but He apparently finds great meaning and significance in our believing, confessing, and repenting. There is great meaning when one of those free agents freely comes to the decision of believing in Christ. There is great joy when one of His rebellious children freely decides to change his mind and come back to the Lord. It has significance and meaning to humans when other free agents take a look at what we have done or written and freely conclude: “This is good”. Did you ever wonder why God even cares what we think? Rom 12:2 If we want to get the meaning of the story, we need to study what our Lord means by “repentance”.
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