The Ninety and Nine

After telling the parable of the sheep who was lost and the man who left the ninety and nine to find it, Jesus gave this summary to the Pharisees and scribes: “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).  I’ve always found this a bit strange—would heaven really have more joy over the man who sins and repents than those who don’t need to repent?  It reminds me of Paul’s question to the Romans after explaining the power of Christ’s grace: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 6:1-2).  In other words, we don’t sin just because it can be forgiven and overcome through the grace of Christ.  We don’t make heaven “happier” by sinning and repenting rather than never sinning in the first place.  So why does heaven rejoice more over one sinner who returns than ninety-nine righteous? 

                One way that perhaps we can understand this is that there are no righteous.  As Christ said to the rich young man, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God” (Mark 10:18).  We know that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” so perhaps in the parable these 99 “just persons” really don’t exist (Romans 3:23).  Everyone needs the grace of Christ and to some extent needs to be brought back like the sheep that wandered.  After sharing an experience about his sister who left the Church and then found her way back, Elder Brent Nielson said this, “As [my son] read the parable of the prodigal son, I heard it differently that day than I had ever heard it before. For some reason, I had always related to the son who stayed home. As David read that morning, I realized that in some ways I was the prodigal son. All of us fall short of the glory of the Father.  All of us need the Savior’s Atonement to heal us. All of us are lost and need to be found. This revelation that day helped me know that my sister and I both needed the Savior’s love and His Atonement” (Waiting For the Prodigal).  We are all like the prodigal son, and we are all like the lost sheep. 

                The Prophet Joseph gave another way of interpreting the sheep in this parable.  He said this, “The hundred sheep represent one hundred Sadducees and Pharisees, as though Jesus had said, ‘If you Sadducees and Pharisees are in the sheepfold, I have no mission for you; I am sent to look up sheep that are lost; and when I have found them, I will back them up and make joy in heaven.’ This represents hunting after a few individuals, or one poor publican, which the Pharisees and Sadducees despised.”  He then rephrased the scriptural quotation that I started with in this way: “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety-and-nine just persons that are so righteous; they will be damned anyhow; you cannot save them” (TPJS 277-278, see here).  This makes a lot of sense to me.  Christ was giving the parables in response to the Pharisees and scribes who were murmuring because Christ “receiveth sinners, and eateth with them” (Luke 15:1).  So it seems likely that he would speak to this attitude in the parables of Luke 15.  With this interpretation, the ninety-nine sheep were those who thought they needed no repentance.  Christ symbolically left them in order to go to others because they would not accept Him.  They were not righteous but the opposite—they were so puffed up with their pretended religiosity that they had damned themselves and could not be saved.