“Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’ So He told them this PARABLE” (Luke 15:1-3).

Exegesis of God’s word involves diligently seeking after the verbal meaning of a text. Put differently, it’s the process of figuring out what the historical authors of their texts intended to communicate. The specific wording of each text matters, even if that wording appears awkward. Funny how many of the commentaries speak about three different parables in Luke 15: the parable of the lost sheep (vv. 4-7), the parable of the lost coin (vv. 8-10), and the parable of the prodigal son (vv. 11-32). But this despite the fact that Luke explicit tells us that Yeshua speaks only ONE parable in Luke 15: “so he told them THIS PARABLE” (v. 3).

Unifying the Parables of Luke 15

By disregarding Luke’s explicit instructions, we interpret each as separate and independent parables rather than three united and interdependent stories forming one parable. This may sound nit-picky, but it’s not! For it is only when we read each of these stories as a single parable do we discover that the lost sheep who wandered far from the flock in the first story is like the prodigal younger brother who wandered far from his people in the third story; and the coin lost at home in the second story is like the older brother in the third story who was obviously lost at home. And this means that the point of Yeshua’s parable is not to rebuke the scribes and the Pharisees, but to plead with these beloved older angry brothers to come in and sit at the table so they too could also be found.

“But he became angry and was not willing to go in; and his father came out and began pleading with him” (Luke 15:28).