Meet Christ Booklets

Lesson 1

THE SELFISH SON

The best way to understand a person is to discover what he is most interested in, to learn what he judges to be the great purpose of his life.

If we want to discover the secret of Jesus Christ, we have to know what He set out to do; and for this we shall have to make a journey. So pack your things and get ready, so that we can travel back through the years, back through 20 centuries to the little country of Palestine .

As we arrive, we see a man in the middle of a group of people. They seem to be ordinary people: workers, businessmen, farmers, shopkeepers, students, professors, as well as many poor people. There are some women in the crowd too. They are young and old.

Another small group seems to be standing a little apart watching this man and the people with him. They seem to be indignant and look at the large group with scorn and superiority. Then one of them in a haughty manner says: “Look at this man, He meets and talks with sinners and He even eats with them”.

 A LOST SHEEP

The man in the centre of the group hears this remark and sees the pride behind it. He answers with a story: “If any of you owns a hundred sheep, and has lost one of them, does he not leave the other 99 in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders rejoicing, and so goes home, and calls his friends and his neighbours together. Rejoice with me, he says to them, I have found my sheep that was lost. So it is, I tell you, in heaven; there will be more rejoicing over one sinner who repents, than over 99 souls that are justified, and have no need of repentance”.

Few of us would feel at ease with the proud group watching the others with such contempt, for we feel more comfortable with those who may not be saints, but who are honest enough to know themselves as they really are. I know that I have often done what is wrong, and I know that hope does not lie in shutting my eyes to what I really am.

If I have known moments of sorrow and disgust with myself after doing something evil, after treating someone unjustly, after cheating or lying or doing something indecent – if I have tasted the bitterness of such moments, then the story of the shepherd who goes to such trouble to find the lost sheep and who is so happy when he finds it, is a story that touches something in my heart.

But if I have never felt such moments, if I feel that there is nothing missing in my life and that I can save myself without help from anyone else, then I should cross over to that other group, or better still, I should go away-for these pages have no message for such a one.