Joy Over One Sinner

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 21, 1860

Joy Over One Sinner

SAID a stranger: “While traveling down the Ohio River on a steamboat, my attention was called to the pilot who was a coarse looking man. The captain informed me, that three weeks ago, as the boat was going through the rapids, the pilot called him to take the helm. He had just seen a boy struggling for life in the rapids. He sprang into a mere skiff and ventured himself among the boiling waters without an oar and saved the boy. I went up to the brave man and spoke to him: ‘Do you ever see that boy whom you saved?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘at every trip he comes down to the boat to see me.’ ‘and how do you feel when you see him?’ ‘More than I can tell,’ he replied; ‘more intense interest than in any one of my own seven at home, for whom I have run no such risk.”

Thus there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance. Thus Jesus will regard those whom he has saved with more interest than the angels.