p. 8 | Receiving His Own

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 26, 1903

Receiving His Own

WHY should not Christ receive sinners? Will a man not receive that which belongs to him, whenever he can get it? Indeed, there is really no question as to receiving; that is shut out by the fact that he will seek for his own. Even so Christ showed how natural it was that he should receive the sinners who flocked to hear him. He was God's representative. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,” “The Lord he is God: it is he that made us, and his we are; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” Ps. 100:3. Christ is “that great Shepherd of the sheep,” “the good Shepherd.”

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” How then could it be otherwise than that he should come to seek the wandering sheep? No man having a hundred sheep would say, if one wandered away, “No matter, it is only one,” and so make no effort to recover it. If he did so with one, then he would do the same with another one, and still another one, until he would not have one left. Indifference with regard to one shows indifference for all. It is by looking after and guarding the single ones, that he keeps the whole. Therefore by the natural action of a man with his sheep, or of a woman with that which is her dowry, Jesus justified his course in welcoming sinners to himself.—Selected.