Lost Sheep

Go home to your friends 

and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, 

and how he has had mercy on you. 

(Mk 5:19)

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

The idea that grace comes with obligations bothers many Christians, who question any doctrine that they feel is inconsistent with a “loving God.” Doctrines like original sin, election, and judgment do not comport well with their image of God. For them, grace means universal salvation, which implies that any obligation imposed by grace is simply unacceptable.

By contrast, Dietrich Bonhoeffer railed about the problem of “cheap grace,” which he defined as:

“The preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living, and incarnate.” (Bonhoeffer 1995, 44-45).

Bonhoeffer is clearly in the minority today because practically every worship service where confessional prayers are offered is immediately followed with a pastoral declaration of universal forgiveness. Worse, influential authors, such as Jack Rogers, have gone so far as to formally advocate for the Bible to be interpreted relative to the double-love command (Matt 24:36-40), disparaging any verse inconsistent with their interpretation of love (Rogers 2009, 65). 

Healing of the Man with an Unclean Spirit

Divergent views on God’s grace lie at the heart of cultural conflict within the church today. Interpreting Jesus’ miracles and parables can offer insight into this conflict.

Consider the healing of the man with an unclean spirit, which appears in the three synoptic Gospels and in each case follows the account of the storm on the Galilee. Mark’s version is the longest and offers details of obvious interest to a modern reader.

Only in Mark do we learn that the crossing of the Galilee involved multiple boats and took place in the evening—a reason perhaps why Jesus was sleeping on the boat—(Mark 4:35-36) and that this man cuts himself with stones (Mark 5:5), which implies that he was a cutter and likely a teenager. 

Our hearts go out to teenagers who cut themselves, an affliction in which emotional pain is so great that physical pain is easier to bear. This man was likely abused or went through some other trauma, like being a child soldier or an orphan. Mark’s account leaves us with a much different impression than Luke or Matthew’s, where the man is described as demon possessed—and it suggests why Jesus may have gone out of his way to heal this man.

Grace in the Mark and Luke accounts includes the stipulation cited above (Mark 5:19). The man is healed and is immediately commissioned by Jesus to evangelize the people of the Decapolis region. The Decapolis was named for ten independent, Roman cities (Mark 5:20). This is a remarkable request because the only knowledge that this man had of Jesus was his own healing and the entire region was predominantly gentile, not Jewish. The herding of pigs, which play an important role in this man’s healing, was largely unknown among Jews because of dietary restrictions.

Parable of the Lost Sheep

While grace in the healing of the man with the unclean spirit was followed by a request that the man evangelize his home town, the Parable of the Lost Sheep provides an important counter example. Consider the parable again:

“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost. Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Luke 15:4-7)

One read of this parable is that sheep cannot be expected to respond to their recovery by the shepherd. It seems to be forgiveness without repentance.

A subtler reading of this passage arises when one takes Jesus’ teaching when he refers to his followers as his flock. Jesus says in his sermon: “When he [the Good Shepherd] has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice … I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” (John 10:4, 14) The inference here is that grace is followed by faith among those elected for salvation.

Healing of the Ten Lepers

We see this response in the healing of the ten lepers (Luke 17:12-19). Jesus said: 

“Go and show yourselves to the priests. And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan.” (Luke 17:14-16)

What is interesting here is that the healing required a stipulation: “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” There is also a response: The Samaritan returned to thank Jesus, which is described as an act of faith. All ten were healed, but only one displayed faith.

While I do not believe that the controversies over cheap grace will end with this brief discussion, it is clear that the nature of grace described in the healings and the parables warrants careful study.

References

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1995. The Cost of Discipleship (Orig Pub 1937). Translated by R. H. Fuller and Irmgard Booth. New York: Simon & Schuster—A Touchstone Book.

Rogers, Jack. 2009. Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church. Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press.

Lost Sheep
Also see:
The Face of God in the Parables
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:



Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com





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