But we had to celebrate and be happy, because your brother was dead, but now he is alive; he was lost, but now he has been found.' "

I have not come to call respectable people to repent, but outcasts."

When he finds it, I tell you, he feels far happier over this one sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not get lost.

But he spoke back to his father, 'Look, all these years I have worked for you like a slave, and I have never disobeyed your orders. What have you given me? Not even a goat for me to have a feast with my friends!

Jesus said to them, "You are the ones who make yourselves look right in other people's sight, but God knows your hearts. For the things that are considered of great value by people are worth nothing in God's sight.

Jesus also told this parable to people who were sure of their own goodness and despised everybody else.

The Pharisee stood apart by himself and prayed, 'I thank you, God, that I am not greedy, dishonest, or an adulterer, like everybody else. I thank you that I am not like that tax collector over there.

There are people who think they are pure when they are as filthy as they can be.

I myself was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life,

and I was so zealous that I persecuted the church. As far as a person can be righteous by obeying the commands of the Law, I was without fault.

But all those things that I might count as profit I now reckon as loss for Christ's sake.