Does God love repentant sinners more than those who stay faithful?

Heaven's joy over repentant sinners is like our relief after loss.

Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ

Feb 04, 2026

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Heaven’s joy over repentant sinners is like our relief after loss.

Editor’s Notes

In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…

How God’s joy over repentant sinners differs from His love for the faithful who never strayed.
That joy at such persons springs from recovery after loss, while God’s love remains constant for those always near.
Why the parables of the lost sheep and coin show God’s pursuit – and are completed by that of the Prodigal Son.

He shows us that Heaven celebrates victory and restoration, but not necessarily a greater love for the wanderer than the faithful.

For more context on this Gospel episode, see Part I.

Parables of God’s Love for Sinners

The Preaching of the Cross, Vol. II

Chapter IX
St. Luke xv. 1—32 ; Story of the Gospels, § 124
Burns and Oates, 1886.
(Read at Holy Mass on the Third Sunday after Pentecost)

‘Joy in Heaven’ – its meaning

‘So I say to you, there shall be joy in Heaven before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance,’ though He does not here add the other words, ‘more than upon ninety-nine just who do not need penance.’

It is in this sentence that one chief difficulty of interpreting these parables has been found.

The difficulty lies in the apparently implied statement that there is more love with God and our Lord for converted sinners than for others, their equals, or perhaps superiors, in sanctity and nearness to Him, who have never been separated from Him. This is what seems to require explanation, and the need of explanation applies to all the three parables before us.

But the answer is plain when we consider the direct scope of these parables, which were occasioned by attacks on our Lord on the score of His great indulgence to sinners.

Our Lord’s Heart

The conduct which was criticized by the Scribes and Pharisees was the result and the manifestation of the joy of the Sacred Heart. Joy is a different feeling from love and esteem, as sorrow is a different feeling from dislike or contempt. Joy is the natural outburst of relief and satisfaction at the recovery of what has been lost, or the return of what has wandered from us, at reconciliation after a quarrel, or deliverance after a danger, reunion after a separation, victory after a conflict. In this sense our Lord must be understood.

The rejoicing of which He speaks on account of the return of sinners is as different in its way from His quiet tranquil love for those who have not gone astray, as was the sorrow which the loss of the sinners originally occasioned. A great blow had been inflicted on His Heart by the loss of the wanderers, who had been originally most dear to Him. That blow was now redeemed and recompensed by the joy of their recovery, and this gave occasion for an outburst of thankfulness and exultation which in its way was greater than the exultation over those in whose case the sorrow of their loss had not been felt.

A soul recovered from sin was a victory of grace, after grace had been defeated and exiled. The King had come back in triumph, and the injury which His realm had suffered was now repaired.

In both the two first parables our Lord puts the same words into the mouth of the person representing Himself, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found what was lost.’ It was His own work in souls which He had in His mind, dearer to Him than could be understood by the hearts of men or angels, the accomplishment of the special mission committed to Him by His Father, on which mission He was to spend the whole of His Life Blood, for which He was to give Himself and all that He had.

The measure of the joy was that of the love of His Heart for His Father, and of His gratitude for His Father’s tenderness concerning us, of the cost which He was about to pay for the accomplishment of His work, and of the knowledge which He had of the infinite misery from which redeemed souls were to be rescued. In this there are several elements of rejoicing which are not to be found in the case of those of whom He speaks as needing no penance.

Of such indeed He can say, in the words which He puts into the mouth of the good father of the Prodigal, at the end of the third parable, that they are always with Him, and all that He has is theirs. The truth which these words represent gives those to whom they apply an incommunicable value, in His eyes and His Heart, in which the others do not share.

All in Heaven are redeemed

And thus, if we are to follow out the thought of the Fathers, mentioned above, the words may certainly be applied to the love of God for the holy angels, who have never been lost, and so never been found again, as men have been lost and found. The joy of God over them is different, not so much in degree as in kind, from that which is here spoken of. It has never been shaken, never dashed by sorrow, and so it does not break out in the feeling of victory, recovery, restoration, and the like.

But although the love of God and our Redeemer for His redeemed, is not the same as that for those who have not been redeemed, it need not be argued that it is either greater or less. And so, in the case of men, as the truth that some have once wandered and others have not, does not of necessity imply a greater merit on the part of the soul, either of the sinner recovered, or the saint who did not need recovery, so it does not imply greater love for such on the part of our Lord.

And, indeed, when we come to think of the truth as it is with us, in a most true sense, there are no ninety-nine sheep who have not been recovered, there are no nine groats which have not been lost. The spotless Mother of God herself, in all the plenitude of her ineffable sanctity, is one of the redeemed, although she had never wandered. The same sacrifice which brought others back was applied to prevent her from ever needing to be sought for. She has the largest share of all in the fruits of the Redemption, though she has had the ineffable blessing of being preserved from even the slightest stain of sin.

Contrast with the Prodigal Son

In the two first of these parables it may be noticed that what is recovered by the owners of the sheep or of the groat has not been lost by any fault of its own. It is simply a thing lost, and missed, and regretted, and sought, and found, and rejoiced over.

This may be taken as reminding us that though we are like the Prodigal Son, in that our wanderings are the result of our own perversity, still the love of God pursues us and strains itself for our recovery because we belong to Him, not because we deserve anything at His hands by our own merits. This part of the story of recovery is left out in the third parable as having been sufficiently set forth in the former two, which differ also in other respects from the last.

This third is more full, more tender, more touching, setting before the Christian mind a larger view of God’s merciful Providence as well as many particulars of the action of that Providence on the revolt of the sinner which could not be so well expressed under the images of the lost sheep and the lost groat. In those parables the chief point was the intense desire of God for the recovery of the lost, the pains He takes, especially in the Incarnation and Redemption of man, to accomplish that recovery, and, in particular, the deep and immense joy when it is accomplished, which adds a new element of exultation and triumph which can only be found in cases where a loss has first been sustained.

Details filled up

Thus, in the sketch of God’s mercies to us, the story of the Prodigal Son fills up many details. Such at the very outset is the happy life of the children of God with Him before there is any falling away into sin. The lost one is here, not a sheep, or a groat, but a man with soul endowed with liberty, and thus capable of giving the highest honour to God by the exercise of that unparalleled gift. He is not merely a man, stamped with the Divine image, a thought which might have been suggested by the groat in the second parable. He is a son, and therefore with the right of inheritance of the Kingdom of his Father.

These features of the character of God in His dealings with His free creatures are illustrated in this parable and not in the others. And in the second place, the return is brought about by the conversion of the lost one himself. It is not a groat found, or a sheep brought home, but a man whose heart is changed by God’s grace.

This is minutely described, and in this respect also the parable differs from those which precede it. The action of God is not limited to His seeking and working for the return of that which is lost. That part has been already set forth, and if a man is anxious to recover a sheep, or a housewife anxious to recover a piece of money, much more, are we led to infer, must God our Father yearn after His lost children.

What is here traced is the history of the soul itself, first in its wandering and degradation, and then in its awakening and conversion, the mightiest work of grace, in the soul itself, and not outside it.

Parables of God’s Love for Sinners

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