Luke 15

Luke 15 is the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke the Evangelist composed this Gospel as well as the Acts of the Apostles. Critical opinion on the tradition was evenly divided at the end of the 20th century. This chapter records three parables of Jesus Christ: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost or 'prodigal' son, a trilogy about redemption that Jesus tells after the Pharisees and religious leaders accuse him of welcoming and eating with "sinners". All three parables are devoted to mercy and all illustrate God's compassion. Biblical commentator Heinrich Meyer refers to this chapter, the following chapter and Luke 17:1–10 as a "new, important, and for the most part parabolic set of discourses" linked by the murmuring of the Pharisees and Jesus' responses to them and to his disciples. Arno Gaebelein notes that while these parables have wide appeal and application, in studying them "it must not be overlooked that the Lord answers in the first place the murmuring Pharisees".