Jesus again strikes His listeners with unexpectedness. Can one person really be more important to God than 99? And what about each of those 99? And what is bad about righteousness? Are we not all called to righteousness?
These shocking words of Jesus can lead us to a couple of thoughts. First, each person stands before God personally, not as part of a collective. All of us have various human connections: family, work, neighborhood, church; they are important, but the meeting with God takes place only one-on-one, and this meeting transforms our life and introduces qualitative changes into our relations with other people. Second, with what do we stand before God? With our righteousness? But "there is none righteous, not one" (see Rom. 3:10). Here it is important whether we recognize our unrighteousness, sinfulness, and ask God to do something with it, or whether we think that everything with us is "no worse than with others" and see no need for repentance. The first path opens us to meeting God, and the second makes the abyss between us and Him still deeper.
