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In Luke 15, Jesus tells us the parable of the Prodigal Son (prodigal means wasteful) and his Forgiving Father in order to teach self-righteous Pharisees of all times that the grace of God stops short of no man, that God does not desire the death of a sinner but rather he turn from his ways and live, that God desires all to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth.
When the wasteful son took his inheritance and ran, he wasted more than material goods; he wasted his father’s love for him. When the younger son asks for his inheritance early he basically was saying to his father, “I wish you were dead. I want no part of life with you anymore. I’d rather go off and spend my time and money with people I don’t even know.” When Jesus told this story, the people who heard it would have expected the father to blow up at the son in anger and deny his request. But the father did not; he graciously granted his son’s wishes.
The son quickly liquidated his share of the inheritance and headed to a foreign land with lots of cash in hand. He squandered it all, living recklessly. After the money was gone, the son was so desperate he became a servant for a foreigner just to survive, doing something that a good Hebrew would have found unthinkable: feeding pigs (the Old Testament deems pigs unclean, and Israelites couldn’t eat or touch them). He found himself broke and starving in another land, but finally came to his senses. He realized that his father’s hired servants were much better off than he was, so he planned to return, groveling, and make a deal with his father: he would give up the title of “son” in exchange for a position of servant in his father’s house. It wouldn’t be ideal, but that way at least he wouldn’t be starving and broke.
So the son headed home to grovel and bargain for acceptance, but his father’s behavior was totally unexpected. He still loved his son and even stood outside gazing longingly into the distance, hoping for his son’s return. And when he saw the son on the horizon, the father was so moved with compassion that he ran to embrace and kiss his son. In that culture it would have been humiliating for a noble man to run: Aristotle wrote that “Great men never run in public.” But the father was so overjoyed to see his son that he tossed societal convention aside, and embraced and kissed him. And remember what the son was doing before he came back? He was a pig herder, so he was filthy and smelly, yet the father didn’t care. He loved the son anyway. He was just delighted to have his lost son home again. This parable’s all about the father’s wasteful, unconditional, forgiving love. The sin is covered. Now all was made right again between the father and the prodigal son.
So who is the prodigal son? “Surely not I, Lord?” Yes, it is you. Read yourself into this parable. You didn’t birth yourself into the Father’s household, but even when you were dead in sin, He made you His child by baptizing you into His Son, giving you a place in His eternal home. But have you responded with complete gratitude and obedience and love for the Father, or have you despised Him and His gifts by wandering into sin? You are the prodigal. By your sins you have said to Him, “I wish you were dead; I want no part of life with you; I’d rather go be elsewhere.” But how does the Father respond to your sinful efforts to run away from Him? He stands waiting with open arms, longing for your return, because He has already slaughtered His Lamb, His only-begotten Son, in order to atone for all your sinful straying. He has no wrath toward you. All He wants is for you to come home, so through His Word He sends His Holy Spirit out to call you to your senses, to call you to repent and return home. When you come back to His house, He embraces you and absolves you: “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” When you are a child of God in Christ, you have a forgiving Father in heaven! Amen.
