The Prodigal Son

The Parable of the Prodigal Son

Jesus' third parable recorded in Luke 15 is perhaps the most famous in the Gospels. Long known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son, it has spawned innumerable versions, some circulated in writing, others coming to life in plays and programs. It has always had broad appeal because it speaks to the dilemma that virtually every young person must face and resolve in the course of growing up in this imperfect world. The dilemma is this: whether to follow faithfully the path of life laid out by parents or to break away from parents and pursue happiness in a life unfettered by restrictions. The answer given by the parable is that to chase after youthful fantasies leads to disaster. Yet in the full space of its moral teaching, the parable has many other dimensions as well. One of its main lessons, also emerging from the preceding parables, deals with another spiritual dilemma—how to treat a sinner who wants to escape from his disastrous choices. The answer is that we should not only forgive him and receive him into our fellowship; we should rejoice exceedingly even as heaven rejoices.

Setting

The setting is a prosperous Jewish farm probably close to a village, yet in the midst of its own fields.

11 And he said, A certain man had two sons:

12 And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.

Luke 15:11, 12

The only family members who enter the story are the father and two sons. The time comes in the life of the younger son when he decides that he would rather leave home and explore the wider world, with all its potential for a more exciting life full of alluring pleasures. According to Jewish custom, the older brother could expect to receive a double portion of the inheritance, leaving only one third for the younger.¹ Yet one third of the father's wealth was still a great amount. So, the younger brother went to the father with a bizarre request—to be given his share of the inheritance even before his father died.

It was bizarre for several reasons. One is that he would make himself ineligible for any share of future increases in his father's wealth. Another is that he wanted his whole share to be converted into money that he could carry, therefore making it very easy to lose. Even worse, it would expose the younger son to the peril of managing wealth when he was still extremely immature. We are not told why the older man consented to this foolishness. Later developments in the parable suggest that Jesus wanted us to blame the father's consent in part upon the older brother. To say the least, the two brothers did not have a warm relationship with each other. The older showed no joy when the younger later returned home. So, we may guess that he was glad to see him go. Perhaps in anticipation that his father would gain more wealth, he wanted to remove any possibility that the younger would inherit any portion of it.

Yet there is a deeper reason why Jesus constructed the parable as He did, with the younger son leaving home with his inheritance while he was still very young. The younger son represents every man or woman who strays away from God's blessing into licentious self-indulgence. The bad decision to take a downward path is generally made quite early in life, perhaps in the teen years or early twenties—at an age corresponding to the evident youth of the prodigal son.

The young man's downward slide

Not long after receiving his inheritance, the younger son embarked on the new life that had come to dominate his youthful fantasies.

And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.

Luke 15:13

The first step was to leave home, and to assure that his new life would be built on as much wealth as possible, he "gathered all"—presumably, all his inheritance—and carried it with him. His entire assets must have been reduced to gold coins or other precious things small enough to hide in his carriage or on his beast of burden or within his own clothing.

His objective was to reach a "far country." No place nearer home was exciting enough to fulfill his dreams. He sought a place renowned as a capital of sinful pursuits, an ancient marketplace of vice comparable to such modern resorts as Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Miami Beach. Jesus' hearers probably thought of Greece as a far country catering especially to pleasure seekers. Once the young man arrived at his destination, he did not wait awhile and test the waters before he entered its social life. Rather, he immediately gave a green light to every lustful desire in his heart, and his new religion, pursued with unbridled heart's devotion, was having fun.

The result was predictable. There is no faster way to lose money than to become an enthusiastic consumer of evil merchandise and corrupt entertainment. So, all the young man's substance quickly wasted away.

Jesus' closing words in verse 13 are a remarkable choice, radically different from the usual practice of storytellers. He summarizes the young man's rapid fall to ruin in just a few words—a mere eight words in Greek, a number that must be close to what he originally said in Aramaic. In many retellings of the story, the young man's life of sin receives drawn-out attention, telling us exactly what he did and how he did it. His career of vice is presented in detail with all the worst moments highlighted. But Jesus never wanted the parable to be used as seamy entertainment. Therefore, to discourage its abuse, he said almost nothing about the young man's behavior at this stage of his life.

His choice to say little was not only the best design for this parable, but also the best example for everyone else who tells stories—pastors, teachers, playwrights, novelists, scriptwriters, whoever. It is never God's will for people to participate vicariously in sin. Sin at second hand is still sin. Yet it is always difficult for a storyteller, when the plot comes to a moment of sinful misconduct, to pass over it quickly—even more so, to sidestep it entirely. Why? Because his reader or viewer would much rather know all the facts. These can be fascinating—even, at some deep level, downright pleasurable—because they evoke our own sinful desires and give them a moment of satisfaction which nearly everyone sees as socially acceptable. But we dare not ignore Jesus' warning that it is as much adultery to look at a woman with lustful desire as it is to enter with her into an adulterous relationship (Matt. 5:27–28). A comparable principle applies to all second-hand experience, including the reading or viewing of stories. Sin is no less sin because it is strictly vicarious. Therefore, to assure that the mind of no hearer would wander into fantasies recreating moments of the young man's sinful pleasure, Jesus passed over these moments entirely. He gave us no picture whatever of the moral trash heaping up in the prodigal son's life.

But Jesus did not spare words when telling the consequences of the young man's sin. In fact, he shows us the sad path of his sin by bringing us down from a distant overhead view to a view up close, so we can see each step plainly. The first step is this.

Departure from God. As we will show later, the father of the wayward boy represents God the Father. Therefore, when the boy turned his back on all the blessings of living at home and instead pursued his own vision of a happy life, he was exactly like every foolish son or daughter of Adam who imagines that to chart a course different from his Creator's will is the ticket to true happiness. The young man's departure to a far country therefore pictures anyone's decision to choose a sinful life over a godly life.
A wasted life. The second step in the path of sin is to enter a dream world that seems to provide every heart's desire when in fact it is draining away God-given life, usually at a slow enough rate, just drop by drop, that the victim does not realize what is happening. Sin is an efficient bloodsucker. At least during moments of greatest thrill, the young man was able to convince himself that he was having a wonderful time. But as day followed day, he came to regret waking up in the morning, for new sunlight was shadowed by loneliness and depression, and, even at night in the midst of revelings, his heart was not free from a sense of bleakness that refused to go away. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of scorn in the faces of those posing as friends. And all the while, his wealth was shrinking. He did his best to ignore tomorrow's doom, when the last penny would be gone, but fear began to haunt his nights and trouble his days. The amount of joy was diminishing, while the amount of waste was increasing. Waste, waste, and more waste. And he could not suppress a growing awareness that in return for everything he had thrown away, he had gained nothing. Instead of finding a meaningful life set in the midst of loving people and devoted to purposes giving deep and lasting satisfaction, he was now limping unsteadily from one momentary pleasure to the next. He felt his mind and body getting weaker all the time, ever more on the verge of collapse.
The story of sin has not changed in our day. The young man or woman who chooses addiction to pleasure achieves loss rather than gain. He rips up the precious gift of life into little scraps and throws them into the garbage.
Deprivation. At his next step down the path of sin, the young man came to an abrupt end of his chosen lifestyle.

And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.

Luke 15:14

He spent the last of his money, so that he could no longer purchase sin offered at a price. But the result was not escape from his chosen path, for he still harbored plenty of sin within his own heart. The proof is that he did not return home. But what attraction did this faraway country still possess? Merely the chance to pursue a life unfettered by his father's will. But that kind of life came at a high cost, imposing on him constant deprivation of everything worthwhile. Perhaps for a brief time he was able to hide his penniless condition by attending parties where he found free food. But then severe famine struck the land. The supply of food shriveled up, and he could not beg a few bites even from old companions. To disguise his poverty was no longer possible. He would have faced certain starvation, except that he had one option remaining, revealed in the next verse.
Likewise in our day, a sinner inevitably falls into severe deprivation. One common form is poverty, because money used mainly to fund wild escapades is soon gone. Another common form is painful loneliness, because living for self means to build a circle of friends who are friends in name only. They are merchants of pleasure, or they are companions in pleasure underwritten by self. As soon as self spends all its money, their friendship vanishes, and self is alone.
Servitude. In the ancient world, anyone whose money and property dwindled to nothing still had one way to obtain necessary food and lodgings. He could sell himself. He could make himself another man's servant or slave. This demeaning fate was the bitter choice of the prodigal son.

And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

Luke 15:15

The choice was bitter because he had never before been a slave. Rather, he had once been a proud master. Yet, to stay alive, he entered the employment of a man who was apparently a farmer with good enough holdings to sustain his family and his farming business through a time of shortages. This man hired the prodigal son to go out into the fields and help feed a herd of pigs. The young man consented only because the alternative was starvation. Yet even so, to take the job must have been a hard decision. Jesus' hearers would have assumed that the young man was a Jew like themselves, and in the eyes of Jews, nothing was more repulsive than pigs. As far as gentiles were concerned, pigs were an especially good source of meat because they were easy to maintain and inexpensive to feed until they grew fat. But pigs were an unclean animal according to the law of Moses (Lev. 11:7–8). As far as Jews were concerned, their uncleanness was not just a label pinned on them by the law. It was their very essence, exhibited every time they saw pigs wallowing in garbage. To sink so low in the world as to become a feeder of pigs would have been, for any good Jew, the ultimate disgrace.
In the modern world, slavery is theoretically a thing of the past, although it some of it survives in hidden places or disguised forms. Yet even in our culture, various kinds of servitude are still the final collapse of a sinner's life. This servitude is not any kind of honorable employment. Rather, it is total dependence on the care of others. At the depths of poverty brought on by sinful excesses, there is total dependence on government or private welfare programs. At the depths of a lifestyle that vice has reduced to addiction or disease or insanity, there is total dependence on medical or other professional help. At the depths of greed or lust or revenge leading to crime, there is jail. The person loses his independence, even his right to make his own decisions. He becomes a helpless pawn of caregivers, because he has proved himself incapable of decisions leading upward rather than downward.
Hitting the bottom. The young man feeding pigs had not yet reached the bottom of his wayward life.

And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.

Luke 15:16

It was bad enough to have pigs as his daily company. Yet after all, they were not much different from his human friends in recent times. These people had come to him with smiles only because they saw money in his hand. Now that he held husks in his hand, the only difference in the result was that the ones coming to him with the equivalent of smiles were pigs. But no one was feeding him a sufficient amount to keep him alive. The natural causes of the famine had struck a huge blow to food supplies for people, but evidently had been less detrimental to the kind of food that pigs ate. The Greek word for the husks he was giving them refers to the pods of the carob tree, a member of the legume family like our locust tree.² It produces a flat pod about six to eight inches long, with sweet-flavored beans inside. The tree is indeed very hardy so that famine conditions might not destroy its fruit. As the young man looked at these pods, he was so hungry that he wanted some as a meal for himself, but he was not allowed to eat them. His overseers ordered him not to take any food from the pigs.

And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!

Luke 15:17

Now at last came the turning point in the young man's life. Until now, despite recent setbacks, he had forged ahead in his obsessive determination to fulfill juvenile dreams of happiness. Now, for the first time, he began to consider whether he was wrong. The first symptom of a new outlook was admission to himself that his life was empty of the pleasure that he had so stubbornly pursued. And indeed, he had come to his next step on the road of sin, which is recognition of personal unhappiness. Often this step is taken only when the unhappiness reaches the level of despair.
Unhappiness. Jesus summarizes the new development in the young man's life by saying, "And when he came to himself." How much meaning is compressed into a few words! They point directly to that decisive moment when the young man said within his heart, for the very first time, "I am miserable. How did I come to this awful place? Maybe I have made some really bad choices." A surfacing of honest self-examination can be the seedbed of an entirely different future, as it was for the prodigal son. From constructive reflections on his present misery came a whole series of new thoughts, all tending in the same direction, for they made vivid and undeniable the huge difference between the life that he had built for himself and the life that would have been provided by his father. The most compelling contrast was between his perilous plight as a lowly servant in a faraway land and the abundant provision enjoyed by all his father's servants. He was starving, while they all had more than enough to eat.

Repentance

Now came a critical moment. He had a choice. From the step of deeply felt unhappiness proceeds two steps leading in different directions. One is the step of perseverance despite the admitted cost, which is certain ruin in the form of spiritual death. The other is the step of repentance. Which way did the young man decide to go? It is a happy story because he chose life rather than self-destruction.

18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,

19 And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.

Luke 15:18-19

He began to exercise his God-given intelligence, sadly neglected during his youthful wanderings, to figure out some plan that could regain a secure and comfortable position under his father. In his mind, he plotted out the details of a speech that he would deliver to his father when he arrived home. The details are given us to show that he had come to genuine repentance, for we find its three distinguishing marks.

Discontent with life as it is. His desire to work out a plan to escape his present situation is proof that he had become wholly dissatisfied with his past choices. Likewise, repentance leading to salvation must start with a reaching out for something better than a sinful life.
Self-blame. In the speech he prepared in his own mind, he admits the true reason for his unhappiness. It is that he had committed grievous sins, not only against his father, but also against heaven. He sinned against his father by taking a large portion of his father's wealth and spending it on foolish pleasure now remembered only with regret. He sinned against heaven by devoting his life to breaking God's law. In his sorrowful and humble confession that he was a sinner unworthy of restoration to his father's favor, we see the second distinguishing mark of repentance: a correct view of self, labeling self as a sinner who has fallen into the trap of sin by his own foolish choices. Together with this dawning view of self comes, if it is true repentance, a godly sorrow for sin (2 Cor. 7:10). The sinner not only feels wrong; he feels sorry. Sorrow is a critical component because it is possible for a sinner to take pride in how sinful he is—to see his morally ugly face in the mirror and feel superior. The presence of godly sorrow in the young man's heart is made obvious by how bitterly he viewed his past decision to forsake his father.
Adopting the right plan. As the young man pondered his misery, the solution that filled his thoughts was to go back home, and at last he decided that he would in fact return. His adoption of the right plan serves as another distinguishing mark of repentance, for to be saved, a sinner must decide to pursue the only remedy, which is to approach God and seek His forgiveness.

Yet the young man's resolve to go home was not in itself enough to rescue him from misery. He had to translate ideas into action. He had to bestir himself and get moving.

20 And he arose, and came to his father. . . .

Luke 15:20a

Somehow, despite his weakness due to malnourishment and fatigue, he was able to make the difficult journey all the way back to his father's farm. Jesus passes over this demanding stage in the son's renewal because it does not have a spiritual parallel. There is no physical barrier we must overcome—no physical work we must accomplish—in order to be saved. As far as we know from the story, arriving home was the next event after his repentance. Yet going home was a step he had to take. It was not enough to sit in a far-off land and wish for something better. Likewise, repentance in itself does not bring salvation. There is another essential step, which is to engage in a personal conversation with God, just as the prodigal son came and talked to his father. The words he had imagined in his own mind while he was still away from home had to be put on his lips when he stood before his father's face.

The larger meaning is that repentance alone cannot achieve salvation. Besides repentance, salvation requires faith. Faith is a kind of belief rooted deep in the heart. Belief in what? It is belief that God is who He says He is and that He will do as He has promised. The plans that swirled in the young man's mind when he was still far from home rested on some belief that his father would restore him to a meaningful life. It was belief in some measure, but really no more than speculation until he acted upon it. Then it became faith.

Likewise, a sinner cannot be saved unless he proves faith in God by reaching out and taking the gift of salvation that God offers him. How does he do this? He must go to God in prayer, confessing (as the young man did) that he has sinned against heaven. He must also seek God’s forgiveness and request a place in God’s family. Repentance crowned with real faith of this kind will indeed achieve eternal life.

Renewal

Perhaps before the prodigal son arrived home, he suffered occasional misgivings arising from guilt. Fears may have surfaced that his father had completely disowned him from his affections—that disgust and disappointment had eroded away any traces of mercy in his father's heart. But the truth was quite otherwise. If he had imagined that addressing his father would be difficult, it proved to be very easy, for his father was actually waiting for him. He was standing outside, peering into the distance and hoping to find the dim outline of a young man—his son—coming down the road. Every parent has a knack for picking out his own children if they are anywhere within view. Therefore, the son had no sooner appeared on the horizon than the father recognized him.

20 . . . . But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

Luke 15:20b

In his eyes, the figure still far away was unmistakably his son, and he responded with great joy. Immediately he ran to meet the long-lost child. How old was the father? Somehow at his age, running for such a reason was entirely possible. And when he reached the young man, he "fell on his neck and kissed him." It was obvious that in the father's heart, there was none of the hostility that the son feared would be there—no resentment, no condemnation, no rejection. Only one emotion surfaced in the father's reaction. It was boundless love. So when the son began to deliver his prepared speech, he found that the words came out readily and met absolutely no resistance. Yet he did not get very far before he was interrupted. Compare his prepared speech in verses 18 and 19 with his actual words in verse 21. He did not succeed in saying everything he meant to say.

21 And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

Luke 15:21

Why was his speech so short? Because his father was hardly listening. He was too busy being glad.

22 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:

23 And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:

24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.

Luke 15:22-24

After the father gave his son a solid embrace, he pulled him toward home and began shouting orders to his servants, telling them to begin preparations for a grand celebration. There was no question in his mind how the son should be treated. He had no need to deliberate on whether to show mercy. That already flooded his heart. And he had no need to weigh what kind of position the son should be given. He had resolved long before the son returned that he would, if he had a chance, restore the son to the full privileges of sonship.

The lesson for us is abundantly clear. If a sinner comes to God and asks to be saved, he should not imagine that his request will initiate some sort of judicial process in the heavenly courtroom for the purpose of determining whether, in his case, God will grant forgiveness of sin and salvation from sin's penalty. Nor will there be any pondering of pros and cons regarding his status afterward—whether it will a place high or low in heavenly society. No, he will immediately, with the full warmth of divine love, be adopted as a full-fledged child of God.

Just as Jesus taught in the preceding parables, heaven will greet his repentance with great joy. That joy is illustrated again by how the father in this parable reacted to the repentance of his prodigal son. He commanded his servants to replace his shoddy clothes with the best robe in the house, to set an expensive ring on his dirty finger, and to put his worn and calloused feet into good shoes. In other words, he transformed the son's outward appearance from that of a beggar to that of a man with prestige and wealth. Then he ordered his household to make preparations for a great feast, using choice meat from their fatted calf. And as the servants ran about to fulfill his desires, he kept telling everyone he saw that his lost son had returned, that the one who had been essentially dead had now come to life again. And he invited them all to share his own joy. He said, "Let us eat and be merry." And of course this was a command that the servants and the rest of the household found easy to comply with. No one objected to stepping aside from work for the sake of a good time. So, it was only a few moments before a party atmosphere filled the whole house as well as the yard outside and all the adjoining buildings.

The feast in this parable intentionally recalls the feast in the parable that Jesus told recently when He was the guest of a leading Pharisee (Luke 14:16–17, 23). But these feasts do not picture the same events. The one in Luke 14 looks forward to the heavenly feast that God will provide for all raptured and resurrected saints at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb (Rev.19:5–9). The feast in the Parable of the Prodigal Son represents the joy in heaven that follows the recovery of a lost soul, the same joy that Jesus described in the preceding parables of Luke 15. Since in this parable the whole household, including both family and servants, joins with the father in celebrating the return of the lost son, we have further evidence that the heavenly joy over a sinner come to repentance will unite the entire heavenly congregation. Not only will God the Father rejoice, so also will the angelic host and the saints in the cloud of witnesses. These saints correspond to the family in the parable, whereas the angels correspond to the servants. The saints in heaven are all children of God. The angels in heaven are all servants of the most High (Ps. 103:20–22; 104:4).

Yet there was one person in the family who was absent when the prodigal son returned. It was the older son, the one who had secured the right to inherit all of his father’s property.

25 Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick and dancing.

26 And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant.

27 And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound.

28 And he was angry, and would not go in: . . . .

Luke 15:25-28a

When the prodigal son arrived, the older son was away performing some task in a remote field, so that he heard and saw nothing of his brother's homecoming. Eventually, the time came for him to walk back to the house, and as he approached, he heard a surprising sound—the sound of music for joyous dancing. He knew instantly that everyone must have abandoned their work for the sake of celebration. But what could they be celebrating? He called a servant detained outside for some reason and asked for an explanation. What he was told struck a hard blow to his proud heart. He learned that his brother had come home and that his father had welcomed him with open arms, even to the extent of giving a joyous feast to mark the occasion. The servant evidently shared the father's feelings, for he expressed relief that the lost son was now safe and sound.

The older brother's reaction? It was different from everyone else's. He was, to put it simply, furious. Instead of entering the house, greeting his brother, and joining in the festivities, he stood outside fuming, no doubt also plotting some way to stop what his father was doing.

Word that the older son was refusing to participate in the party came to the father, who probably guessed the reason. He knew his older son very well. He knew that the brothers had never been close and that the older had not grieved when the younger left home. Perhaps he also remembered the smugness and self-satisfaction on his older son's face when he was recognized as sole heir of his father's property. Yet the father was unwilling to let this son's petty selfishness go unchallenged. He went outside and began to plead with him to come in and welcome a brother rescued from ruin.

28 . . . : therefore came his father out, and intreated him.

29 And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:

30 But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.

Luke 15:28b-30

But the older son had no tender feelings in his heart. He had only jealousy. And he spouted off a speech in self-defense that contrasts sharply with the speech that the prodigal son gave when he was first reunited with this father. The younger admitted how undeserving he was of any favor. The older told his father that he had never received the favor he deserved. He insisted that he had always been a good boy, never transgressing his father's will. He had fulfilled all his father's commands to the letter. Yet never had the father given a feast for him.

His words echo the murmuring of the Pharisees, when they charged Jesus with improper behavior because He received sinners and ate with them (v. 2). Like a Pharisee, the older son felt himself vastly superior to his brother just returned from a sinful life. His brother had consorted with such moral scum as harlots, whereas he had always freely chosen to walk alongside his own father. His brother had thrown away a huge portion of his father's wealth, whereas he had worked day after day to increase it. His brother had never given serious attention to his father's will, whereas he had never sidestepped any of his father's commands, or even any of his preferences. Yet which of the two sons was given a feast in his honor? It was his brother. So what had he, the faithful son, gained from all his unswerving devotion to his father?

Similar words were always filling the hearts of the Pharisees when they saw how Jesus treated sinners. They labored tirelessly at keeping God's law in all of its finest points. Never had they strayed from it even one step to the right or to the left, or so they thought. They imagined also that all their scrupulous law-keeping required great sacrifice of both time and money. So, they could not grasp why a man who presented Himself as no less than God's Messiah would refuse to smile upon them, when He was always smiling upon the refuse of Jewish society, and they were loud in their bitter complaints against His greater compassion for, in their view, the undeserving.

But of course Jesus had as much love for the Pharisees as for other Jews. The proof is that He patiently laid out all the parables in this chapter in an effort to correct their wrong thinking. They would have found no less welcome to His favor than He extended to other repentant sinners if they had simply turned away from their sin, which was spiritual pride. Jesus' admonition to the Pharisees comes at the end of the parable.

31 And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.

32 It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

Luke 15:31-32

The admonition is framed as the father's rebuke of the angry son. He reminded this son of the great contrast between him and his brother. Yes, for the son who had always stayed at his side, the father had never held a feast like today's, but this feast was not given in honor of the prodigal son. Rather, it was given to express joy at his rescue from ruin. It celebrated renewal of everyone's fellowship with him. Yet the father's fellowship with the older son had never been broken. Every day in their relationship had been a feast in celebration of togetherness, as every day in the future would be also if the angry son would come inside and rejoin the family. Moreover, this son had no reason to feel that he would suffer some loss of money or property because the prodigal son had come home. The father said, "All that I have is thine." The earthly meaning is that the prodigal son would receive no further inheritance when his father died. But the heavenly meaning is that all believers will enjoy the full riches of heaven regardless of how many others belong to the congregation of saints.

The father explained also why the celebration was so joyous. His younger son had not only returned from a long journey; he had escaped from virtual death. When in a far country, he lost every loving relationship and every possession, and at last he lost even his personal freedom; in short, he lost every reason to live. But now that he had come home, all the doors to happiness reopened before him. Why should his own brother mourn at his resurrection to life? How unnatural! How cruel!

In their conversation, the father and older brother were standing outside the house where everyone else was feasting. The house clearly represents heaven. In essence, Jesus was telling the Pharisees that if they wished to participate in the heavenly feast awaiting all of God's people, they needed to prove that they were true children of God by laying aside their contempt for repentant sinners and replacing it with brotherly love. In the law they professed to revere and obey, it is commanded, "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (Lev. 19:18), and thy neighbor surely includes thy brother. If they refused to heed this foundational principle of the law, they would show themselves unqualified to enter the house and join the celebration.

Let us now look at the unique features of the last parable.

The thing lost. It is a human being. This choice serves the main purpose of the parable, which is to view all stages of a sinner's experience as workings of a thinking mind.
Why the thing became lost. The human being—specifically, a young man—became lost as a result of personal choice. His choice was not mindless stupidity such as the lost sheep illustrated. Rather, it was a choice dictated by careful thought concerning his options. He had adopted a hedonistic philosophy, viewing pleasure as the goal of life. Some of the greatest philosophers both in Jesus' day and throughout history have endorsed hedonism as the only reasonable perspective. As far as the world is concerned, the young man was no fool. Moreover, his strategy for gaining pleasure was entirely sound. It was this. Get as much money as you can as quickly as you can and go immediately to the best shopping mall for good times. All the young man's thought processes were right on track for achieving what his mind, in agreement with countless other intelligent minds, conceived as his best possible future. The parable is therefore God's comment on human wisdom. It reinforces what Paul says in First Corinthians.

19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

1 Corinthians 1:19–21
Why the thing lost has great value. Even in his self-destructive wanderings, the younger son retained great value because he was, after all, a child of the father. From the moment of birth, he had been dear to his father's heart, just as every lost child of God has from eternity past been dear to the heart of his divine Father. The father stood as often as possible on the outskirts of his property in hope of seeing the first shadow of a boy walking home. So also God the Father looks with grief upon every sinning child and waits with longing heart for the child's repentance.
How the thing lost is recovered. The lost child's recovery is the outcome of his own awakening to good sense. As earlier in his life story, the emphasis is on the thoughts passing through his own mind. Making pleasure the goal of life had led to nothing but bitter disappointment, even to peril of starvation. The young man therefore, as Jesus said, "came to himself." In other words, he finally figured out that hedonism was a bankrupt philosophy. Like all human beings, he was gifted with a mind capable of finding truth if it can break off all the chains of self-seeking delusion. The ultimate cause of repentance is, of course, divine grace, but grace does not decline to use rational persuasion. With God's help, the young man exercised his God-given intelligence and properly distinguished truth from falsehood. He chose truth as his guiding philosophy from that point onward in his life.
The lesson for us? We should never take the position that Christianity or the Christian life are basically arbitrary choices that we make in hope of living forever. Nonsense. They are the right choices because they are true, and because they rest squarely on all true wisdom.

One application of all three parables

Some people who have spent their lives in church find it difficult to welcome new people who are just emerging from deep sin. They are so different in background and outlook and appearance that it is hard to see them as brothers and sisters. But the lesson of Luke 15 for old-line church members is that they dare not be leery of new converts. They dare not look upon them with judgmental hearts because they have a history of bad choices. Rather, the duty of every true believer in Christ is to make new believers feel part of God's family.

Footnotes

Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 3rd ed. (N.p., 1886; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, n.d.), 2.259.
George Ricker Berry, Interlinear Greek-English New Testament (N.p., 1897; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1981), 278; William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 430; "Carob," Wikipedia, Web (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carob), 5/29/24.