For this thy brother was dead, and is alive again, and was lost, and is found (Luke 15:32)
The Parable of the “Lost Son” is the final one m the sequence of three told by our Lord Jesus Christ m response to the Pharisees and scribes murmuring “this man receiveth sinners” (Luke 15 2) The elders of Israel could only see the negative side of the actions of Jesus Christ They considered the tax collectors and assorted other sinners not worthy of any association Their concern was solely with their own contamination, it never occurred to them that they had a responsibility to seek lost sinners and help them find their way back to the fold.
Ironically, the traditional Christian view of this parable has also focused on the negative aspect of the story The chapter heading notes m many King James Bible editions calls this the parable of the “Prodigal Son” and modern language Bibles usually refer to it as the “Lost Son,” but Jesus Christ himself supplies, as it were, the punch line to the story by concluding it with the word “found” (Luke 15 32) Hence we would prefer the title “The Found Son” The emphasis of all three parables m Luke 15 is on restoration, not loss, The lessons taught to us by our Lord Jesus Christ in these parables can be just as powerful today in guiding us how to seek, find and recover lost “sheep, coins, or sons.”
We can relate
The story of the “found son” has a strong emotional impact. Any one of us who has had a child, spouse, relative or close friend lost from the gospel message can relate to this parable and empathize with the tragic pain that inevitably accompanies such a situation. There is a similar story in the writings of the rabbis of a “lost son” who squanders his inheritance on “riotous living,” but the outcome of this Jewish parable is quite different. But more on this later in our essay.
The son got what he wanted
A man had two sons and the younger asks for his inheritance immediately! As the younger son, he would have been entitled to one-third of the estate since the elder brother was to receive a double portion under the tenets of the law (Deut. 21:17). However, it was unusual to give such an inheritance while the father was still alive. This may indeed be the point of verse 13 since the pronoun “his” is not in the original text. Yet this is precisely what the Father has given us.
We have been given the inheritance of life. There is nothing special on our part that we, of our own strength, have done to deserve our present existence. We have been given the inheritance of the gospel message; whether this portion was received by circumstances of birth to believing parent(s), or by hearing the gospel call later in life by a God-given messenger, nevertheless it is by the grace of God I am writing, and you are reading, these words.
The actions of the younger son were strictly of his own doing. He got exactly what he wanted and it nearly destroyed him. There is an old saying that seems perfectly appropriate in this regard: “Be careful what you pray for, for you may receive it.”
A predictable disaster
The downfall of the younger son seems entirely predictable. He left his father’s house, obviously not wishing to be any longer under his discipline. Furthermore he went into a “far country,” where he thought he would be beyond his father’s influence, and set about to spend “all.” Leaving no reserve for the morrow, he truly fell into “want.”
The story unfortunately has parallels to our own age where easy credit (and credit cards), coupled with a world that constantly stimulates our desires to accumulate more and more material things, makes it entirely possible for one to come to dire straits. It is all too easy for us to spend far beyond our means and get ourselves in deep trouble. Sometimes this trouble is directly manifest, and many other times it simply becomes a situation where a brother or sister is spending so much time and energy at their job (and sometimes more than one job), in order to pay bills which he never should have accumulated, that the work of the Lord suffers. We make sacrifices for money that we often would not think of making for the Truth!
So low had this young man fallen that he joined himself to a “citizen of that country,” in other words a pagan employer! (Precisely the point of the previous paragraph.) He lands a job tending “swine.” Surely, the most degrading of professions for a Jew.
To what level do our excesses bring us as we struggle to pay for them?
Awakening and repentance
It is at this point that something quite remarkable happens The young man wakes up and realizes his sin Sometimes we absolutely have to hit bottom before we can appreciate the magnitude of our failures It is an unfortunate trait of the human character that this is true As painful as this lesson can be, sometimes we can only stand by and watch as someone sets on a path to destroy his life All the warnings we may give them go unheeded Nevertheless, we should never give up because at some point in their lives, only when they are ready, they might indeed listen.
The young man recognizes his sin “I have sinned against heaven, and before thee” All sin is ultimately against the Lord God (Gen 39 9, Psa 51 4 and also verse 21, among others) It is a teaching of the apostasy that there are two types of sins, venial and mortal, or trivial and serious, leading to death Such thinking is even presumed amongst Christadelphians, namely, that some sins can be forgiven (in a sense venial) and others not (by implication mortal) Recall once again that such thinking is absolutely ruled out by the direct teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ “And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven” (Matt 12 31 NIV).
The only exception is denial of the power of God, a person who does this cannot avail himself of God’s forgiveness since he refuses to believe in the very power that can forgive.
Teaching this fundamental truth, Jesus has the young man realize m his thoughts that he must seek the forgiveness of God and throw himself at the mercy of his fleshly father It is the correct sequence First we must acknowledge our sin to God, then we must do something about it with man We can forgive those who trespass against us even if they do not repent, even as Jesus forgave those who crucified him Nevertheless this does not obviate the need for repentance on the part of the sinner In other words, sometimes forgiveness may precede repentance and on other occasions repentance may come before forgiveness But regardless of the order both need to be accomplished to complete the healing process (Matt 6 14, 15) That is the whole point of repentance.
The young man says “I am no more worthy to be called thy son make me as one of thy hired servants” (Luke 15 19) In saying this our Lord Jesus Christ draws the Pharisees and scribes right into the realm of a traditional story that they probably recognized The Jewish parable of the “disobedient” son comes exactly to the same point as this story told by Jesus The moral of the Jewish story is “That the (disobedient) son of a friend is redeemed from bondage, not as a son but to be a slave, so that obedience might be demanded of him” If Jesus was teaching tradition, his message would have ended at verse 19 But Jesus gives the story an entirely different conclusion.
The Father’s forgiveness
The young man returns to his father “When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him” (Luke 15 20) How was this possible? The translation here is exact, the original Greek word implies a “long distance off” We can picture his father going up to a high vantage point, perhaps a mountain, every day so that he could survey the landscape for a great distance in the direction of the “far country” where his son had gone, hoping and praying that someday he would see him.
Once he sees him, does the father wait for his son – not We are told that he ran to greet him and fell on his neck and kissed him The word “fell” here is a very powerful word m the original It literally means embraced or seized him violently, today we might imagine something similar to a “bear-hug” to use a roughly equivalent American idiom.
The important point is that the father had completely and utterly welcomed his son back home and it is only in the next verse that we get a confession on the part of the son of his sin. The order seems wrong to some, but once again we must not try to change the order m which the Lord Jesus presents the story The father certainly could not have had direct knowledge of the son’s repentance (v 18) until he heard it himself from the son (v 21) yet the father did not hold back his compassion and affection
Do we act accordingly or do we demand first contrition on the part of those who sin against us? The very fact that the son returned was evidence enough to the father of the son’s desire to be repentant Is this the way we handle things in our ecclesias? A few years ago, as a visiting speaker at an ecclesia in another part of the continent, I ran a workshop on the subject of “Forgiveness” I referred to this parable and asked the audience the question When should an ecclesia do this, i e offer forgiveness to a member who had been withdrawn from even before there was direct evidence of repentance on the part of the brother or sister One of the older brethren m the audience immediately said “When it is one of the children of an Arranging Brother”! The audience laughed thinking the brother was being facetious, but m fact he was not – he was being completely serious.
In this parable the relationship is one of “blood” family, thus perhaps we can miss the general application The fact remains that we do have a natural human tendency to handle matters with more sympathy when it is one of our “own” When sin occurs with one of his own sons or daughters sometimes even the most adamant brother will become completely forgiving of a situation where previously he would not have been We must remember that we call each other brother or sister for a reason All members of the ecclesia are related by “blood,” i e the “blood” of Christ.
Restoration and celebration
The father not only welcomes him home, but restores him to honor m the household The “ring” being put on his finger signifies this, as the ring was usually the seal put upon documents to transact business in the first century AD When one is restored to the household we ought not hold back what they can and cannot do m the ecclesia It is sad indeed to see one come back and be, m a sense, only partly forgiven with the ecclesia placing restrictions on his participation.
Interestingly, the scriptures teach that God will not only forgive our sins, He will, m effect, completely forget them and so He styles it as being “blotted out” (Acts 3 19) Do we do the same? In any relationship this is a wise course to follow, just as restoration is not complete without forgiveness being accompanied by repentance on the part of the sinner, neither is it finished without forgetting on the part of the person wronged If God says he will not only forgive sin, but He will blot out the remembrance of it, we should do the same.
The “fatted” (vs 23, 27, 30) calf is slaughtered for a special feast The word here literally means “grain-fed” and in verse 29 the animal is referred to as a “kid” This is a special young tender animal that had not been allowed to run with the herd and toughen itself by the rigors of roaming the pasture The father had been saving something special m anticipation of his son’s return, even though we have no reason to suspect any correspondence had ever transpired until the father had seen his son afar off.
Often when a son (or a brother or sister) wanders off and gets lost m the world, it is precisely because they feel unworthy They feel unloved and unwanted for a variety of reasons, and making them feel special is exactly what they need, not only to feel comfortable about their return, but more importantly to want to never leave again.
The older brother
What of the older brother? He has often been made to be the villain of the piece and is held up as the model for the scribes and Pharisees If that comparison is true then it can only be true in part, for the father’s loving explanation remains unanswered by the elder brother, and we have every right to assume it was accepted
The obvious fact is that our Lord Jesus Christ provides a perfectly plausible and spiritual scenario for the father’s special treatment of the repentant younger brother and expects us to understand and, by example of this teaching, use the same concepts “Thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (Luke 15::31) How can we complain about that?
The forgiveness of the younger took nothing of real value away from the elder Neither should restoration of a lost member take anything away from all who had remained ever faithful The elder brother’s jealousy was entirely based on wrong motives “Thou never gayest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (v 29) Surely, his friends were not the father’s friends, He had never transgressed his father’s commandments, yet did he do this out of love and respect for his father or out of selfish motives?
Again we see the enduring patience of the father He realizes that his elder son feels jealous, entirely because of wrong motives, yet he is not answered harshly in any way In fact the father implores him, and we can only feel that he is successful Notice what the father says “We should make merry” (v 32) The elder son is asked to be part of the rejoicing and we have no reason to believe that he refused it.
If the parable was meant to be strictly a rebuke to the Pharisees and scribes then here is where Jesus could have done it Instead he asks them to be part of the process of healing the entire family As with the other two parables in this remarkable 15th chapter of Luke, the ending is one of exaltation and joy “Thy brother was lost, and is found” And so ends the parable of the “Found Son”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One