The Deep Love of the Father

It was originally given with the two precediing parables in the context of criticism from the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling about Jesus methods and company.

All three parables emphasize the importance of seeking, finding, and restoring hte lost.

It is usually called the parable of the prodigal son.

However, verse 11 identifies it as a man with two sons.

As such it not only teaches us

It’s focal point is not the prodigal son but the prodigal love and grace of the father.

Its uniqueness does not consist in the sons. We all know people like the rebellious younger son or the resentful older one. At one time or another, in fact, most of us have been like the one or the other.

But we have never known anyone like the father.

He is the first party named and the last to speak.

None of the problems posed in the parable can be solved without the father.

He is the crucial link.

The parable is about the indomitable love of the Father.

God’s Love and Grace For The Reckless Rebel

Rebellion - vv. 12-16

According to Jewish law, the firstborn son is entitlted to twice the amount given to the other son.

A man with two sons would give 2/3 of his estate to teh first son, and one third to the second.

What is shocking is not the amount but the timing of the request. Property was typically disposed by a will executed after a father’s death, not by request when he was aliv.

The request shames his father.

It is a public statement that he no longer wishes to live with or be identifeid with the family.

In requesting what should become available only at his father’s death, the son is, in effect, writing his father’s death certificate. In Jewish society, this is an unforgivable offense.

In effect saying, “To me you are dead.”

The father could have responded variously. He could have put the young man in his place: “I had to wait until my father was lowered in the ground, and you must too.” He could have tried appeasement: “If your allowance is not enough, I’ll double it.” He could have taken a probationary approach: “I’ll give you a half-section of property and see how you do with it.” He could have appealed to the remaining shreds of his son’s honor: “Don’t subject our family to such disgrace.” The father has authority to do any of these, but he forsakes them all.

Instead, the father opts to respond in a most surprising way - he divided his property between them - v. 12. Now this is significant as the Greek uses two different words for property in v. 12. The son asks for ousia - meaning “financial wealth.” The father shares with him “bios” - one of several Greek words for “life.” The father does not simply divide his assets; he divides his life.

The deal done, a few days later, the son converted all of his assets into cold, hard cash and set off for a distant country and squandered it all away recklessly - v. 13.

From the world’s point of view he has it made - money, anonymity, distance! He is living the dream but it was not long before reality set in. due to wasteful pleasures he blew it all.

NExt, his foolish, wasteful living is compounded by forces out of his control - a famine.

The distant far off country, the land of opportunity, suddenly became alien, foreign, far removed from security. Now to survive he must do that which is repugnant - he chooses a life of slavery in which he feeds pigs. HIs hunger is so great hat he longs to eat their food.

Though not unheard of, this is a surprising request.

Since the older son got a double portion of his father’s estate, the younger son’s share would have been one-third of the estate.

Having received his share, a few days later he converted all of his assets to cash and set himself headfirst into a life of wasteful living.

Pigs were unclean. The pods were carob pods seed casings of a tree used as food for cattle, pigs, and sometimes the poor. Seedpods similar to peapods but much larger.

The point is that the younger son has hit rock bottom in his new life. He is desperate. Utterly bankrupt.

The prodigal son is a picture of all sinners who in spite of the rich advantages of having a relationship with God waste their lives in sin and self-indulgence.

Returns - vv. 17-21

Hitting rock bottom can have a very sobering effect and thus we read in v. 17 that the younger brother “came to himself.”

The idea here is he had inner thoughts which led to resolutions to act.

The young man “came to his senses” - v. 17

He had clarity of thought and honest self-appraisal that in his present state he is utterly perishing.

He realizes he is lost.

He resolves to act - v. 18.

His violation had a vertical and horizontal dimension

That is crucial because only the lost can be found.

“But when he came to himself” means repentance.

Repentance means a change of mind. But this is more than just an intellectual change of mind. It is change in one’s way of thinking that results in different beliefs and a change in the direction of one’s life. Repentance is to turn from one’s allegiance to sin and unbelief.

He not only realized the futility of his situation, but he also came to understand his sinfulness against God himself.

A Walk with God: Luke The Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11–19)

Jesus was aware that there are people who are lost, not only in terms of the kingdom of God, but in personal terms: they don’t even know themselves. A person can get so caught up in a kind of activity that he doesn’t even know who he is any more.

One of the greatest abilities we have as humans is the ability to deceive ourselves, to rationalize, to make up excuses. Some of us continue to delude ourselves, postponing that painful moment of honest self-evaluation. But this young man woke up to the reality of what he was doing. That awakening is, of course, the most critical point in his life.

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to Luke How Great the Father’s Love for Us (15:11–32)

The image of running, falling on one’s neck, and kissing in forgiveness occurs only once elsewhere in Scripture: in Jacob’s reconciliation with Esau. The younger son in the parable has offended both father and older brother on the issue of inheritance, as Jacob offended his father (Isaac) and older brother (Esau) on the same issue. Like Jacob, the younger son faces a day of reckoning: he “comes to himself” and goes back home. Jacob had reason to fear Esau, whom he defrauded; the younger son has reason to fear his father, whom he disgraced. Both fears were mistaken. Esau “ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him” (Gen 33:4). The description of the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau is unmistakably similar in theme, vocabulary, and syntax to the reconciliation of the younger son and the father. It is not difficult to imagine that this redemptive key in the parable, perhaps the entire parable itself, was fashioned by Jesus on Jacob’s inimitable meeting with Esau. So remarkable was Esau’s response that Jacob believed he had seen “the face of God” (Gen 33:10). So it is with the younger son: both he and Jacob have been accosted by grace, and grace is the face of God.

The son commences his rehearsed speech but the Father cuts him off.

Restored - vv. 22-24

Robe, ring, sandals - all three signify status, reputation, honor and acceptance. Especially sandals - going barefoot was a sign of humiliation and indignity.

These gestures far exceed the sons needs.

The father’s response displayed compassion, love, acceptance, and celebration.

v. 24 - ties to the previous two parables about God’s joy in saving the lost. The father’s celebratory attitude depics the way in which God the Father receives repentant sinners. He is a great and loving savior.

The son doesn’t even get to finish his rehearsed speech.

God’s Love and Grace For The Respectable Rebel

He is a prodigal just in a different way. His rebellion is more socially acceptable.

He is like Jonah

He is self-centered and doesn’t understand God’s grace

His body stayed at home but his heart was lost

Instead of the story ending on a note of joy and celebration, the spotlight now shifts to the older brother.

He was out in the field.

I believe that minor detail is actually a metaphor of the older sons’ separation from the father. The younger son was separated overtly, but the older son was separated covertly. To all appearances, the field is the proper place for him to be. He is doing what he supposed to be doing.

Coming in from the field he hears “music and dancing.”

The lack of joy in his own heart makes him suspicious and jealous of the joy at home.

He speaks not to the father - and certainly not to the brother - but summons one of the servants and asked what is going on.

v. 27

Mention of his brother stokes the embers of hatred and resentment to angry flame. The news could hardly be worse: his brother has returned and his father has celebrated it.

Furious, he refuses to join the celebration.

So the father comes to him.

He pleads, invites, implores for a change of heart.

But to no avail.

The older son launches a counter offensive - v. 29. His duty has been faultless. Instead of rewarding the son, the father has been mean and unfair. For his long-serving, longsuffering, dutiful older son the father would not even spare a goat.

He impugns his younger brother - v. 30

“this son of yours” is calculated for maximum effect and widens the distance between the two sons.

How does the father respond?

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to Luke How Great the Father’s Love for Us (15:11–32)

The older son is like many people who have enjoyed a long relationship with God. His love for the father has grown cold, he has become callous and complaining, he harbors bitterness about the life that passed him by. He has been faithful over the years, and he imagines that the father owes him a reward. Having not received what he imagines, he thinks himself justified in his bitterness. So bitter is he that he will not address his father as such. The father nevertheless speaks more tenderly to the older brother than to the younger, calling him teknon (v. 31). English translations (incl. NIV) usually render the word “son,” but that is a disappointing approximation, owing to the fact that English does not have a term of endearment for a grown male. Teknon literally means “child,” connoting the affection, nurture, and protectiveness of a parent for a child, or even “of a hen that gathers her chicks [Gk. teknon] under her wings” (13:34). To the accusation that the father “never” threw a party for the older son (v. 29), the father asserts, “My Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours” (v. 31). The description in v. 31 of the relationship of the father to the son—yes, this disgusting elder son—is formulated in the most absolute and unconditional way possible. The only description in the NT analogous to it is that of Jesus and the Father, “All things have been committed to me by the Father” (10:22); “All that I have is yours, and all that you have is mine” (John 17:6, 10).

Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Luke & Acts Notes

In this speech [15:29–30] the elder brother shows that he also has, all along, been an unworthy son, serving his father not out of love but in the spirit of a hireling. The fact that he would have liked to enjoy himself ‘with his friends’ and away from his father, proves that he too was at heart a prodigal! And at heart the Pharisees and Scribes (v. 2) were also wanderers from God” (Weymouth 1912:207).

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to Luke How Great the Father’s Love for Us (15:11–32)

Only one thing is missing: the older son has yet to learn that “righteousness” is not achieved by his worthy obedience. It is a gift conferred by the father’s love, and it is received by joining the banquet. In so doing, the son not only bears the family name, he joins the father’s mission. His righteousness is not his own, the result of obedience to the law (v. 29!), “but that which comes through faith in Christ” (Phil. 3:9). This description is intentionally drafted in Pauline terminology, for Saul of Tarsus was the quintessential older son, whose self-description (“a Pharisee whose righteousness according to law was faultless,” Phil 3:6) is practically interchangeable with the older son’s (“all these years I continued serving you and never violated your command,” v. 29). According to the virtually unanimous witness of early Christianity, Luke was a protégé of Paul. It seems very possible to imagine that Luke did not intend the stories of Simon the Pharisee, the fig tree, the Pharisee host, and yes, the older brother, to be understood as stories with open or unfinished endings, but rather with delayed endings. The intended completion comes in the Acts of the Apostles in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, whose acceptance of his father’s love for him on the road to Damascus enabled him also to accept the Gentile mission of Christ and join the Father’s banquet!

Unlike the father’s positive attitude, the older brother is surprised at the return of his younger brother, offended and jealous at the father’s celebration, angry at the father’s forgiving love, declared his own self-righeousness, and focused on his brother’s sinfulness rather than his newfound repentance.

He does not understand his opportunity to have a close relationship with God or the generosity of his grace or his joy at the salvation of sinners, or the profound transformation of conversion.

No real love for the father, no interest in repenting sinners, no real recognition of his own sin