The Prodigal Son

The Love of a Father

Luke 15:11–32 (AMP)

And He said, There was a certain man who had two sons;

And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the part of the property that falls [to me]. And he divided the estate between them.

And not many days after that, the younger son gathered up all that he had and journeyed into a distant country, and there he wasted his fortune in reckless and loose [from restraint] living.

And when he had spent all he had, a mighty famine came upon that country, and he began to fall behind and be in want.

So he went and forced (glued) himself upon one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed hogs.

And he would gladly have fed on and filled his belly with the carob pods that the hogs were eating, but [they could not satisfy his hunger and] nobody gave him anything [better].

Then when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father have enough food, and [even food] to spare, but I am perishing (dying) here of hunger!

I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son; [just] make me like one of your hired servants.

So he got up and came to his [own] father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity and tenderness [for him]; and he ran and embraced him and kissed him [fervently].

And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son [I no longer deserve to be recognized as a son of yours]!

But the father said to his bond servants, Bring quickly the best robe (the festive robe of honor) and put it on him; and give him a ring for his hand and sandals for his feet.

And bring out that [wheat-]fattened calf and kill it; and let us revel and feast and be happy and make merry,

Because this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found! And they began to revel and feast and make merry.

But his older son was in the field; and as he returned and came near the house, he heard music and dancing.

And having called one of the servant [boys] to him, he began to ask what this meant.

And he said to him, Your brother has come, and your father has killed that [wheat-]fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and well.

But [the elder brother] was angry [with deep-seated wrath] and resolved not to go in. Then his father came out and began to plead with him,

But he answered his father, Look! These many years I have served you, and I have never disobeyed your command. Yet you never gave me [so much as] a [little] kid, that I might revel and feast and be happy and make merry with my friends;

But when this son of yours arrived, who has devoured your estate with immoral women, you have killed for him that [wheat-] fattened calf!

And the father said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

But it was fitting to make merry, to revel and feast and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and is alive again! He was lost and is found!

The Father represents the Lord as He’s waiting for us for come home to Him as His children. He is waiting with open arms at any time to forgive us of our sins. That’s why He died on the Cross, bearing the sins of the whole world. That’s why He told the Father in the Garden, in Luke 22:42, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My Will, but Yours be done.” And He took that Cup for us on that Cross and died for our sins.

The Prodigal son represents us as sinners, rebellious, prideful, boastful, greedy, only looking out for ourselves. But we have the Love of the Father waiting to take us in, with waiting arms to hold us when we’re dirty, unkempt, smelling like the world’s dirt and sin and shame all over us. The prodigal’s father didn’t care what the son looked like, what he smelled like, he saw him from a great distance away, and ran toward him. This is this only verse in the Bible that shows God running towards us in love. That’s how much the Lord loves us. And we know the prodigal stunk to the high heavens as he’d be working in the pig pen because that was the only job he could get at the time, and for a Jewish boy, that was the lowest of the lows. They didn’t even eat pigs. But he had lost all his money in riotous living, so that’s all that was left for him to do was take are of the pigs. But when he came to himself, and isn’t that a wonderful verse? Verse 17 says he came to himself, which means he woke up to where he was and admitted to what he was and where he was and knew he needed to go home to his father and ask his forgiveness for his actions. But he didn’t get to himself on his own, because as R.C. Sproul says in his commentary on Luke, on the Prodigal Son, he says, “because any person who reaches this level of degradation—someone who is dead in sin, who is torpid, who is in so deep a slumber that no alarm clock could possibly awaken him—cannot turn around and come to himself by himself. When somebody is in a coma or is unconscious and he awakens, we say that he “came to.” That’s the case with this young man. He was in a spiritual coma and he came to, he was resuscitated and roused to wakefulness not by himself but by the only way anyone ever comes to. He was awakened by God,by the power of God, the Holy Spirit. In Matthew 16, Jesus gathered the disciples and said, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ They'd said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ Jesus said, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ This is question that everyone of us has to answer. Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’ When Peter uttered those words to Jesus immediately responded with a benediction. ‘…for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father Who is in Heaven’” (Matthew 16:13-17).

This is the same for the Prodigal Son, the Father in Heaven and God, the Holy Spirit brought the Prodigal Son to himself and that’s why he got up to go ask his father for forgiveness even though he didn’t know if there was forgiveness to be had. Little did he know what was waiting for him at home. He didn’t know how his father would receive him or if he’d receive him, he just knew he wanted to go home to his father.

The Father, representing the Lord, always loves us, even when we are in our sins. Goe will not awaken a person to grace and to salvation without at the same time convicting him of his sin. It says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His Love for us in this; While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” What love, what wondrous love that God has for us. The Word also says He first loved us, in 1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us.” We have so many reasons, as we were prodigal sons and daughters, just like the prodigal son in this parable, to love the Lord, because the Lord loved us first and keeps on loving us, and was waiting to welcome us home, to put the ring on our finger to show that we are His child, the finest clothing on our backs, to kill the fatted calf to eat so He could give us a celebration welcoming us home, because this His child, who once was dead, is now alive. The Lord runs to us and hugs us and kisses us in our filth. That’s the way God works.

But there is a third person in this story, the older son, the one who never left home. He represents the attitude that Jesus was correcting in the Pharisees of the day that Jesus was telling the parable, the religious people. He neither shared nor understood the Lord’s joy in the prodigal’s return. He wouldn’t celebrate with his father either and go in to the party. His father invited him to come in and celebrate, but he just got angrier, and wondered why his father had never given him a party when he’d stayed home all those years serving him. But yet, his father gave a party to his brother, who lived riotously all these years, as soon as he came home. He just couldn’t understand it how his father could do that. His father tried explaining it, but the elder brother, being so self-righteous, wouldn’t listen.

That’s the way of the world. There will be people who will never listen to the call of the Lord on their lives because they believe their religion will save them, but sadly, it won’t. Only Jesus’ Blood on Calvary and His Dying for our sins will save us. The Father’s Love and Jesus’ ultimate Sacrifice are all that will save us. The Saviour is waiting! Will you let Him in?