One of Christ’s most famous parables is that of the prodigal son. It could also be called the parable of the self-righteous brother, or the parable of the longing father. What it teaches us about God the Father is quite remarkable, and to a certain kind of religious mind and heart, also quite scandalous.
Once there was a man with two disobedient sons. One of them was honest enough to go off and spend his inheritance on whores, while the other remained, working diligently in the fields for all the wrong reasons. The two sons are distinguished by this—the scoundrel son received a gift in order to abuse it. The other son was incapable of receiving a gift. The parable is explicit that the father divided the inheritance between the brothers at the beginning of the story, but the older brother later complained that he had received nothing. And he had received nothing—he was incapable of it.
Are you like the younger son? If you are, then you are an abuser of grace. You are a waster. Let us not sugarcoat it—you are a loser. The good news is that this is the Table that is set for you. God welcomes you to it. The fatted calf has been killed for you. You are a loser, and yet the ring has been put on your finger, and a robe has been called for. God the Father has hired a band.
But the grace of God goes still deeper than that. Are you a stuffed shirt Pharisee? Are you a fusser? An ethical, moralistic whiner? Are you the kind of person who has no friends, and cannot recognize the grace of your Father? This just makes you a different kind of loser than your younger brother. So stop standing there in the driveway, sullenly listening to the music and dancing.
As we repent, this Table is for both kinds of losers.
So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.
So………,what would be all the right reasons to work diligently in the Fathers fields?
And does anyone do that?
I am inclined to think that you do, Doug Wilson. (With periodic human failures.)
In the relay race of life, the only thing people have going for them is that God Himself is our anchor man.
Some people will lose worse than others, but in the last rely, God wins the race for the team, even though everyone else lost. Correct?
LOL! You sound like my husband Adad. We’ll call that “salvation by having a good work ethic.” And those who don’t “work diligently in the Father’s fields,” deserve nothing, and certainly not praise and celebration once they blow all the money!
Pour some social justice on those wounds, “you didn’t earn that,” and what we have is a mess, and perfectly good men now rejecting the whole parable.
Well Memi, wisdom, if we actually have any, is it’s own reward!
I understand most aspects of this parable. My questions have much to do with over application or over inferring about the son who stayed! The dad is the easiest to understand, for “a dad” anyway!????
Amen, I’ll take it, well said.
Just let the record show I still have about as much enthusiasm for “stuffed shirt Pharisee,” as the disciples once had for tax collectors. Actually I don’t like tax collectors, either.
How can you make these assumptions about the older son? What in the text suggests that he is like the Pharisees? All we know about him is that he became angry that the father is celebrating the repentance of his yonger brother. And isn’t that the contrast to the main point of all 3 parables in this section? That is, all 3 parables have the same point: there will be rejoicing when someone comes to faith! The older brother WASN’T rejoicing so Jesus is using him as a contrast to what an appropriate reaction should be. Plus, look at how… Read more »
Well, the whole reason for telling the 3 parables in the first place begins with, “Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” So the older son is an example of a pharisee, a man who believes he is entitled by virtue of his own merit, his own innate goodness, and his own alleged compliance with the law. He doesn’t even know he’s received a gift, an inheritance, he thinks he’s totally earned it himself by working in the fields. I suspect this is part of the reason why Pastor… Read more »
Meme…this is going to get silly. Who is the pharisee in the lost sheep parable? Who are the teachers in the lost coin parable?
You are concluding way more than you ought.
That’s assuming the three parables all repeat exactly the same thing. How about this: they build on each other. The first one is about the Father’s desire to bring His lost (emphasis on lost) sheep in. The second is about the same thing, plus the joy that less recently lost believers are to have when that happens. And the third, brings in the element of what happens to the people who don’t recognize that they were such as the lost themselves. They put themselves “outside the party” because they don’t realize that all formerly lost sons should share in rejoicing… Read more »
I found the Jewish perspective on this parable kind of interesting. Asking for one’s inheritance is seen as massively disrespectful in that it implies a willingness to eagerly contemplate a parent’s death. Most Jews I know are horrified when gentiles announce casually that their parents will be leaving them some money. So, the elder brother was undoubtedly angry about the disrespect and callousness shown to the father. Even though I am more like the feckless, irresponsible younger son, I have always had some sympathy for the older brother. I don’t see him as pharasaical so much as imposed upon–he has… Read more »
Well…OK.
Maybe there are three kinds of losers! ; – )
If you start with the premise that Jesus’ parables weren’t just morality tales but were announcements of His Kingship and the inauguration of His rule, then it’s not a stretch to assume that He’s talking about His and His father’s relationship to the structures in place, how the announcement of His rule is going to overthrow the nice little thing the Pharisees have going, and how they’re going to resent that and, well…..the rest is history. The older son is going to inherit anyway, yes — but if he doesn’t wise up and repent of his resentment of how His… Read more »
‘All we know about him is that he became angry that the father is celebrating the repentance of his yonger brother.’ And we know about Pharisees that they were angry that Jesus would celebrate the repentance of their own ‘younger brothers.’ That alone confirms the older brother is like the Pharisees. And given that the chapter opens by explicitly speaking about Pharisees who grumbled because ‘this man welcomes sinners and eats with them’, and closes with a brother that grumbled because his father welcomed a sinner and ate with him…. then I don’t see this as reading waaaaay too much… Read more »
Who said the younger son wasted his inheritance on “whores”? The older son, not the narrative. It simply says “riotous living” literally in an “unsaved” manner.
That is a good point! We have no idea what the “riotous living” really is. The older son in Luke 15:30 says he has “devoured his inheritance with prostitutes,” and given the nature of men, most likely he has. Given the nature of men however, the older son could just be tossing out his disgust and resentment with a false allegation.
The older son sounds a lot like Jonah, minus the whale barf! ????