(Luke 15:32.)
THUS closes this wonderful scene the most wonderful picture that was ever painted. What is its subject, do you ask? God laying Himself out to recover wanderers, those that are at a distance from Himself, either in immorality, or in cold, self-satisfied morality. “Yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him” (2 Sam. 14:14). And if it were not so, “we must needs die,” die in our sins, die in our ruin and wretchedness, in our lost condition, and distant position; that position of distance to be “fixed” for all eternity, as it will be for those who hold out to the last against all His endeavors and entreaties, as we read in chapter 16, in the case of the “rich man.”
Yes, my reader, it is solemnly and sadly true, that if you refuse to go into the house, like the elder son in chapter 15, you will have to be turned into the hell so graphically, but terribly, described in chapter 16― “For the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psa. 9:17). And are you of the sect of modern Sadducees, or of their dupes, who deny that there is such a place as hell? Allow me to ask you, Who knows best, they and you, or the Son of God? —the One who came from the unseen world into ours that He might lift its curtain for us, and make us know the certainty of heaven and hell, the end of good and evil; and that He might deliver us at the cost of bearing judgment at the hand of a holy God, that He might deliver us from the torment of the one, and introduce us into the bliss of the other.
“A picture,” do you say? with the short-sighted logic of all such cavilers. Granted; but a picture of what? “Eastern imagery?” Granted; but of what? Pictures portray something; imagery represents something, not that which has no existence. And the picture of Luke 16:19-31 portrays an awful and endless reality that we might escape it. Oh, be warned! Thank God you are not in that flame of torment, where so much as a drop of water to cool your tongue will be denied (vs. 24).
You may be where you are perishing with hunger (ch. 15:17), and I thank God if you feel it. But you are still where the fullness of the Father’s house is offered, not “bread enough and to spare,” as for a hired servant, but―the “fatted calf,” with “music and dancing”; all the delights and joys of heaven for a prodigal or a professor; and the best robe, the ring, the shoes, to fit you for the house, to remind you of your Father’s love, and to give you a standing in His favor, as well as His embrace and kiss at first meeting.
And not only is Luke 15 a picture of God’s grace in recovering the sinner, but of His joy in receiving him.
What a drama is being enacted on the vast stage of this world. And the chief actors, who are they? Wonder of wonders, God in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost―all engaged in the work of each individual sinner’s Salvation and reception. And what a scene is that on which the curtain falls at the close! (vss. 25-32.) Picture of God entreating and man refusing—self-righteous man, too. And soon―how soon―the curtain will indeed fall on this vast drama. God still beseeching (2 Cor. 5:20), man still refusing. Christ coming again from heaven will close it, and all rejecters, refusers, and neglecters will be forever excluded; the last word of the chief Actor being, “It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this my son was dead and is alive again: and was lost and is found.”
W. G. B.