We have seen the Lord Jesus in His work set forth by the shepherd, and the more bidden but at the same time the active pains-taking operation of the Spirit of God, no less necessary in order to bring home the work to men in both giving the light to see and also searching them out. Now we have in the third parable the effect produced; for the work is not merely conversion or pardon, and therefore nothing that is done in this way would suffice unless there was the full bringing of the soul to God and also into fellowship with Him, the new and intimate relationship of a son by grace. This is what the third parable accordingly sets forth. And hence it is no longer a sheep or a piece of money, but a man. It is there that we find intelligence and conscience; and so much the more the guilt. Such is man's case. The first Adam had a certain relationship to God. When he was formed out of the dust, God dealt with him in tender mercy and gave him special advantages in Eden, privileges of every suited sort. But man fell from God, as the prodigal here left his father's house.
In a general way this is represented by a certain man who had two sons. “And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.” There was the point of departure, the first and main step of evil. There is scarce anything in which men are apt more to mistake than in what the true nature of sin consists. They measure sin by themselves instead of by God. Now the desire to have one's own way at a distance from God is positive sin and the root of all other sin. Sin against man is sure to follow; but sin against God is the mainspring. What more evident denial of Him in works than to prefer one's own will to His?
The younger son then (which makes the case the more glaring) said to his parent, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” He wished to go away from his father. Man would be at a distance from God, and this in order the more at ease to do what he likes. “And he divided unto them his living.” Man is tried—he is responsible; but, in fact, he is not hindered from having his way, God only keeping the upper hand for the accomplishment of His own gracious purposes. Still, as far as appearances go, God allows man to do what he pleases. This alone will tell what sin means, what the heart seeks, what man is with all his pretension, and the worse the more he pretends, “And not many days the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.” There was eagerness to get away from his father. It was, as far as his will was concerned, a complete abandoning of his father to do his own pleasure. He wished to be so thoroughly at a distance as to act according to his own heart without restraint. There, in a far country, he wastes his substance with riotous living. It is the picture of man left to himself, doing his own will in this world with its ruinous consequences for the next as well as this. “And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be in want.” Such, again, is the picture not only of the active course of sin but of its bitter issues. Sin indulged in brings misery and want. There is a void that nothing can satisfy, and the selfish waste of all means only makes this to be more felt in the end.
So, in the extremity of distress, “he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.” Now we find the sinner's degradation; for love is not there, but self is. The citizen does not treat him as a fellow-citizen, but as a slave. There is no slavery so deep or degrading as that of our own lusts. He is treated accordingly; and what must this sound to a Jewish ear? He is sent into the fields to feed swine. “And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him.” He is reduced to the lowest degree of want and wretchedness; yet no man gives unto him. God is the giver, man grudgingly pays his debts, if he pays them; never to God, only half-heartedly to man. But no man gives: so the prodigal found.
“And when he came to himself.” Now we begin the work of God's goodness, he comes to himself; before he comes to God. “And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger.” It is God giving him the conviction of his state. Hence his feeling is that even those who have the lowest place in his father's house are well and even amply provided for compared with him.
His mind is made up. “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.” The last words betray the usual legal state. It is one who conceives that God must act according to his condition. This grace never does. He had wronged his father, he had been guilty of folly, excess, and lewdness; and he could not conceive of his father doing more for him at best than putting him in the lowest place before him, if he received him at all. He felt that he deserved humiliation. Had he judged more justly, he would have gathered that he deserved much worse; that the more favored he was, seeing that he was so guilty, he must be put away—not merely go away, but be put into outer darkness where should be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
But although there was this wrong reasoning, at bottom there was at least a real sense, however feeble, of his sin, and, what was more and better, a real sense of love in God the Father. If he could only see Him, hear Him, be with Him! He rises accordingly and comes to his father, “but when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him.”
It is not the son that runs; but, even though a long way off, the father saw him. It was the father that ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. The son would not have dared to have done so, still less would He have expected it from the father. But grace always surprises the thoughts of men; and therefore reason can never find it out, but rather denies and opposes and enfeebles it, qualifying it, putting clogs and fetters on it, which only dishonor God, and do not alter the truth, but most surely injure man. The father then ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Not a word about his wicked ways! and yet the father it was that had wrought secretly, producing the conviction of his own evil, and the yearning after his own presence.
Further, it was the father who deepened all that was of himself in his own soul immensely, now that the prodigal was come to him. It is not true therefore that by not putting forward the evil in this case our Lord implied that the father was indifferent to the evil, or that the prodigal son was not to feel his outbreaks or his fleshly nature. Surely it should be so much the more, because it was allowed him to judge himself and the past in the light of such unspeakable grace. “And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” He cannot say more. It was impossible in the presence of the father to say, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” It was well, as far as it went, to acknowledge that he was no more worthy to be called his son. It was unqualifiedly right to say, “I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight;” but it would have been still better if he had said not a word about anything of which he could be worthy or unworthy. The sad truth was, that he was worthy of nothing but bonds or death. He deserved to be banished forever—to be driven out from the presence of his father.
Grace, however, does not give according to what man deserves, but according to Christ. Grace is the outflow of the love that is in God, which He feels even towards His enemies. For this reason He sent His Son, and He acts Himself. “But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe and put it on him.” All must now be of the very best, because all must be in accordance with the grace of God and the gift of Christ. “Bring forth the best robe, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry.” The younger son had never worn the best robe before; the elder son never did wear the best robe at all. The best was kept for the display of grace.
The two sons, therefore (of course the prodigal before his return), do not represent children of God in the sense of grace, but such as have merely the place of sons of God by nature. Thus Adam is said to be so. (Luke 3) All men are spoken of similarly in that sense—even the heathen—in Acts 17 as being endowed with a reasonable soul as men, and as having direct personal responsibility to God in presence of His favors and mercy. It is also doctrinally affirmed in “one God and Father of all.” (Eph. 4)
But then sin has completely separated man from God, as we have seen in this very parable. Grace brings into the nearer and better relationship of sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. The prodigal only enters this state when he at length comes back to his father, confessing his sins and casting himself upon divine grace. The best robe, the ring on his hand, the shoes on his feet, the fatted calf, all these belong, and belong solely, to the relationship of grace, to him who is born of God by believing in the name of Jesus. It is God magnifying Himself to the lost. “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.”
It is important to see this common joy. It is not only that there is personal blessing for the heart that is brought back to God, but there is the joy of communion, which takes its rise in and its strength from God, whose joy in love is as much deeper than ours as He is above us. Nor is it now only in heaven as we saw before, but there is the effect produced on earth, both individually and also in other hearts; and the great power of it all is after all communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, which the Holy Ghost sheds abroad—His love shed abroad in the heart, no doubt, but issuing also in communion one with another. “They began to be merry.”
But here we have a further picture. “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing.” The joy of true Christian worship, of living fellowship in grace, is unintelligible to the natural heart. This was what struck repugnantly the ears of the elder son. “And he called one of the servants, and asked him what these things meant.” He could have understood, debt, he could have urged right, he could see and pronounce on failure; but he did not scruple to judge God Himself, as we shall see. “The servant said unto him, Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in; therefore came his father out and entreated him.” His heart was outside the home of his father, nor did he breathe the spirit of the love that was being shown to the returned prodigal. He was a stranger to grace; so he had no part in all this joy. He was pursuing his own things. No doubt he was active and intelligent “in the field,” in the world, away from the scene of divine mercy and spiritual joy.
When, therefore, the servant told him that his brother had come, and of the way the father had received him, he shows his aversion on the spot, and yet more, the more he hears what made the others happy. Grace was to him irksome and even hateful. Doubtless he took the ground of righteousness, though he had none; plenty of talk and theory, but nothing real. His father comes out in the fullness of love and entreats him. “And he, answering, said to his father,” with that kind of pious, or rather impious, indignation against divine love, which belongs to and does not shock the natural mind, “Lo, these many years do I serve thee, [hollow and wretched service!] neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment, [the unhappy sinner had no sense of sin!] and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends.” Thus he was bold enough to judge the father as the self-righteous shrinks not from judging God. To the thought of the unbeliever He is hard and exacting. There is utter blindness as to all the favors of God, total insensibility of heart as well as conscience. “But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.” There is manifest dislike of grace and its ways. He does not call the prodigal his brother, but tauntingly “thy son.” And though it was what the father had given, he calls it “thy living,” in every case putting the worst aspect forward.
Truly the patience of God is as wondrous as His love. Hence the father perseveres: “And he said unto him, Son [for nothing can exceed the tender mercy of the father, even to the unthankful and the evil, the ungrateful and rebellious son], thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” It was just the place of the Jew under law. But it is the same position that every unconverted man in Christendom takes who is endeavoring to walk after the flesh religiously. It is just so that the natural man in these lands thinks and speaks. And no doubt the Jews had the chief place and indeed the only place that God claimed in this earth. All Other countries God had given to the children of men, but His land He had reserved for Israel. He had brought them to Himself through redemption of an outward sort and put them under law. The same principle is true of any self-righteous man who is in his way endeavoring to be good and serve God, but insensible to the truth that it is mercy that he wants and delivering grace. “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad.” Wonderful thought! God Himself delighting in the joy of grace and putting Himself in it along with others. “Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
Notice again, “For this thy brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.” “Thy brother” is to be observed. God is not in any way disposed to allow the denial of proper relationship, Hence one of the sins that will draw out the last judgments of the Jews is not merely their base ingratitude toward God, but also their hatred of the grace He is showing to the poor Gentiles in their wretchedness and sin. This we find strongly put by the Apostle Paul: “Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.” (1 Thess. 2:16.) They cannot endure that others, dogs of the Gentiles, should hear the gospel of grace, which their pride of law induced them to despise for themselves.