(Luke 15)
We have three parables presented to us in this chapter. The source of that which is taught in them all is love.
1. The Shepherd who sought the sheep that was lost.
2. The Woman who sought the piece of money that was lost.
3. The Father that received back again the prodigal son.
In the last it is not a question of seeking, but of the manner of receiving the son when he had come back. There is many a heart that longs to go back, but does not know how it will be received. The Lord Jesus says, the grace and love of God are shown out, first in seeking, and then in the reception. In the first two parables, we have the seeking; in the third, the reception by the Father. One great principle runs through them all: it is the joy of God to seek and to receive the sinner. He is acting upon His own character. No doubt it is joy to the sinner to be received, but it is the joy of God to receive him; “It is meet that we should make merry and be glad,” not merely meet that the child should be glad to be in the house.
This is a blessed truth! It is the tone that God has raised, and that every heart in heaven responds to. The chord that God strikes Himself; heaven echoes it; and so must every heart down here that is tuned by grace. What discord, then, must self-righteousness produce! Jesus tells forth the joy and grace of God in thus acting, and puts this in contrast with the feelings of the elder brother—any self-righteous person—though the description be of the Jews.
It is this note that is sounded from heaven in love, that we read in the heart of Christ down here; and, oh, how sweet! In one sense, it is more sweet to have it here than up there. It is down here that this love of God is astonishing; it is natural in heaven. It is here on earth, among us, that God has manifested what He is; that He has delight in saving lost sinners: and angels desire to look into it.
The shepherd puts the sheep upon his shoulders, and he brings it home rejoicing; “Am I not right to seek lost sinners?” Is it not a right thing for God to come among publicans and sinners? This may not suit a moral man, but it suits God; it is His privilege to come amidst sin—to come near to ruined sinners—because He can deliver out of it. The shepherd has the sheep upon his shoulders and rejoices; he charges himself with it; he takes the whole toil of it. It was his own interest to do it, because he valued the sheep; it was his, and he brings it home. Thus He presents the shepherd to us. And thus it is with “the Great Shepherd of the sheep.” He presents it as His interest “to seek and to save that winch is lost:” He even makes it His interest in the sense of love; and He does bring the sheep home rejoicing.
Well, then, there is another thing in this second parable—the painstaking of this love, in seeking that which has been lost. It is not a sheep, but money in a house. Everything is done to get the money. She lights the candle, she sweeps the house; she could not stop in the task of love—diligent, active love—until the piece was found. It was her affair and interest again. And then we have the joy when her possession is recovered; she gives the tone to those around her; others are called in to have communion with it—“Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost.” And that is the way of the Lord. Thus, then, we have the same great principle in this parable as in the former. There is the patient activity of love until the result is produced. It was the joy of the woman, as of the shepherd. The first great thing was the energetic power and activity of this grace, as well as the good will. There was entire inactivity in the sheep and in the money. The shepherd and the woman alike did all. It is true at the same time that there is a most important work—an effect produced in the heart of the one who has gone astray and is brought back again; and therefore the third parable, which shows the feelings of the wanderer and the manner of his reception. In a word, we have not only the manner of the workings within, but also the manifestation of the father’s heart. It is not the estimate of love in the one brought back, that gives the answer to all his thoughts, but the manifestation of the father’s own heart. There is this one simple fact—the father is on his neck kissing him! and that tells him what that heart is.
But man makes a distinction between sinners. So the Lord puts a case, where the sinner is gone, even in man’s judgment, to the fullest degree of evil, and shows it does not outreach the grace of God—a case which wonderfully exhibits the truth, that “if sin abounds, grace does much more abound.”
“And there wasted his substance in riotous living.” Any person who lives beyond his means looks rich; so does the sinner, wasting his soul, seem happy.
“And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him.” There is no giving in the “far country.” Satan sells all, and dear—our souls are the price. If you sell yourself to the devil, you will get husks, he will never give you anything. Would you find a giver, you must come to God. Hearts are not easy in the world. Leave a man for a few hours to himself, and he will soon be in want.
“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! I will arise, and go to my father.” He had not yet understood how he would be received, yet he did understand that there was love in that house; the very hired servants had bread enough and to spare; and he did understand, too, not only that he was hungry, but perishing with hunger.
Every soul that returns to God is thus brought to the thought of goodness in God.
Well, the prodigal goes back and says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” He did not understand what his father was—what a father’s heart was. He was glad to be in the father’s house; but still “make me as one of thy hired servants” was his thought. He measured the father’s love in some little degree by the sense of what he had been, and the evil in which he had been—he thought to get into the place of a servant. Now there are a multitude of hearts in this state, lowering down the standard of what the Father must do to some sort of adaptedness to their fitness. I am not speaking of positive self-righteousness. They have still the remains of legalism, and would take the place of a servant in the house. “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” But that will not do for the father, if it would do for the son. It would be constant misery to the father’s heart to have a son in the house as a servant; neither would it be testimony to the servants in the house as to the father’s love. The father cannot have sons in the house as servants; and if his boundless grace brings them, he must show the manner of the reception to be worthy of a father’s love.
The father does not even give him time to say, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” He lets him say, “I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son;” but no more, for he is on his neck kissing him. How can he say, “Make me a hired servant,” when the father is on his neck, producing the consciousness that he was a son?
“But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; 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.” He brings us into the house where the servants are, with nothing less than all the honor He can put upon us. His love welcomes us while in our rags, but here the same love acts in another way. He introduces us into the house as He would have us be there, with His mind expressed about the value of a son. “We read here the description of the fatted calf, the best robe, the ring, and the feast. There are, perhaps, some who would think it humility to be a servant in the house. Now it is not; it is only ignorance of the Father’s mind. I read, “that he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus.” Now if you begin at that end—the Father’s mind and grace—would it have been worthy of Him to have put us in the house with a constant memorial of our sin and shame, of our former dishonor and degradation? If there was any sense of shame—the merest trace of the far country —would it have been worthy of the Father? No! “The worshipper once purged has no more conscience of sins.” The condition that finds its place in God’s house must be worthy of God. It would be an evil thing to doubt this love, as it would have been an evil thing in the prodigal, when the father was kissing him, to say, I have the rags of the far country upon me. Did he then think of his rags as a reason why there should not be that expression of the love which was in the heart of his father? Then when I see the character Christ gives me of what God is towards me as a sinner, the doubts of my heart are silenced before such grace.