(Luke 15)
I take this chapter because one finds so many souls not in the second condition of this repentant prodigal; as to the state of their minds, they have not the best robe and the fatted calf, not being with the Father on the ground on which the Father reveals Himself. The whole thing is the Father's mind, what the Father felt and did. From the prodigal's confession, all is the Father's mind and the Father's ways. There are numbers of saints not on this ground: there is not this conscious place with the Father.
There are two very distinct states in this prodigal; only in the second, do we really get the Father's thoughts and feelings, not the prodigal's, but the effect upon him. This is not the judgment, or the presenting of the blood to God as meeting that judgment, but God in justifying grace, and the way the soul enters on the enjoyment of that grace. The side on which the gospel is presented here is not that judgment is outstanding, and that the blood is there to meet it, but the joy of divine love in blessing the wanderer brought back by grace.
We must not confound God's government (in which He may have anger even with His own children) with God's nature, which cannot allow sin. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” From the nature of God, the moment He is revealed, He abhors and rejects the sin, and, from the holiness of His nature, He judges it. We are to walk in the light, as God is in the light. God has no measure with sin (there are indeed “many stripes” and “few stripes"), but His nature rejects sin. Adam returns to the dust from which he was taken—present judgment that marked God's displeasure.
God may chasten His own children, but what is so dreadful is being shut out from the presence of the Lord forever. There is no veil over the glory of God. If you have to do with God at all, you must deal with God, not as under the law when there was a veil, and God was hidden, but now He has come out, and wrath from heaven has boon fully revealed. This is not the side we have here, but the grace that goes out to seek the lost. We get the Trinity in this chapter, but not as a doctrine. We find the activity of God in grace in the Lord and the Holy Spirit, and then in the way the soul is received. The shepherd has lost his sheep, and he goes after it, and brings it back, while the sheep never put its feet to the ground. Then we see the piece of money—there could be nothing that passed in it, no activity. Then there is another, thank God, not a new but a most blessed and lovely principle, that it is not our joy, but God's joy.
A Pharisee is a man who thinks he has a righteousness for God; we have that described in the elder brother—you do not want to be a Jew, to be a Pharisee. It is the most hateful thing in God's sight that exists.
A Pharisee has no sense of sin, no sense of holiness, or of love; there is nothing so foreign to the heart and mind of God; there is the most thorough selfishness in him, not a thought of anything else. The Pharisees had the law, the prophets, Christ as coming in the flesh, the word of God—they had got it enough to take pride out of it, but not so as to enter into the Father's heart. “Thy brother is come;” that ought to have touched his heart—not a bit. There is no sense of righteousness or of holiness in the Pharisee; there is only the making the outside of the cup clean, as if God did not see the inside.
The Lord takes the case of one that has gone to an excess of riot, as the prodigal; grace reaches him, and this is God's delight. The moment the soul has got hold of what God is, it is not feeding on husks, that is the worst thing, as regards the heart; there is not one bit of difference when you come to the root of the matter. With the first act of the young man, the mischief was done, when he turned his back on his father's house, and took his own way. When he crossed the threshold of his father's house, he was as much a sinner as when he was eating husks, and, what is more, he was nearer returning when he was eating husks; there was no pretense then that he was not perishing.
There was enough evil to reach the conscience. “Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,” we all say. We like our own will; we like to be from God to do our own will. This is what you all are as children of Adam; you have your back upon God, and your face to your own pleasures. There is no return till that is confessed. Suppose a son goes off' in wild wickedness from his father's house; he may not be a thief, he may be an honest cleric, but everything is wrong till he comes back.
The heart of man in itself never returns to God. There is a famine in the world; when natural things are gone, what has the heart left? There is in many a heart the sense that there is a famine in the world; the heart has nothing to satisfy it.
There is no giving in the devil's country. You would not have to take so much pains to make yourself happy, if you were so! All these artificers in brass and iron are merely an effort to make the city (where we are without God) pleasant. That kind of heart never turns the heart to God, but turns it to what satisfies the flesh. There is no giving there, there is selling oneself. “And he joined himself unto a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.”
When he comes to himself, there is a total change; the goodness of God comes into the heart. “How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare!” He does not say “I shall get it,” but the sense of goodness is awakened in the soul, and this produces a want of another kind.
Whenever the Holy Ghost works in the soul, there is a want of some kind: I want more holiness, I want to be like Christ. Wherever there is the revelation of Himself to the heart, there is always the sense of the goodness of God. People say, “If I perish, I perish at the cross;” conscience is awakened, but the heart is attracted. “I will arise and go unto my father.” Now it is not that he has got to his father, but his face is turned to him—an immense thing for the soul, but there is not peace yet. “Bread enough and to spare:” there is abundance and plenty there. He did not know if he would be let in, but he knew there was plenty to be let into. “I will arise and go unto my father:” the moment it is so, God and the soul have met. He did not say that he would change his ways, but “I must go to my father;” the heart wants God. “And will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” The next thing is honest confession. It is often a long while before we get up to this, knowing that we have no title. “I cannot take the children's bread, and cast it to dogs.” “Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master's table.” I am just a wretched dog, but there is goodness enough in God for those who have no title. If you take holiness as a ground of your acceptance, it is a mistake: it is righteousness.
This young man never has a word to say to the blessing till everything is spent. Are you fit for God now? It is not what is in God that meets your case, but what is in you will, you hope, meet God's case: this is all wrong. We have seen the young man's heart brought to God in a sense—all quite right, but he begins to think how he will be with God when he meets Him. What did this prove? That he had never met God at all! People talk of a humble hope of some small corner in heaven. God's presence is there, and are you fit for that with all those rags on you? There was a work of God in the man's soul, but there was this thought. He had no terms to make with his father when he met him. You find numbers of souls, who have not really met God to find what His thoughts are, partly hoping, partly fearing. He was not judging from what God was, and had been. He had not given himself up, as nothing but sin, to find what God was to those who have nothing but sin. What was the effect of his returning? To bring him to his father with all the traces of the far country, totally unfit for his presence. He was coming back to God's presence in his rags (the effect of the experience of God's work in our hearts is to bring us to God in our sins); just as he had come out of the far country. Till we submit to that, we never get peace. We are often reasoning from our thoughts and feelings to what will be, but that is giving God the character of a judge; and if He has the character of a judge, there can be nothing from Him but everlasting destruction. Why not confess you have not met Him yet? I do not say He has not met you. The father kissed the prodigal in his rags. He deals in absolute grace with me such as I am, loving me when I am in my rags—a condition totally unfit to be in the house. The father acted from his thoughts, and feelings, and mind, and the only effect of the wretchedness of the son was to draw out the compassion of the father. The very essence of Christianity is that, because we could not meet God as a judge, God has come to us in grace to show that He is greater than our sins.
The footing we are upon with God is not what we are for God (this has to do with government), but what God is for us. He does not look for righteousness, but He brings it. It is not what God finds, but what God gives.
With his father on his neck, the prodigal never says, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” He had met his father, and consequently he knew his position with his father; the whole thing depended on what his father was for him.
Are you content that your position with God should depend on what God is for you, not on what you are for God? He has learned his father's heart towards him; he knows a son's place because he has found his father's heart. The grace has gone out, and righteousness goes in.
The young man had got his share before. The “best robe” was what the father put upon him now, that he might be the witness to the whole house of what were his father's thoughts. We come not simply with our rags off, but with Christ on. He brings us to His own presence according to His own heart.
There is not a word about the son now. It was the Father's delight to have him, and He puts that delight upon him—Christ. It is experience we get when the son was on his way to his father, but experience is not righteousness. The experience was there, but experience led him in rags to his father's presence. I get Christ as my righteousness. Then the soul sits down and enjoys all the Father has to give. You will find it hard for your heart to bow to dependence on what God is to you. There can be no real true holiness practically till we have got the certainty of salvation. How can a child have fit affections if he has not a father? An orphan is capable of them.
Do not be merely satisfied with being saved. I am uneasy when I see a person resting too long on contrasts. I believe we shall remember it in heaven; “the Lamb as it had been slain” will be before us there. Do not be always saying, “I was scampering away, and He took me in.” Have you found nothing within the family—nothing in the firstborn among many brethren, without thinking of that? Walk is all important when I am a child. Then it is God deals with us in close government—thank God for it!
Is the place of your heart with the Father, living there with the affections belonging to that place? Are you content to take your whole condition and blessing from what the Father is to you?