THIS was the real crisis in this young man’s history, and it is the crisis in the history of every soul. He had reached a turning point before, when he “began to be in want;” but that in itself did not turn him to his father, his only source of real relief. It is when a soul is in want, and a man comes to himself, that he turns to God. A sense of need is not in itself sufficient. How many who feel a sense of need seek to drown it in dissipation. Or, on the other hand, to allay it by “turning over a new leaf,” that is, leading a more moral life; or even quiet it with outward religious observances.
No, a man must “come to himself,” that is, be brought to feel his helpless and destitute condition, and that with a sense of the goodness there is with God to meet it. “When he came to himself he said... I perish with hunger,” and that while in his father’s house there was bread enough and to spare for hired servants even.
Have you, my reader, ever been thus “in want,” and “brought to thyself”? Depend upon it, the time will come when you will feel your need and come to yourself; if not in this world, in the next, in eternity, when it will be too late, if not in time.
The difference between the younger son in Luke 15 and the rich man in Luke 16, is that the former came to himself when mercy was to be had; the latter, when he was beyond the reach of it, even to obtain a drop of water to cool his tongue in his torments. But he felt his need. “Have mercy on me,” he cried. He had come to himself, he felt his condition to the full; “I am tormented in this flame,” he said. But it was too late. Awful, awful, solemn words, “TOO LATE.” O reader, dear unsaved reader, pause! Turn before it is too late with you forever. Turn to Him who will have mercy, “to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
See how earnest the rich man becomes. How he intercedes not only for himself, but for others (Luke 16:2727Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: (Luke 16:27)). How he values the gospel message, its messengers, and its warnings then, for others, when he realizes that it is all too late for himself, and he settles down in eternal remorse. That was the effect of “coming to himself” when too late. But repentance is the result of “coming to one’s self” in time; for we find the younger son say, “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.”
This, then, is repentance, and it is “the goodness of God that leadeth thee to repentance” (Rom. 2:44Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? (Romans 2:4)). The evidence of it here was the profligate’s confession, “Father, I have sinned.”
W. G. B.