ODJ: one lost son
February 23, 2012
I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you” (v.18).
READ: Luke 15:11-24
This story of the prodigal son is one of the most famous and familiar of Jesus’ parables. It’s also the most personal. For it touches an area that is often the most painful—our children.
In the parables of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7) and lost coin (vv.8-10), the emphasis is on the lostness and the relentless efforts of the owners to recover what was lost (vv.4,8). The sheep was lost due to its natural propensity or weakness to stray; the coin through carelessness. Yet the son was lost because of his own wilful sinfulness (vv.11-13).
Instead of a seeking shepherd and a searching woman, we have a waiting father. The aggrieved father did not relentlessly pursue his wayward son. Instead, he patiently waited for the son to return. Undoubtedly, the father had perseveringly prayed for his son to come “to his senses” (v.17).
The turnaround came when the son willed to “go home to [his] father and say, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you’” (v.18). The son also took deliberate steps to come home: “So he returned home to his father” (v.20).
Why didn’t the father go and search for his lost son? The first two stories made it clear that Jesus came to seek and save those who are lost (19:10). However this third story of the prodigal son emphasises the responsibility of the lost—the need for us to repent. The longsuffering Father patiently and lovingly waits for us to return home. “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him” (v.20). The son’s guilty sinfulness is overshadowed only by the Father’s gracious forgiveness.
Have you wilfully left home? Come back to your senses! —K.T. Sim
Why didn’t the father stop his son from leaving home and ruining his young life? What would you have done?
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Sure, the father could have stopped his son from leaving home, but what’s to say the son wouldn’t have taken the inheritance on his own and left?
There is a deep kind of love that allows freedom of choice and action for the ones you love, deeper than the constant hovering of protection. So the father allowed him to leave because he loved him.
As the father, I probably would have done the same. As the older brother, I would have done the same too. But I don’t think I would have the nerve to ask for my inheritance to my parents’ face. Or squander my money away in wild living. Moving to the distant country and then being homesick is the most likely…