The ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’ (Luke 15:11-32) is one of the most popular and well-known portions of Scripture – and for good reason. There are many preachers who use this parable for an evangelistic gospel message. Just from a quick skim over I counted nine separate gospel sermons that could be comfortably elicited from the passage.
The main point of the parable, of course, is primarily focused upon the elder brother, and not the prodigal. Jesus is teaching those that are recipients of God’s love ought never to begrudge anyone else from also receiving that love. v.20 is to be my focus here, and what is revealed about God’s love for His children:
“And [the prodigal son] arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.”
God’s Love is a True Love
Within this parable we have portrayed before us the full range of God’s emotions towards those whom He loves – from grief and yearning to joy and delight. God truly loves His children.
This was never brought home more powerfully that during my first study of the prophet Hosea. God had first asked Hosea to marry a woman who was a prostitute, and he obediently did as he was commanded. This wife, Gomer, conceived children to Hosea on three separate occasions, two daughters and a son. A short while later, Hosea’s wife, Gomer, abandoned him, returning to her former lovers.
This time God told Hosea to pay a price to buy her back from those lovers (as the custom of the time dictated), and God commanded Hosea to love her completely. How Hosea’s heart must have been breaking from the feelings of hurt, betrayal, anger and sorrow! God’s message to Hosea was: “I need you to understand just what it means for me to continue loving My people, who are so often so unfaithful to Me.”
1 Corinthians 13 gives us a good idea of what a true love is, and as such is a passage often read at weddings. We are told there that,
“Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, does not boast, and is not proud. Love does not dishonour, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
God’s love is a true love that always remains at the fullest of its perfections.
God’s fatherly love is a compassionate love
The prodigal son had thrown his father’s love to him back in his father’s face, deserted him, squandered half of his wealth, and disgraced the father’s good name. Yet such was the father’s love to his son that when we saw him returning to him, the father was first overcome with compassion toward his son.
The father embraced his returning son, showering him with kisses. (the translation of kissed does not do justice to the original Greek, which is closer to abundantly kissed!) Kissing is an expression of love, and serves here as a picture for how God showers His children with an abundance of His love.
The father running to greet his son is also to be noted. By the customs of the day, it was considered undignified for an elder man to run…
Just as it was considered undignified for Jesus Christ, the holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts to eat with publicans and tax collectors; just as it was considered a disgrace for Jesus to have had His feet washed with the perfume, tears and hair of a known prostitute;
Just as it is considered undignified when the worst members of society become Christians and become joined to Christ’s set apart people. God, who is glorious in holiness, is willing to suffer such indignity, in order to embrace those whom He loves.
The prodigal son was loved by his father in exactly the way that he needed to be loved. In returning to his father, the son was clearly afraid, ashamed, and carrying the burden of guilt for how he had treated his father. With the father’s running to embrace to his son, the showering him with kisses, the dressing him in the best robe, placing a ring on his finger, and killing the fatted calf that they might all celebrate the son’s return, the son would have been left feeling forgiven, welcomed back into family, honoured once more as the son of his father, and, more than anything else, loved.
The prodigal son had always known he was loved by his father, but he was not able to understand how much he was loved until he became acquainted with the sheer graciousness of his father’s love;
And that is exactly the same for us with God – we are not able to understand how we are loved by God until we become personally acquainted with the sheer graciousness of God’s love toward us.
John Newton, the author of the hymn, ‘Amazing grace’, had been involved in the slave trade before his conversion to Christianity, as captain of a ship that transported slaves to the Americas. After becoming a Christian, Newton came to see the wickedness of what he had been involved in. He often struggled to fully accept God’s forgiveness. He certainly never forgave himself.
Newton was once in conversation with a fellow minister, who was telling him of the conversion of a man who was known very publicly for being a bad person. The minister said to Newton, “I shall never despair of the conversion of anyone again.”
Newton replied, “I never did since God saved me.”[1]
That ought to be the default setting of every Christian – amazement and wonder at the gracious love of God given to them through Jesus Christ, their Lord. To our shame, it is not always, but it ought to be.
Charles Wesley encapsulates this feeling as well as anyone has ever done. You do not have to put much effort in to feel the sheer wonderment as he writes,
“And can it be, that I should gain, an interest in the Saviour’s blood?
Died He for me who caused His pain, for me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou my God shouldst die for me?”
What is there that could possibly stop you from running to a God who loves you in such a great and glorious way?
As I wrote this, yesterday was Father’s Day. My two daughters commemorated the day with a card and gifts. I have told them both that although I love them so very, very much, sadly, there will be times when my love fails them. I do not want it to; I will continuously fight against it doing so; but sadly, it will –
God’s love, however, in all of its wonderful perfections, will never, ever, ever fail.
I started up this blog during the Covid lockdown of 2020. A large part of my motivation for doing so, was so that I would leave a portion of my own Christian writing as a legacy to be passed down to my daughters and any possible future descendants, when I have left to be with Christ.
This post, more than any, is for them.
[1] James Montgomery Boice, The Parables of Jesus, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1983) p.52.
Commenti