The Lost Son – Luke 15:11-32[context – Luke 15:1-2]

A man has two sons.  The younger son asks his father for his inheritance, and the father obliges.  The son leaves his family, goes to a far away land and lives an ungodly life.  He spent/wasted all of his money, then there was a famine.  He finally wound up getting a job feeding pigs, and wishing he could eat what the pigs ate(in other words, he hit rock bottom).  He then decided that the servants in his father’s house were better off than he was, so he decided to go back to his father and ask to be treated as a servant, not as the son he was.  He went back to his father, and his father saw him in the distance.  His father ran out to meet him, hugged him and told a servant to prepare a feast for his son.  The older son heard the commotion and asked what had happened.  A servant told the older brother that his younger brother had returned home and his father was having a feast in celebration of the younger brother’s return.  The older brother was upset.  When the father came to him, the older brother was angry, and maybe even a little jealous, because of how well the younger brother, who had wasted everything his father had given him in immoral living.  The father stated that it was good that they were celebrating, because the son that was dead was now alive.

Context

Before Jesus told this parable, we are told that tax collectors and sinners(i.e. the worst of the worst kind of people, at least in the minds of the religious elite and likely many others) came to Jesus and listened to Him.  The Pharisees and scribes(i.e. the religious elites) complained that Jesus was actually teaching these people and eating with them as well, something no self-respecting teacher of the time would do.

What Does It Mean?

This is a longer parable with a lot of important lessons to learn, but let’s start with what all of this means.  In ancient societies, a father’s wealth would be divided among his sons, ,not daughters.  Each son would get an equal portion, except that the eldest son would get twice as much as each of the other sons.  In this situation, the younger son is leaving, so before he leaves, he wants his inheritance, which would be one-third of his father’s wealth.  The older son would get two-thirds, twice what the younger son would be entitled to. This means that after the younger brother left, everything that the father had would go to his older son.

The father is God.  The younger brother represents someone who leaves God, and by leaving God, I mean that he is going off into a life of sin.  In Luke 15:13, Jesus tells us that the younger son wasted everything he had in wasteful, extravagant living.  Later, in verse 30, the older brother says that his younger brother wasted his money on prostitutes(note: I’m not sure how he would know that, but that is his assertion).  After the younger brother spends all his money, he finally realizes the situation he is in, or to put it more pointedly, he realizes what the result of his wasteful(i.e. sinful) living has become.  When a sinner finally realizes that he is a sinner and that he is separated from God, he has two options:  (1) continue just like he is; or (2) repent(change of heart) and humbly return to God.  The younger brother decided to go back to his father.  And this is a great thing.  When the younger brother(sinner) returns to his father(God), the father runs out to meet him. God wants sinners to repent.  He does not force them to repent; the choice belongs to the person.  Here, the brother repented.

But what about the older brother.  He is the person who represents someone who believes he has been faithful to God.  That is why in verse 29, the older son tells his father about just how good and faithful he has been to his father.  Do you remember the context of this parable and the two before it?   Scribes and Pharisees, who thought they were faithful to God, complained that Jesus was teaching tax collectors sinners.  These are the people Jesus was talking about when He was saying what the older brother said and did.  The father’s response was that his son was dead, but is now alive.  Translation:  a sinner was dead in his sins, but is now alive and reunited with God.  The father also states that what was lost, was now found, which is what has happened in the two prior parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.  Jesus’ main point is that the scribes and Pharisees should have been happy that tax collectors and sinners wanted to hear the gospel.  They should have wanted sinners to repent.  But they didn’t.

Takeaways

Here are some basic things that we can learn from this parable:

People leave God.  Just like the younger brother, when we sin, we leave God.  No one takes us away from.  We do that all on our own.  This is something we need to take ownership of.  Until we realize and admit to ourselves that we turned our back on God, we will never be able to return to Him.

We need to take a good look at where we are at in our lives.  The younger brother was starving and feeding pigs.  It’s easier to see how bleak your situation is when we think about physical things.  It is much more difficult to see our spiritual state.  Why?  Because we focus on the physical, and if things seem okay(physically) in our lives, we tend to think we are doing fine.  But we need to be honest with ourselves.  We need to look at our spiritual lives.  How are we doing with God?  Are we with Him, or are we far away from Him?

We need to be purposeful.  The younger brother considered his situation and decided that he could improve his life by returning to his father.  I am not suggesting that if we return to God, our physical lives will improve.  They likely will, but Jesus is not promising improved physically lives; He is promising an improved relationship with God.  And that is WAY better than any physical reward.

We need to be humble.  The younger son did not resolve to return to his father’s house and demand to be treated like a son.  His intention was to return as a servant.  This is an important point that I do not want you to miss.  He . . . wanted . . . to . . . be . . . a . . . servant.  Jesus is our example.  He came to this world to serve, not to be served.  If we are going to be His disciple(i.e. follower), we need to serve.

God will exalt you( I Pet. 5:6).  It was the younger son’s intention to return home as a servant, but his father put a robe on him, put a ring on his finger, put sandals on his feet, held a feast in his honor.  His father welcomed his son as his son, not as a servant.  When we repent and return to God, He treats us as His children.  We are sons and daughters of God.  How special is that!

When someone repents and returns to God, that doesn’t take anything away from us.  Even if we were as faithful as the older brother claims to have been(and I do not think he was that faithful, but rather that Jesus was using his claims to illustrate the self-professed claims of righteousness from the scribes and Pharisees), it takes nothing away from our relationship with God.  We still have all the blessings He promised to us.  We do not lose anything. God’s blessings are not finite.  Whether one person is saved or a billion people are saved, we all receive the same blessings.  We are still saved from sin.  We still get to be with God for all eternity.

When someone else repents, we should be happy.  We should not begrudge anyone’s salvation.  The older brother was upset that the younger brother was receiving wonderful treatment from his father.  When God treats a repentant sinner well by washing his sins away, we should be happy.  And we should be happy regardless of who that person is, or was.  Someone who was dead(spiritually) is now alive(spiritually).  Someone who was lost is now found.  That is the final verse of this parable.

The Wrap

The scribes and Pharisees didn’t think some people were worthy of having the good news preached to them.  But Jesus told them a parable that they could relate to.  What father would not welcome his repentant son home?  As we have seen over the course of these last three parables, there is celebration in heaven when a sinner repents.  There should be celebration on earth as well, in God’s kingdom.  That is how we need to respond to people repenting.  And it will be difficult for people to repent, if they do not know they need to repent.  It will be difficult for people to follow Jesus if they never hear about Him.   And yes, I realize that Jesus is probably the most widely known person on the face of the planet.  But how many people really know Jesus.  I mean the Real Jesus.  The One Who is the subject of the four Gospels:  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  That is where we come in.  We need to let people know about Jesus . . . the real one.  The next article I am intending to write will be what I like to call, the American Jesus.  He is WAY different from the one you read about in the Bible, and that’s what I’ll be focusing on next.  Until then, BE His disciple.  Don’t act like one, but be one.