God in the Prodigal Son
by Lee Magness
THE PRODIGAL GOD ~ A Theological Reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son
by Lee Magness
What do we learn about God—the nature of God, the will of God, God’s relation his children—from a careful theological reading of the parable of the Prodigal Son?
There was a man who had two sons.
God is like humans, but God is not human. The "man" in the parable of the prodigal son is the character of the father in the plot of the parable, a clear reference to God. It is one of many metaphors for God scattered throughout Scripture Why do we call it a metaphor? Because it is a comparison not a literal definition, like "God is my rock." In telling us what God is like, the term also tells us what God is not. In some ways God can be compared to a man, a human, but God is also not a man, not human. As meaningful as it is to refer to God as a man, it remains an anthropomorphism. Scripture testifies repeatedly that God is Spirit. And God is also not male. God can be referred to just as meaningfully as a woman (Luke 15.8-10). In fact God cannot be limited by any category, including humanity and gender.
And the younger of them said to his father, "Father,
God is parental, not paternal. Another meaningful metaphor, another potentially useful anthropomorphism used for God in the Old and New Testaments, is "father." Isaiah 63:16 reads: “For you are our Father…. You, O Lord (YHWH), are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.” 1 Corinthians 8:6 says: “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” This paternal metaphor is expanded in Galatians 4.4-7: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” God is father-like, having and sending a son, adopting humans as sons (heirs). And because we are like sons (heirs) in relation to God, we cry “Abba, Father.”
Although we often (traditionally but still meaningfully) think and speak of God as a father, we must always remember that we are speaking metaphorically not literally. God’s motherly attributes are also referred to even in the Old Testament. Isaiah 42.14 says, “now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant.” Isaiah 49.15 says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. And Isaiah 66.12-13 adds, “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you….” Hosea 11.1-4 offers maternal imagery in this extended metaphor: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and nursed them.”
So the parable's use of the term "father" reminds us not that God is a human or a male or a father per se, but that many of God's divine characteristics are reflected in human fathers and mothers. God is parental, not paternal.
…give me the share of property that is coming to me."
God welcomes our requests. Before you dismiss this request as the demand of a greedy son, think about it from the father's perspective, from God's perspective. God relates to us much as fathers related to their sons, their heirs. God is a God who gives us good gifts out of his good will for our welfare. God welcomes our requests. In Matthew 7.7-11, Jesus invites us to ask God to give: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
There is a fine line between asking for what we need, knowing that God already knows what we need and is eager to give us what we need, and demanding what we already have. Think about Adam and Eve’s desire to “be like God” and the humans building the Tower of Babel in order to “be with God.” There is clearly something problematic with the son's request, but he asks in the context of God's true nature as a good and generous God.
And he divided his property between them.
God is a giving God. According to Scripture God gives light and life and Spirit and growth and power and wealth and prophecy and spiritual gifts. God even gives songs in the night. As James 1.17 says: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. God is a giving God
The only other time that this word “divided” is used in the New Testament is in 1 Corinthians 12.11. The context reads: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. The parable of the workers in vineyard (Matthew 20.1-16) reminds us that God truly does “apportion/divide to each one individually as he wills.”
So the parable of the prodigal son teaches that God is a giving God, a gifting God, to all God's children--those who leave and those who stay, those who are needy and those who are greedy. This extravagance, this giving, this gifting, suggests that the younger son is not the only prodigal in the parable. Prodigal means extravagant. And God is as prodigal as the son, perhaps more so.
Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.
God lets us go. In this passage we learn that God is a God who lets go. God not only lets go of his good gifts, but God also lets go of us! God lets us go. God lets us turn our true inheritance into easily expendable commodities. God lets us leave our true home and break our relationship with him. God lets us waste our resources, his resources. God lets us suffer the consequences of our alienation. God lets us experience loss, emptiness, want, need. God lets us try to save ourselves, fill our own emptiness, find our own way, even when in doing so we make matters worse, much worse. God lets those who abandon him experience abandonment with others.
“But when he came to himself,
God wants us to come to ourselves. Despite Kenneth Bailey’s insistence that this act does not refer to repentance, that it refers only to an honest awareness of his situation, centuries of Christian interpretation have sensed something more here, a positive turning, at least the beginning of repentance, the groundwork for repentance, something akin to repentance. Let me offer another possibility based on the role of God in this parable. The problem with temptation is wanting something that we forget or deny we already have, that God has already and always provided—likeness to God, the presence of God, the good gifts of God. What’s sinful about sin is either rejecting who God has made us to be (our true selves) and what God has given us to enjoy (meaningful, fulfilled life) or trying to obtain those things on our own terms and in our own way.
“Coming to himself” may well refer to the realization that the younger son always had been and still was the child, the heir, the beneficiary of his father (of God), that he had always been and still was beloved of and blessed by his father (by God), and that his father (God) had already provided a rich, secure, meaningful, fulfilling life for him. Once he realized that all he wanted to be he had been all along and all he wanted to obtain he had had at his disposal all along—once he “came to himself”—there was no alternative but to return. Viewing repentance through the lens of God suggests that it is so much more than sorrow for sin. It is a recognition, a realization, a remembrance of our relationship with God.
he said, ‘How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!
God is the one we can never really forget. Whether or not the younger son "coming to himself" deserves to be called repentance, it is significant that even in the far country, even with nothing and no one, even in the pig pen, the son is thinking of the father. Maybe self-centeredly, maybe manipulatively, maybe jealously—but he is thinking of the father. This parable invites us--in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, in whatever situations we have placed ourselves--to think of a God who is generous, a providing God, a hiring-not-firing God, a God of sufficiency, a more-than-enough-bread God, a God who spares nothing, a God with plenty to spare, a God who specializes in leftovers, a prodigal God.
Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12.9, “My grace is sufficient for you….”
I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’
God is the home for which the lost long. How does the younger son define the problem? He has sinned against God ("heaven" is a euphemism for God) and he has sinned in the presence of his father. Note that the verse says "against God" but "before you." The problem isn't wasting his money, it's not gambling or immorality or any of the other sins the older brother (and we) imagine. The sin is a broken relationship with the father. The younger son is not returning home, he is returning to his father. The father is home.
It is alienation from God, separation from God, a broken relationship with God, that leaves us hungry, empty, half-alive, half-dead, dying. Sin is not just a violation of the law of God, it is a violation of the love of God. It is not breaking a requirement of God, it is breaking our relationship with God. It is not ignoring a precept of God, it is ignoring the person of God. Sin makes us doubt/deny our sonship, our self-hood, our identity, our innate, made-in-the-image-of-God, it-was-very-good worthiness. And that worthiness is based on our relationship with God.
And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
God's love is painful, persistent, lavish, prodigal. The God revealed in the parable of the prodigal son is a God who can be trusted to welcome us home. However we judge the motives of the son’s return, however desperate he may be, it is to the father that he returns. Like God, this father is characterized by compassion, by mercy, by pity, by grace. His actions demonstrate more than mere affection. They reveal a love that has persisted through the pain of his son’s disregard and distance. The son has treated the father in the most shameful ways. So how does the father respond to his pitiful return? With far-sightedness, with gut-deep compassion, with running, with kissing. This is a lavish love, a luxurious love, an extravagant love, a prodigal love.
In Ephesians 2.4-8 Paul talks about this lavish love using lavish language: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God….
And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.
God never ceases to be our "father." The father rejects the son’s sin-skewed perception of himself, his status, his worthiness, his relationship. He doesn’t even let the son speak his plan to exchange his status of heir for that of hireling. Even when, even though, the son refuses to consider himself a son anymore, the father is still his father.
God still, God always occupies a place in the deepest recesses of the prodigal’s heart, mind, self to which he can and does turn, no matter how great the distance, the disregard, the disrespect, and the dis-grace he has experienced. God views us the same even in our shame; to him we have the same sonship (the same robe, his), we share the same authority (the same signet ring, his), we share the same status (the sandals of a freedman, not a slave). And God celebrates our return because he sees us as we truly are, his, even when all we can sense is our shame.
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.
God is alive to us, even when we are dead to him. God realizes that alienation from him is a kind of death, but a death that can be reversed by reconciliation with him. Paul puts it well in Ephesians 2.4-6: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus….
God realizes that alienation from him is precisely what sin is—a broken relationship with God that creates an enmity with him--but a sin that can be redeemed and an enmity that can be reversed by reconciliation with him. Listen to Romans 5.8-11: …but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’
God is a joyous God. God’s joy at the return of the son is his joy. He is not sharing the joy of the son. The son may still be uncomfortable, ashamed, for all we know. And God is not just reflecting the joy of the revelers—they may still wonder about the wisdom of the father’s warm welcome. It is his joy—“because he has received him safe and sound.” This God is a joyous God.
But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him,
God reaches out to us even when we refuse to reach out to God. The father handles self-righteous anger (the response of the older son) with the same prodigal compassion as he handles self-centered abandonment (the action of the younger son). In fact by refusing to go in, by preferring the field to the house, the older son repeats the actions of the younger. But the father goes out to meet him too, fresh from the fields, overcomes his absence too, by his compassionate presence.
God is an entreating God, a begging God, a comforting God, a consoling God, a God who “goes out,” a God who “stands beside” both all his sinning sons and daughters, urging us to reestablish our relationship with each other by reestablishing our relationship with him. God begs us to go in by himself going out.
but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’
God care compassionately for us even when we contort his compassion. The father endures the older son’s sin-skewed perception of himself and his relationship with his father. You think the younger son had sinned? Look at the sins of the older son! He redefines their relationship as slave to master rather than beloved son to father. He insinuates that their relationship was based on law-keeping rather than mutual love. He refuses to acknowledge his relationship to his brother (tantamount to refusing to acknowledge his relationship to his father). He implies that his father has never showed his love to him, that he would rather associate with his friends rather than his father’s friends/ He conceals his sins by exaggerating the younger son’s sins. And he utterly misunderstands his father’s own joy in killing the calf.
The God of this parable endures unspeakable pain. Call it sin, if you will. But what makes the behavior of the elder son so painful is the way it twists and bends God's loving intentions. This God absorbs all our contortions of his compassion.
And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”
God is a prodigal God. The final insight we gain about God from the parable of the prodigal son is that God is always with us. The father reminds the older son what he has already acted out to the younger son--that their relationship is ultimately what really matters. It is a relationship that can be described personally--"you are always with me." And it is a relationship that can be described in terms of provisions, possessions--"all that is mine is yours."
“I will be with you always.” It’s God's oldest promise, his most consistent promise, his best promise. The promise of his presence. It’s what he wanted with Adam and Eve--presence. It’s what he promised Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and Joshua and Gideon and Jeremiah—his I-will-be-with-you-always presence. It’s what he promised his people through his prophets, through Isaiah and Haggai—I will be with you always. It’s what he promised Mary and Jesus and Paul— I will be with you always. It’s what he promises us, in Hebrews 13.5—“I will never leave you nor forsake you.” God is always with us, and all that is God’s is ours, at our disposal, available to us for his good pleasure.
There is some mystery surrounding the last verse of the parable. It says, “it was necessary to celebrate and make merry.” For whom was it necessary? The younger son? Surely a gracious welcome home and an undeserved reinstatement was more than he needed. The villagers? Surely they could not have anticipated that the father would even forgive the son, let alone throw a banquet to which they could expect to be invited. The older son? No, then he would have said, “it is necessary.” It must be the father. It was necessary, for the father, to celebrate and make merry. It is God’s nature to have joy in his children, to celebrate their presence, to make merry at their restoration—this prodigal God, this merry God, this merciful God.
by Lee Magness
What do we learn about God—the nature of God, the will of God, God’s relation his children—from a careful theological reading of the parable of the Prodigal Son?
There was a man who had two sons.
God is like humans, but God is not human. The "man" in the parable of the prodigal son is the character of the father in the plot of the parable, a clear reference to God. It is one of many metaphors for God scattered throughout Scripture Why do we call it a metaphor? Because it is a comparison not a literal definition, like "God is my rock." In telling us what God is like, the term also tells us what God is not. In some ways God can be compared to a man, a human, but God is also not a man, not human. As meaningful as it is to refer to God as a man, it remains an anthropomorphism. Scripture testifies repeatedly that God is Spirit. And God is also not male. God can be referred to just as meaningfully as a woman (Luke 15.8-10). In fact God cannot be limited by any category, including humanity and gender.
And the younger of them said to his father, "Father,
God is parental, not paternal. Another meaningful metaphor, another potentially useful anthropomorphism used for God in the Old and New Testaments, is "father." Isaiah 63:16 reads: “For you are our Father…. You, O Lord (YHWH), are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.” 1 Corinthians 8:6 says: “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” This paternal metaphor is expanded in Galatians 4.4-7: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” God is father-like, having and sending a son, adopting humans as sons (heirs). And because we are like sons (heirs) in relation to God, we cry “Abba, Father.”
Although we often (traditionally but still meaningfully) think and speak of God as a father, we must always remember that we are speaking metaphorically not literally. God’s motherly attributes are also referred to even in the Old Testament. Isaiah 42.14 says, “now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant.” Isaiah 49.15 says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. And Isaiah 66.12-13 adds, “Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you….” Hosea 11.1-4 offers maternal imagery in this extended metaphor: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and nursed them.”
So the parable's use of the term "father" reminds us not that God is a human or a male or a father per se, but that many of God's divine characteristics are reflected in human fathers and mothers. God is parental, not paternal.
…give me the share of property that is coming to me."
God welcomes our requests. Before you dismiss this request as the demand of a greedy son, think about it from the father's perspective, from God's perspective. God relates to us much as fathers related to their sons, their heirs. God is a God who gives us good gifts out of his good will for our welfare. God welcomes our requests. In Matthew 7.7-11, Jesus invites us to ask God to give: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
There is a fine line between asking for what we need, knowing that God already knows what we need and is eager to give us what we need, and demanding what we already have. Think about Adam and Eve’s desire to “be like God” and the humans building the Tower of Babel in order to “be with God.” There is clearly something problematic with the son's request, but he asks in the context of God's true nature as a good and generous God.
And he divided his property between them.
God is a giving God. According to Scripture God gives light and life and Spirit and growth and power and wealth and prophecy and spiritual gifts. God even gives songs in the night. As James 1.17 says: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. God is a giving God
The only other time that this word “divided” is used in the New Testament is in 1 Corinthians 12.11. The context reads: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. The parable of the workers in vineyard (Matthew 20.1-16) reminds us that God truly does “apportion/divide to each one individually as he wills.”
So the parable of the prodigal son teaches that God is a giving God, a gifting God, to all God's children--those who leave and those who stay, those who are needy and those who are greedy. This extravagance, this giving, this gifting, suggests that the younger son is not the only prodigal in the parable. Prodigal means extravagant. And God is as prodigal as the son, perhaps more so.
Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.
God lets us go. In this passage we learn that God is a God who lets go. God not only lets go of his good gifts, but God also lets go of us! God lets us go. God lets us turn our true inheritance into easily expendable commodities. God lets us leave our true home and break our relationship with him. God lets us waste our resources, his resources. God lets us suffer the consequences of our alienation. God lets us experience loss, emptiness, want, need. God lets us try to save ourselves, fill our own emptiness, find our own way, even when in doing so we make matters worse, much worse. God lets those who abandon him experience abandonment with others.
“But when he came to himself,
God wants us to come to ourselves. Despite Kenneth Bailey’s insistence that this act does not refer to repentance, that it refers only to an honest awareness of his situation, centuries of Christian interpretation have sensed something more here, a positive turning, at least the beginning of repentance, the groundwork for repentance, something akin to repentance. Let me offer another possibility based on the role of God in this parable. The problem with temptation is wanting something that we forget or deny we already have, that God has already and always provided—likeness to God, the presence of God, the good gifts of God. What’s sinful about sin is either rejecting who God has made us to be (our true selves) and what God has given us to enjoy (meaningful, fulfilled life) or trying to obtain those things on our own terms and in our own way.
“Coming to himself” may well refer to the realization that the younger son always had been and still was the child, the heir, the beneficiary of his father (of God), that he had always been and still was beloved of and blessed by his father (by God), and that his father (God) had already provided a rich, secure, meaningful, fulfilling life for him. Once he realized that all he wanted to be he had been all along and all he wanted to obtain he had had at his disposal all along—once he “came to himself”—there was no alternative but to return. Viewing repentance through the lens of God suggests that it is so much more than sorrow for sin. It is a recognition, a realization, a remembrance of our relationship with God.
he said, ‘How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!
God is the one we can never really forget. Whether or not the younger son "coming to himself" deserves to be called repentance, it is significant that even in the far country, even with nothing and no one, even in the pig pen, the son is thinking of the father. Maybe self-centeredly, maybe manipulatively, maybe jealously—but he is thinking of the father. This parable invites us--in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, in whatever situations we have placed ourselves--to think of a God who is generous, a providing God, a hiring-not-firing God, a God of sufficiency, a more-than-enough-bread God, a God who spares nothing, a God with plenty to spare, a God who specializes in leftovers, a prodigal God.
Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12.9, “My grace is sufficient for you….”
I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’
God is the home for which the lost long. How does the younger son define the problem? He has sinned against God ("heaven" is a euphemism for God) and he has sinned in the presence of his father. Note that the verse says "against God" but "before you." The problem isn't wasting his money, it's not gambling or immorality or any of the other sins the older brother (and we) imagine. The sin is a broken relationship with the father. The younger son is not returning home, he is returning to his father. The father is home.
It is alienation from God, separation from God, a broken relationship with God, that leaves us hungry, empty, half-alive, half-dead, dying. Sin is not just a violation of the law of God, it is a violation of the love of God. It is not breaking a requirement of God, it is breaking our relationship with God. It is not ignoring a precept of God, it is ignoring the person of God. Sin makes us doubt/deny our sonship, our self-hood, our identity, our innate, made-in-the-image-of-God, it-was-very-good worthiness. And that worthiness is based on our relationship with God.
And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
God's love is painful, persistent, lavish, prodigal. The God revealed in the parable of the prodigal son is a God who can be trusted to welcome us home. However we judge the motives of the son’s return, however desperate he may be, it is to the father that he returns. Like God, this father is characterized by compassion, by mercy, by pity, by grace. His actions demonstrate more than mere affection. They reveal a love that has persisted through the pain of his son’s disregard and distance. The son has treated the father in the most shameful ways. So how does the father respond to his pitiful return? With far-sightedness, with gut-deep compassion, with running, with kissing. This is a lavish love, a luxurious love, an extravagant love, a prodigal love.
In Ephesians 2.4-8 Paul talks about this lavish love using lavish language: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God….
And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.
God never ceases to be our "father." The father rejects the son’s sin-skewed perception of himself, his status, his worthiness, his relationship. He doesn’t even let the son speak his plan to exchange his status of heir for that of hireling. Even when, even though, the son refuses to consider himself a son anymore, the father is still his father.
God still, God always occupies a place in the deepest recesses of the prodigal’s heart, mind, self to which he can and does turn, no matter how great the distance, the disregard, the disrespect, and the dis-grace he has experienced. God views us the same even in our shame; to him we have the same sonship (the same robe, his), we share the same authority (the same signet ring, his), we share the same status (the sandals of a freedman, not a slave). And God celebrates our return because he sees us as we truly are, his, even when all we can sense is our shame.
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.
God is alive to us, even when we are dead to him. God realizes that alienation from him is a kind of death, but a death that can be reversed by reconciliation with him. Paul puts it well in Ephesians 2.4-6: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus….
God realizes that alienation from him is precisely what sin is—a broken relationship with God that creates an enmity with him--but a sin that can be redeemed and an enmity that can be reversed by reconciliation with him. Listen to Romans 5.8-11: …but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’
God is a joyous God. God’s joy at the return of the son is his joy. He is not sharing the joy of the son. The son may still be uncomfortable, ashamed, for all we know. And God is not just reflecting the joy of the revelers—they may still wonder about the wisdom of the father’s warm welcome. It is his joy—“because he has received him safe and sound.” This God is a joyous God.
But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him,
God reaches out to us even when we refuse to reach out to God. The father handles self-righteous anger (the response of the older son) with the same prodigal compassion as he handles self-centered abandonment (the action of the younger son). In fact by refusing to go in, by preferring the field to the house, the older son repeats the actions of the younger. But the father goes out to meet him too, fresh from the fields, overcomes his absence too, by his compassionate presence.
God is an entreating God, a begging God, a comforting God, a consoling God, a God who “goes out,” a God who “stands beside” both all his sinning sons and daughters, urging us to reestablish our relationship with each other by reestablishing our relationship with him. God begs us to go in by himself going out.
but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’
God care compassionately for us even when we contort his compassion. The father endures the older son’s sin-skewed perception of himself and his relationship with his father. You think the younger son had sinned? Look at the sins of the older son! He redefines their relationship as slave to master rather than beloved son to father. He insinuates that their relationship was based on law-keeping rather than mutual love. He refuses to acknowledge his relationship to his brother (tantamount to refusing to acknowledge his relationship to his father). He implies that his father has never showed his love to him, that he would rather associate with his friends rather than his father’s friends/ He conceals his sins by exaggerating the younger son’s sins. And he utterly misunderstands his father’s own joy in killing the calf.
The God of this parable endures unspeakable pain. Call it sin, if you will. But what makes the behavior of the elder son so painful is the way it twists and bends God's loving intentions. This God absorbs all our contortions of his compassion.
And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”
God is a prodigal God. The final insight we gain about God from the parable of the prodigal son is that God is always with us. The father reminds the older son what he has already acted out to the younger son--that their relationship is ultimately what really matters. It is a relationship that can be described personally--"you are always with me." And it is a relationship that can be described in terms of provisions, possessions--"all that is mine is yours."
“I will be with you always.” It’s God's oldest promise, his most consistent promise, his best promise. The promise of his presence. It’s what he wanted with Adam and Eve--presence. It’s what he promised Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and Joshua and Gideon and Jeremiah—his I-will-be-with-you-always presence. It’s what he promised his people through his prophets, through Isaiah and Haggai—I will be with you always. It’s what he promised Mary and Jesus and Paul— I will be with you always. It’s what he promises us, in Hebrews 13.5—“I will never leave you nor forsake you.” God is always with us, and all that is God’s is ours, at our disposal, available to us for his good pleasure.
There is some mystery surrounding the last verse of the parable. It says, “it was necessary to celebrate and make merry.” For whom was it necessary? The younger son? Surely a gracious welcome home and an undeserved reinstatement was more than he needed. The villagers? Surely they could not have anticipated that the father would even forgive the son, let alone throw a banquet to which they could expect to be invited. The older son? No, then he would have said, “it is necessary.” It must be the father. It was necessary, for the father, to celebrate and make merry. It is God’s nature to have joy in his children, to celebrate their presence, to make merry at their restoration—this prodigal God, this merry God, this merciful God.
