Daily Devotional

What’s your favorite Bible story? Is it the Exodus? David and Goliath? Noah and the Ark? I love all of these narratives, but my favorite Bible “story” is actually fictional. It’s a story Jesus told – the parable of the Prodigal Son. 

This story is the longest of Jesus’ parables, found in Luke 15:11–32. Most of us could probably retell the story in detail: the titular Prodigal Son takes his inheritance early, squanders it in reckless living, comes to his senses, returns home, and is welcomed by his father with open arms: “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (v. 24). The parable ends with a confrontation between the father and the older brother, who is irate at the father’s joyous and unconditional welcome toward his wayward brother. The context indicates that the older brother is a stand-in for the Pharisees, whose grumbling about Jesus “receiving sinners and eating with them” (v. 1) precipitates this parable.

So why is this my favorite Bible story? For starters, it’s a theological gold mine. The younger son gives us a biblical model of repentance, while the older son helps us ponder our compassion for the lost. But the main reason I love this story is its characterization of the father: the portrait the passage paints of the heart of God.

First, the parable teaches us that God is patient. Shockingly, the father accommodates his son’s incredibly rude request to take his inheritance and skip town, perhaps in hopes that a dose of reality will bring him home. I don’t think the father saw his son “a long way off” (v. 20) by accident; I imagine he was habitually watching the road, hoping that someday, somehow, his son will return. In the same way, God is patient with sinners, mercifully withholding judgment while graciously extending offer of salvation through Jesus: “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). 

Second, the parable teaches that God is forgiving. The prodigal is embraced immediately and unconditionally, before he even reaches the house or says a word. His rehearsed speech of contrition is cut short by his father’s announcement of celebration. The father is so overjoyed that the shame, loss, and heartbreak of the past is forgotten in an instant. So also does God offer immediate, unconditional, and total forgiveness through the atoning work of Jesus. As one of my favorite modern hymns puts it (in language drawn from Scripture, cf. Hebrews 8:12, Micah 7:19),

What love could remember no wrongs we have done,
Omniscient, all knowing, he counts not their sum;
Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore,
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more.

How much quicker to repent might we be if this image of the father embracing the prodigal were firmly fixed in our minds!

Lastly and most importantly, the parable portrays God as gracious. Upon close examination, both the prodigal son and the prideful son make the exact same mistake: thinking their relationship with their father is predicated on merit. The younger son believes his only way home is to become a hired servant; he is “unworthy” to be called a son (v. 19). Conversely, the older son reveals his obedience is motivated by reward: “these many years have I served you... yet you never gave me a young goat” (v. 29). The older son angrily believes that his brother’s celebration is unmerited, especially while his own meritorious behavior has gone unrewarded. To both sons, however, the father demonstrates that his love, their status as sons, is not tied to their performance. In the same way, every relationship between God and humanity, from the creation of Adam to the call of Abraham to redemption in Christ, is based upon grace, not merit. God’s favor generally, and salvation specifically, is unmerited, “the gift of God, not by works” (Ephesians 2:8–9). This parable is nothing if not a picture of grace.

And here the parable’s subversive, earth-shattering nature is revealed. The Pharisees probably expected an ending in which the younger son IS accepted back as a hired hand, then works his way back into the father’s good graces, the older brother modeling true obedience all the while. (Oddly enough, a parable along these lines exists in Buddhist religious teaching.) But Jesus takes this paradigm of earning our way to God, the paradigm on which every man-made religion operates, and absolutely obliterates it. Instead, He holds out a radical depiction of unmerited, undeserved, freely-given grace from a loving and forgiving Father. Thus, Jesus’ response to the is not “Be nicer to lost people,” but, “Your grumbling betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the character of God and the nature of salvation.” The parable ends with an implicit warning for the oh-so-meritorious Pharisees: while the younger brother enjoys the blessings of the grace of the Father, the older brother, still hung up on questions of “fair” and “deserved,” ends the story outside the feast.

A final point by way of application. Throughout my Christian walk, I have wrestled with inserting merit-based thinking in my relationship with God. I would acknowledge with my lips that salvation is by grace alone and then do my utmost to prove that I was worthy of God’s grace. (Actually, it was more like feeling guilt and shame because I knew I wasn’t doing my utmost.) God became distant, remote, a disapproving work supervisor mostly concerned with my Christian “job performance.” A simple change helped me shift my perception of God to better include the patient, forgiving, and gracious Father of this parable: I started calling God my Father in prayer. Suddenly, the things that I saw as religious drudgery became opportunities to experience the unconditional approval that is mine in Christ. So here’s my question to you: does the God you imagine (that image that comes to mind when you think about God) match the Father in this parable? May today be a reminder that you, dear child of God, are unconditionally accepted and forgiven by your heavenly Father, no matter how far you’ve strayed from home.

"English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers."