“And when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” Luke 15:20.
A minister once began his sermon on the parable of the prodigal son somewhat like this: “You undoubtedly have heard many sermons on the familiar parable of the prodigal son, but I want to begin a sermon by stressing that this was a son in his father’s house.”
Carrying through that thought, let us take a look at this well-known parable from the point of view of the father who loved and had compassion on his wayward son.
Well do I recall that when I and my brother and sisters (we were a family of eight children) wanted to go out for a while in the evening, my mother would ask, “Where are you going?” If our response was a shrug of the shoulders, we were advised to sit down and decide where we were going so that she knew where we were going. She also expected us to do as we said. But then the next question was, “When are you coming home?” If the answer was satisfactory we were sent on our way with the final remark, “Remember, I am praying for you.” That reminder had more effect on us than she realized. But we never could come home so quietly that she did not hear us. Yet most of us did not really mind, because we knew that she loved us and cared. “As a father loves his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.”
Yet there was one sister who was inclined to rebel at this strict discipline. She would repeatedly threaten to leave home. So one day my mother packed her belongings and told her that if that was her desire she could go. That gave her second thoughts. She stayed.
The Lord loves us with an eternal love as His chosen people in Christ Jesus. He bestows on us all the benefits of Father’s house, all the good gifts that we receive from Him from day to day in the communion of saints in His church. He is strict with us and demands that we live up to the rules of the family only because He loves us. Therefore He often does as the father in the parable, divides unto us our share of the inheritance and lets us go. You notice that I said “often.”
Consider for a moment that whenever we sin we are doing so with Father’s goods. We rightly confess to God, “All that I am belongs to Thee.” For in Him we live and move and have our being.” We live in Father’s house, serving Him in love with all His goods that belong to us only as His sons. We sin with the eyes, ears, mouth, hands, feet and means that God entrusts to us.
Consider also that in His love for us God sometimes gives us over to our sin. Because of our sinful, rebellious nature we must learn the hard way. God gives Satan power to tempt us. He gives us over to the lusts of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. We are tempted and we fall. Think of David and of Peter, or just think of yourself at some specific occasion.
If it were not for Father’s eternal, unchangeable love, we would most certainly perish in our sins. Little do we realize how much we offend and grieve God with our sins. He is hurt, deeply hurt, that we turn away from Him and despise His statutes. He justly becomes very angry with us, for it remains forever true that the soul that sins must die.
But, as the parable teaches us, Father’s love for His wayward, profligate son never changes. Jesus proved that by receiving sinners and eating with them (Luke 15:2).
As long as the wayward son had money to spend he had many friends. But when he had wasted all of Father’s goods in riotous living all his friends left him. He was all alone, completely deserted, penniless, starving. He found himself a job feeding pigs. To satisfy his hunger he had to wrestle with the pigs at their trough. The wages of sin is death. Well may we learn to pray, as Jesus teaches us, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
Only then did he wake up to the fact that Father loved him. Yes, only then does our heavenly Father reach out in love across the miles to draw us back to Him. You notice in the parable that all the while that the son is away from home his father yearned for him, sat by the window with his eye down the road desiring for his son to come home. He was the first one to see him, to run out to meet him, to embrace him, and silence him, so that he never finished the confession he had so carefully prepared in advance.
How little we as teenagers and even older sons and daughters realize how much pain we bring upon our parents with our foolishness, thoughtlessness and sins. Only when we become parents ourselves pacing the floor during the weary hours of the night waiting for John or Mary to come home do we realize why our parents were so strict, so insistent, so demanding, so straight-laced. But how much more we still daily offend our heavenly Father with our sinful pride and sins!
We might conclude from this parable that since God so freely forgives our sins, sin is not such a serious matter. We can sin with impunity. We get away with it. That seems to have been the conclusion of the elder brother, who is angry because his father freely receives and makes a feast for the son who wasted father’s goods with harlots.
We can be sure that soon after the prodigal son was settled at home the father had a serious talk with him. He impressed on him anew that sin has its serious consequences, for accursed is every one who does not abide in all that is written in the book of the law to do it. God is merciful, but His mercy is a just mercy, since every sin is committed against the most high majesty of God. God is angry against sin for God’s justice must be satisfied.
We ourselves cannot do that. No animal, angel or other person can do that for us. God’s justice is satisfied only by the wonder of His grace that He gave His only begotten Son to suffer torments of eternal hell in our stead. Only through faith in Jesus Christ can we have peace in our souls.
Even that does not mean that there are no bitter consequences when we sin. Do you remember that David was forgiven for his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah, but after that the sword never departed from his house? Many young people ruin their lives when they are young, and many marriages are spoiled before the wedding night.
But even apart from that, our souls are sorely wounded when we sin. A soldier who comes from the battle field with a serious injury may recover, his wounds may heal, but the scar remains. Sin leaves its scar on our souls. We can wish it never happened, but wishing does not take away the sting of our offense. David prays, “Sins of youth remember not!” And Peter, long after the night when he denied his Lord writes in his first epistle, be clothed with the slave’s girdle of humility, for God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. How well he knew.
Rev. Hanko is a retired minister of the Protestant Reformed Churches. He is a member of Hudsonville Protestant Reformed Church in Hudsonville, Michigan.