The Prodigal Son
THE PRODIGAL SON
LUKE 15:11-24
It doesn’t matter how far we have gone away from him; when we return to God, he is ready to take us back.
Through the south-eastern districts of Galilee, where the Lord appears to have been teaching at this time, ran the road to the Decapolis, the crowded half-Gentile region of the Ten Towns, astride the southward-swinging caravan routes and the highways of trade and activity. The ruins of Gerasa, streets, houses, temples, remarkably well preserved, give a vivid picture of one of the towns of this busy land.
The Prodigal did not necessarily go far. He was able to reach home half-starved, in time of famine. A far country is not necessarily remote geographically. The rebel boy was as alienated and separated in heart and mind even in his father’s household. He merely translated a mental attitude into fact, when he laid premature hands on that which he might later have enjoyed in fullness and in peace.
Perhaps some wandering Greek philosopher had proved to him the illogicality of faith, that the idea of God was “meaningless,” and that life, after all, is only the experience of the senses—as many teach today. He did not tell him that philosophy is a constantly changing speculation, and can by sleight of words argue its own self out of existence, and destroy with words the very words in which it finds expression.
Famine came. It was periodic in the first century. A papyrus letter from AD 100, written by a prodigal just such as this young man to his mother, brings the story of the boy from Galilee very close to us. He was outcast, in rags, rejected. There is no evidence that the mother forgave. But the father in the Lord’s story is a picture of God. The boy’s motives for returning are low enough, but he had faith enough to rise and go. And when faith moves out, grace more than meets it. The father did not keep him waiting at the door, or receive him gruffly, ironically, sarcastically … he ran to meet him. It is the Parable of the Wonderful Father.
Notes 15:12: “his living”—Deuteronomy 21:17, one third. 15:13: Gk. “living ruinously.” 15:15: “feed swine”—abhorrent to a Jew; sin degrades as well as alienates. 15:19: “hired servants”—lower status than slaves; could be dismissed at will. 15:22: “robe”—sign of honor; “ring”—sign of authority; “shoes”—mark of sonship.