The Unforgiving Brother
THE UNFORGIVING BROTHER
LUKE 15:25-32
Are we at all like the older brother, who worked hard out of a sense of duty without ever realizing the Father’s great love?
The story is also the Parable of the Unforgiving Brother. Like the Pharisees, who would have been horrified to jostle with Gentiles in the oval forum of Gerasa, the prodigal who had never left home claimed perfect obedience. Obedience? Yes. He had fulfilled meticulously the letter of the Law, and felt he had earned much from his father.
But it was a purely legal relationship, service rendered without love, and with no understanding of his father’s heart. The elder brother also needed to kneel and say: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” But he had no sense of sin, no realization of his merciless heart, no conviction of his bitter jealousy. “This son of yours,” he said, repudiating all bonds of brotherhood. He is a repelling picture. Note the rebuke in 15:32—“this your brother.”
Let us give the parable a third name. It is the Parable of the Waiting Father. God sent his Son into the far country to pursue the prodigal. The elder brother might have done just this. The father in the story had no one whom he could send. He simply waited, as God still waits. Those whose children wander may take comfort here. They share the grief of God.
“O Lord, make haste to save us,” runs the ordered prayer, and it is a cry natural enough. Indeed, the Prayer Book takes it from the Psalms. And yet it shows the situation from the angle of time-bound man alone, and not as it is seen from heaven. God waits for the sinner’s return. God is ready in grace to meet the sinner’s inch with his mile. (See Isaiah 55:7; Jeremiah 3:12; Ephesians 2:4f.) The parable ends without a word of the future. The Pharisees are left free to make their own ending.
Let Hebrews 10:22 in the NEB rendering conclude: “So let us make our approach in sincerity of heart and full assurance of faith, our guilty hearts sprinkled clean, our bodies washed with pure water. Let us be firm and unswerving in the confession of our hope, for the Giver of the promise may be trusted.”
Notes 15:28: “kept intreating him”—the father displays the same love to both sons. 15:30: note the direction in which the elder brother’s suspicion at once turns (“harlots”).