Luke 15:17
And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
The verse marks the moment when self-deception gives way and the wandering son returns to reason, awakening to recognize his desperate need and suffering. Starving in a strange land, he contrasts his perishing with hunger against the plenty in his father's house, where even the hired servants have bread enough and to spare. Remembering his father's kindness, love and goodness gives him hope and draws him toward home, though he still thinks himself fit only to beg for a servant's place. That recognition leads him to decide to return by humble confession of sin and unworthiness, resolving to leave his ruin and accept a servant's place. The father he turns toward represents God, who longs for the sinner to return and, though sinned against, receives the returning one with compassion, pity, love, forgiveness and greatest joy.
Parable Setting and Purpose
Luke 15:17 belongs to the parable of the prodigal son, which reveals God's pitying, kind and tender love for those who stray and turn away from Him. Though they choose their own course and are exposed to temptation, He does not leave them in their misery nor abandon them there, but works to bring them back. The parable was given in answer to the complaints of the scribes and Pharisees that Jesus associated with sinners, to teach mercy and forgiveness toward those who have sinned. It presents the lost as those who need a Saviour, and Christ's mission as recovering them rather than condemning or destroying them.
It deals with those who have known the Father's love but have been led captive by the tempter and led away and separated from Him. God's love remains strong for the one who has separated from Him; He continues to love him, calls him back, and works to bring him home. When such a one repents and returns, He receives him with a father's joy and tender care as His child, clothing him with the robe of righteousness. Christ taught this truth by illustration drawn from facts of life and experience familiar to His hearers, using everyday surroundings and ordinary human experience to illustrate immortal truth. The story is formed to interest every mind and appeal to every heart, showing a spirit open to the influences of nature and delighting to gather spiritual teaching from daily life, so that the daily task is brightened and uplifted by constant reminders of the spiritual and the unseen.
He taught by illustration rather than by proof, leaving hearers free to accept or reject truth. He instructed in practical godliness, distinctly outlining duty, commending truth to the conscience with clearness and earnestness, using no long, farfetched, complicated reasoning but coming right to the point. He reads every heart as an open book and draws things both new and old from His treasure-house to illustrate and enforce His teachings, touching the heart and awakening sympathies. The reunion is most pathetic and touching, a deeply moving picture of the father seeing his son afar off, running to meet him, and rejoicing that he who had been thought dead is alive. In that same compassion the parable represents Christ's loving care for Israel, the father's love for his lost son reflecting Christ's yearning for the people even as they resisted mercy and faced Jerusalem's destruction.
Downfall and Destitution
The son had rejected his father's care and selfishly demanded his portion, separating himself to avoid counsel and reproof and obligation in order to manage his inheritance as he pleased in pursuit of freedom and present pleasure. He went far away to forget his father and seek pleasure without restraint, wasting his inheritance and the gifts of youth in sinful indulgence and extravagant pleasure. Famine then brought pinching want and destitution, leaving him friendless in a strange country, clad in rags and hungry and longing even for the refuse fed to swine. He was brought down from a life of sinful indulgence to the low business of feeding swine, in need of the very means he had squandered.
His condition illustrates the sinner's bondage to sin and the spiritual and moral ruin that follow separation from God and living for self. The sinner is a prodigal long stayed away from God, perishing in sins while serving sin and the flesh and the devil for poor wages with no profit. Separation from God weakens self-government, allowing pride and impulse and disordered habits to overpower conscience and reason and principle, so that restoration to oneself as well as to God is needed.
Sons become prodigals through indulgence in the home, when parents permit pernicious ways and allow too much freedom and indulge will and inclination instead of restraining and educating from the dawn of reason in the fear and love of God. Such failure to sustain mind and purpose by firm, undeviating, sanctified principles with consistency and affection and a lovely and consistent example can lead children into crooked ways and rebellion. The prodigal also pictures a person ruined by selfish indulgence who, once ambitious and successful, sinks through habitual drinking until courage is lost and he comes under Satan's control, yet Christ meets such a fallen and discouraged person with tender sympathy suited to his need.
Professed commandment keepers who transgress act as the prodigal, unthankful and unholy, flattering themselves that they are Christians while employing their entrusted talents to counterwork God. Conformed to the spirit and principles of worldlings and exerting their influence on Satan's side, there is no light in them for sanctification or holiness. Jesus yearns after these sons and daughters and longs to do them the good He would delight to do, but He cannot do it because of the perversity of their characters.
Coming to Himself
The moment is the breaking of self-deception, when the son returns to reason and awakens from deception to recognize his desperate need and suffering. Coming to himself is coming to moral senses, becoming sensible of great sin and neglect against the heavenly Father. It is diligently searching the heart over the road traveled and where it will end, refusing false hopes and consenting to the one humble way back. It is recognizing true condition and need, turning thoughts to God and becoming ready to obey His directions.
It is also becoming aware of lost condition and of the distance placed between oneself and the Saviour. This is the state of one who knows he is unsaved and grieving Christ, yet finds moral power weak and the will not on the Lord's side. Repeated attempts at self-reform in own strength have failed, and there is struggle to attend to the Word or to pray with feeling. Coming to the right mind begins with reflecting on relationship to the Maker. To prefer human praise to God's favor, sinful rewards to heaven's treasures, and sin's husks to God's spiritual food is moral madness, even when intelligent in worldly matters but disregarding eternal interests.
In that awakening he contrasts his perishing with hunger against the plenty in his father's house. Even the hired servants have bread enough and to spare, more than enough food in abundance, while he is starving. Brought low by hunger and destitution, remembering the security and provision left behind, his recognition of need leads him to decide to return. He sees that his friendlessness, want, hunger and suffering follow his own folly, disobedience and sin in alienating himself from his father's house and separating himself from his father. This recognition turns him toward returning to his father.
His coming to his senses happens as Satan's deceptive influence is broken. Thinking of his father's kindness, love and goodness gives him hope and draws him toward home. Assurance of God's love leads sinners to return in repentance, though he still thinks himself fit only to beg for a servant's place. The longing to return to God while still far from the father is the tender pleading of God's Spirit drawing the sinner back.
The father's plentiful bread and household abundance picture God's ample mercy, compassion, love and hope rather than rejection. Salvation is full and freely available nourishment and joy in Christ, so believers should not remain spiritually hungry but receive it by continual faith. Life away from the Father's house is starvation in a foreign land, and the hungry are urged to return to the Father's abundant supply.
Repentance and Return
Recognition of desperate need moves the starving son to resolve to go back to his father, confessing sin and unworthiness and asking only for a servant's place. Brought low by hunger and want through his own disobedience, alienated from his father's house and perishing while even hired servants enjoy plenty and to spare, he is humbled by remembering his father's kindness, provision and love. He returns as a destitute beggar without comfortable or even decent clothing, wretched through privation and emaciated with hunger, with renewed appreciation of his father's love and claims, and he is received with pity, compassion and forgiveness. He does not wait until he has made himself respectable before deciding to return.
He leaves the service of Satan and of sin at once, turns square about, and decides from that day to be a Christian, even if keeping the Sabbath costs position and trade. Coming back means the straying soul begins to resist temptation and turn from sin and Satan's service to the Father's house and service. It means changing life and character, confessing backslidings, coming to Jesus, and returning to the Father's blessing. The return is marked by seeking the Lord with confession and contrition, and those who seek Him do not seek in vain. It means being led step by step in submission to His will and His way to obtain a rich experience.
Coming to himself means grasping Christ by faith, fixing the eye on Him, casting himself helpless on His mercy, and choosing to come penitent to the Father's house. It means ceasing what is known to be sin, giving the little remnant of life to Jesus, and being saved by His cleansing blood, because He waits to be gracious. Coming back means more than reclaiming a son's privileges; to enjoy sonship its conditions must be met. He must also accept a son's obligations and remain under his father's care rather than wander again.
This is unreserved surrender of the whole life, guided by God's word and submitted to His control for deliverance from sin, remaining under the shepherd's care in the fold and repaying love by staying. It means meeting God not on human ground but on His ground, with cordial assent and willing obedience to His terms. It means renouncing the favor and friendship of the world, making Christ all and in all and walking according to His Word, acknowledging Christ as King, submitting to His authority, consulting His will, making His law the rule of life, being bound by His requirements, making His life the pattern, obeying His Word, denying self for His glory, and being willing to sacrifice all for His sake. God's boundless love in assuming humanity in His Son, given as propitiation for the sins of the whole world, opens the way, and Christ freely cooperates with and gladly receives all who so receive Him to reign within.
God will accept the prodigal who links himself with God and turns to Him with full decision of soul. Giving heart and soul to God brings His blessing, and God will work with the one who returns to help other youth give their hearts to God and be converted. Returning to God in repentance is not humiliating, for as the father welcomed the prodigal, God receives the contrite person with love and covers the returning sinner with the robe of Christ's righteousness. The son's example warns against delaying return to family and God, for humble return and deliverance from sin depend on Jesus' strength, not one's own.
The history applies to a backslider who once loved and served the Lord but turned away, and to one estranged from the heavenly Father who has neglected the call to return though invited to come and become loyal. The return begins with seeing need, and the repentant soul is welcomed without reproach; what is required is penitence, a broken and contrite heart. The verse shows the beginning of repentance in which a person recognizes lost condition and need and turns toward home. The prodigal's return to the Father's house pictures God's gift of His Son to bring wandering people back to Him.
God in Christ daily beseeches men to be reconciled, with outstretched arms ready to receive and welcome not only the sinner but the prodigal, restoring the sinner to divine favor through goodness and mercy. Christ's dying love manifested on Calvary is the assurance of acceptance, peace and love, so that the sin-darkened soul may see light shining from the cross. The turning point is given for youth: many youth live as he did in careless, pleasure-loving, spendthrift living, expending inheritance in pleasure and sinful indulgence until left friendless in a strange country, clad in rags and hungry. They forsake the fountain of living waters, the fountain of true pleasure, and hew out broken cisterns which can hold no water. Coming to himself puts the mind in a new channel with purified thoughts and changed purposes, a solemn sense of responsibility, and happiness and thankfulness in the pardon and love evidenced by the Lord. Those who have wandered from God come back in contrition and penitence after hearing a message of love, and find hope of redemption through Christ.
Father's Loving Reception
The father in the parable is God, who longs for the sinner to return and, though He is the one sinned against, receives the returning one with compassion, pity, love, forgiveness, and greatest joy. The son's coming to his senses begins a return in which he repents and goes back, and he is received not as a servant but as a beloved son, forgiven and restored. The welcome opens without accusation to a father waiting with yearning love, who prepares a feast to welcome him home.
That welcome is pictured by embrace, by garments covering rags, by a ring given as token of restored standing and place in the family, by clothing with the robe of righteousness, and by a place at the Father's table in reconciliation to God. The Father's gift of His beloved Son as sacrifice shows infinite love for the fallen race and opens a channel for that love, so that all who believe on Jesus are restored again to favor. That believing brings obedience to all of God's commandments and life in Christ.
God regards wanderers with love proved at Calvary, where He sent His Son to be the propitiation for sins, not for some only but for the sins of the whole world, with infinite benevolence pouring out its treasures to make man one with God. He takes the first step to seek people even while they are in rebellion, and welcomes back every wanderer who allows Him to bring them home, giving courage to despondent and distrustful sinners. Even the poorest person who comes to the Father in repentance is welcomed with love, and heaven rejoices, with joy among the heavenly host over the repentant return. The return of one repentant sinner brings greater joy than the ninety-nine who need no repentance, and he is met with tender sympathy and earnest care.
God acts as a true shepherd toward those ready to die through indifference and careless disregard, going after the lost sheep and speaking to the distressed soul to return with the promise to return, healing backslidings, loving freely, and turning anger away, with all heaven rejoicing in the finding. The father's house is the home to which the lost are reclaimed and brought back when they recognize desperate need. The father's plenty shows that one who has failed can come to the Lord, confess mistakes, and seek strength to begin again. The contrast between starvation and household abundance presents God as a loving father who bears with His wayward people and is willing to suffer for their sins and bear their guilt. The prodigal is welcomed by Christ, whose love assures the sinner of acceptance, peace, and love.
Seeking and Restoring Wanderers
The moment of coming to himself leaves the wanderer suffering in feeling, often desponding and discouraged, sensible of great sin and neglect against the heavenly Father and of desperate need that only the Father can supply. Above everything else such a one needs pity, help, sympathy and free forgiveness, not efforts to make him feel his error and reminders of his mistakes. His repentance calls for tender sympathy that understands his suffering over the years he has lost and meets him with encouragement, hope, compassion and love. That meeting must not be with reproach, censure, suspicion, jealousy or severe judgment toward those who have fallen under temptation. The parable itself is meant to soften the heart toward the fallen, to encourage return to Christ for pardon and strength, and to restrain harshness.
What is needed is the loving welcome of the father, not the cold rejection and refusal to forgive shown by the elder brother. The elder brother's complaints, though natural, are wrong, and his rejoicing-exposed spirit is selfish, jealous, murmuring, gossiping, planting doubt, questioning and evil-surmising, displeased that the lost are welcomed and saved. That elder son stands for members of an established church who have already had much labor and a house of worship, who ought to rejoice when wandering sheep come to themselves, are awakened, baptized and brought to the fold. Instead they act out the parable most distinctly by feeling envious and jealous because more labor is not given to them, expecting to be constantly fed with sermons, demanding ministerial labor for themselves, and neglecting soul-saving in their homes and among others. None should take that complaining attitude, but with Christ formed within as the hope of glory should seek to save the lost, carry the message of salvation, bear light, reflect truth by precept and example, pray in sincerity, stretch out the hand all day long and hunt for souls as an earnest working church; the lesson means much and must be carefully studied together with the lost sheep and the lost coin, because practicing it involves eternal interests.
The church is failing in seeking the lost and bringing them into the fold, and must recognize and acknowledge that failure. The lesson of the prodigal together with the lost sheep must be studied more closely and obeyed with purpose by going into the wilderness to search for, find and bring back those who have strayed, instead of wounding and driving the sheep away. The prodigal far from home and perishing with hunger represents people far from the Father's house, perishing in sin and needing to be brought to saving knowledge of the truth. His desperate condition makes him an object of compassion, to be treated with compassion in God's enterprise of mercy sustained by self-denial and offerings in righteousness.
His awakening marks the beginning of return, when he recognizes his desperate condition and remembers that even his father's hired servants have food in abundance. Sinners who have themselves been rescued can understand and help others who are lost, and through their ministry many prodigals can be brought back to the Father. Workers are therefore to encourage those who have left the Father's house to return, and people seeking truth, including those who come to the Sanitarium, can turn back and be saved when they are wisely helped. The verse marks a turning point showing that one in error can be brought back from ruin rather than driven further into desperation. Applied to teachers, patient gracious dealing can help erring students return to God, while harshness and humiliating exposure can imperil them and keep them from returning.
Erring people need opportunity to recover and turn back, not harsh or condemning treatment, and are not to be held at a distance or left under Satan's control but met with tender love and efforts to restore them. Erring youth especially should be treated with tenderness and sympathy rather than harsh judgment, as shown by the young backslider turning from sin and Satan's service to come back to his father's house and service. The prodigal coming to his senses and recognizing his desperate condition is paralleled by a man degraded by liquor who entered the tent deeply moved to become fully converted.