Prodigal Son Kneels Repenting on the Roadby CBPepper
15:19Luke 15:19
And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.
The verse is the resolve of the ruined prodigal, perishing with hunger in a strange country after wasting his inheritance in self-indulgence, when he remembers the plenty even his father's hired servants enjoy and determines to return home without first trying to make himself respectable. It is his confession that by leaving his father and wasting his goods he has made himself unworthy to claim a son's place and privileges, and that he will ask only to be received and treated as a hired servant. His request for a servant's place shows humility and penitence, yet also how little he understands his father's love and willingness to receive him. The father does not meet him with reproach or punishment, but discerns him while yet a great way off, hastens with tenderest pity, runs and falls on his neck and kisses him, and rejoices that he who was thought dead is alive. He will not let him ask for a servant's place, but honors him as a son, covering him with the robe of Christ's righteousness and preparing a feast, so that returning to God in repentance is not humiliating but brings forgiveness, restoration to favor, and joy in heaven.
Parable Context and Setting
Luke 15:19 belongs to the parable of the prodigal son, which reveals God's pitying love for those who have strayed from Him. He does not leave them in their misery or abandon them when they turn away and suffer, but is kind and tender toward those exposed to temptation.
The parable presents the Lord's dealing with people who have known the Father's love but have been led captive by the tempter and turned away. His love for those separated from Him remains strong, and when they repent they may return to God, be received with joy, and be clothed in the robe of righteousness. The returning son acknowledges that he has forfeited any claim to be called son and approaches in repentance, and God works to bring such wanderers home.
The setting of the verse is the misery that follows separation from the father, when pursuit of self-indulgence leaves the son degraded and enslaved by sin. Through his own disobedience he comes as low as he can, far from home and perishing with hunger, friendless in a strange country, clad in rags, destitute and emaciated, feeding swine and longing for their refuse. He is brought low by destructive habits, with Satan gaining control of mind and judgment, and the lost in this condition need compassion and saving knowledge. His friendlessness and hunger arise from disobedience and separation, and his ruin through selfish indulgence pictures one brought low by such a course.
In that want he remembers his father's kindness and love and the plenty, privileges, and care freely enjoyed even by his father's hired servants while he himself perishes with hunger. Humiliated by adversity he resolves to return by humble confession, and starving, he does not first try to make himself respectable. His confession that his sin has made him unworthy to be called son comes as he resolves to return home because he remembers his father has plenty of food.
The story of the lost son illustrates the joy in heaven when someone is brought back to God. Even the poorest sinner who comes in repentance and returns calls forth Christ's tender sympathy and earnest labor, and brings joy among the heavenly host.
Christ used this familiar experience from daily life to teach spiritual truth and make the unseen vivid and immortal truth more present in ordinary experience. He illustrates truth in all its bearings rather than proving it by long, farfetched, complicated reasoning, comes right to the point, reads every heart, and draws things both new and old from His treasure-house to illustrate and enforce His teaching. He commends truth to the conscience, touches the heart and awakens the sympathies, and leaves hearers free to accept or reject without forcing belief, and the parable is most pathetic and touching in showing the father seeing his son afar off, running to meet him, and rejoicing that he who had been thought dead was alive.
The parable also represents God's loving fatherly care for Israel, which has resisted mercy, while Jesus grieves over the judgment coming upon Jerusalem. The prodigal can mean those who claim to be commandment keepers while transgressing the law, unthankful and unholy, using entrusted talents to counterwork God. Jesus yearns after such sons and daughters and longs to do them the good He delights to do, but cannot because of the perversity of their characters, for there is no light in them and their influence is not unto sanctification or holiness.
Many prodigal sons become wayward through indulgence at home and parents' failure to restrain, guide, and control them. The story illustrates how a child may become wayward when indulged and not restrained or guided.
Meaning of Son's Confession
The words are the son's recognition that by leaving his father and wasting his inheritance his sin has made him unworthy to claim the place and privileges of a son or any share in his father's goods. He confesses that his wrongdoing has taken away his right to sonship, and he acknowledges his guilt in departing from his father. Knowing he does not deserve to be called son and that he has neglected his father's claims, he is willing to come back in poverty and ask only to be received and treated as one of the hired servants. He does not ask for restoration to sonship but only for acceptance in the lowest place, content to be taken in as a servant despite having squandered his blessings.
His confession is humility, penitence and repentance, with a sense of being lost, degraded, in need, and in need of a Saviour. He comes to the Father as the only one who can supply that need, appreciating His love and acknowledging His claims. His request to be made a hired servant reveals how little he understands his father's love, for he expects only a servant's place and underestimates his father's willingness to receive him. He plans to confess guilt and believes restoration as a son is impossible, so limited is his view of the love waiting for him.
Trembling and fearing to be disowned, his misery has overcome his pride, and he turns from his former life and hurries home to ask for that place.
Father's Loving Reception
The parable teaches mercy and forgiveness in the way the father receives the returning son. He sees him when yet a great way off, discerns his own image under all the degradation, does not wait, but hastens to meet him with tenderest pity and compassion. He runs to him, falls on his neck and kisses him, lifts him up and takes him to his breast and heart. He rejoices that his son, who had been thought dead, is alive.
He does not meet that return with reproach, blame, punishment, contempt, accusations, or reminders of past unworthiness. He does not stand on dignity or set past wrong before him. He meets him instead with compassion, pity, love, forgiveness, and greatest joy.
He does not let the son ask for a servant's place, but receives and honors him as a son. He wraps him in a rich robe, gives proofs of love and tokens of forgiveness, and orders special respect and clothing for him as if he had ever been an obedient son. He clothes and honors him, welcomes him home, and prepares a feast and celebration with restoring gifts.
The returning sinner is covered with the robe of righteousness, even the robe of Christ's righteousness, and given a place at the table. Coming back to God in repentance is therefore not humiliating or degrading. That reception gives the son a much deeper sense of his ungrateful course than he had when he decided to return, and his before-subdued heart is now broken because he has grieved such love.
The wanderer's past is forgiven and forgotten, and his disgrace is covered by pitying love. The father's tenderness does not make sin seem less grievous, but helps the child recover and return. God meets that return with infinite love shown in giving His beloved Son as a sacrifice at Calvary as propitiation not for His own people only but for the sins of the whole world. That gift makes a channel for the outflow of His love so that all who believe on Jesus are restored to favor, brought to saving knowledge, made one with God, and led to obedience to all His commandments and life in Christ.
The wanderer's desire to return is awakened by the Father's Spirit drawing him back with love. Even one step in repentance is met by God, who hastens to enfold him in infinite love. He hears the contrite soul, and even a faltering prayer, a secret tear, or a feeble sincere desire is known and met, with a deep influence calling him to full conversion. Christ receives the sinner and restores him to God's favor, ready to receive not only sinners but those who have strayed, and His dying love on Calvary assures them of acceptance, peace, and love. Acceptance with God comes through Christ, not through a bodily act, but through submitting the human will to God and receiving Christ as Saviour. The verse thus illustrates the loving Father's willingness to bear with a rebellious child and His continuing invitation to return.
Assurance for Returning Sinners
The despairing sinner crushed under sin is not to believe Satan's lie that God has no pity and leaves him to perish, but to arise and go to the Father trusting that Jesus died that he might live, that He loves him and wills not that he perish, confessing sin and abused love and squandered blessings, admitting unworthiness to be called son and asking to be made as a hired servant. With such a promise doubt must go, for to think the Lord sternly withholds the poor sinner who wants to return and forsake sins from coming to His feet in repentance dishonors God and misrepresents Him to the world. That thought hurts the soul, fills the whole spiritual life with hopelessness, and discourages all effort to seek and serve Him. God must not be thought of only as a judge ready to pronounce sentence, for though He hates sin He gave Himself in the person of Christ, one with the Father, to bring eternal life within reach of all sinners so the sinner should not perish but be saved with eternal blessedness in the kingdom of glory.
Turning back to God in the way appointed for salvation is exemplified here, for after long separation with no certain hope of eternal life the only way to get hold again is humble coming confessing unworthiness and asking only to be received. It is a way so lowly that pride will not consent to it, leaving no room for false hopes. God is ready to accept and pardon all transgressions if the sinner will but come, and the sinner's sense of unworthiness does not make him past help. God is willing and able to forgive and receive those who come, contrary to the idea that He is unwilling to pardon, and the Majesty of Heaven meets him even now with mercy inviting him to come for life, with Christ to cleanse him from sin when he lays hold upon Him.
That unworthy feeling after sin must not keep anyone who has failed and been betrayed into sin from praying and coming before the Lord. Jesus waits with outstretched arms to welcome the returning prodigal, who should go to Him, tell Him mistakes and failures, ask strength for fresh endeavor, and trust He recognizes every effort to reach His ideal and will never disappoint confidence. His return is an example not to delay in coming back to God with a humble, enlightened heart, trusting Jesus as personal Saviour and surrendering to Him. Those absorbed in the world are called to come home without delay, no longer claiming the place of a son but asking to be received as a hired servant.
For a thorough backslider who has given up the Sabbath through temptation and discouragement, this means leaving the service of Satan and sin, turning square about without delay even at the cost of position and trade, and coming back to the Father's house and service deciding to be a Christian from that day. That return brings evidenced pardon and love, a new channel of purified thoughts and changed purposes, and solemn happy thankfulness. Returning means turning from sin and Satan and leaving wandering from God and truth to come back into fellowship with God, turning steps toward heaven to confess backsliding and come to Jesus. It is to be done despite unkind treatment from fellow believers, because Christ's love and sacrifice give reason to return.
The story applies to one who had once loved and served the Lord but left the Father's house after faithfulness, and to those like Wessels who have neglected the Spirit's invitation. God still loves him, will accept him as His child, and calls him to return to loyalty to his heavenly Father. Sinners seeking the Lord for the first time and backsliders returning with confession and contrition under the Holy Spirit's convicting power are met by a tender, pitying, loving Saviour whose compassion is greater than all human compassion. He died to save the perishing and can be trusted to do all He promised, so none who turns to Him seeks in vain.
Those who have left the Father's house, far off and perishing with hunger, sick and sinful, are to be encouraged to return to God and pointed to the great Healer, to be brought to saving knowledge and made one with God. The lost are reclaimed through Heaven's sacrifice, labor, and energy expended for their return. They have as incentives the rewards of right-doing, enjoyment of heaven, society of angels, communion and love of God and His Son, and elevation of all powers through eternal ages urging loving service. Serving sin and the flesh and the devil brings no profit but poor wages, so the call is to turn and live rather than die.
Obedience After Return
The welcome home does not end the story, for to enjoy a son's privileges the returned son must comply with the conditions of sonship and accept a son's obligations. Claiming the place of a son means living according to the father's conditions and accepting his authority, remaining under the shepherd's care rather than renewing wandering. That remaining is the answer to the shepherd's love, staying in the fold and giving the whole life in unreserved surrender. Meeting God is not on the sinner's own ground but on God's ground, with cordial assent and willing obedience. Such obedience renounces the favor and friendship of the world, submits to Christ as King to reign in the soul, and walks in accordance with His Word and law.
A wandering son who returns in submission to God's will and way is led by the Lord step by step into a rich experience. That leading brings praise to God and tears of joy. God accepts 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 a place in working with Him, so that those who have been restored can help other lost ones find their way to the Father and give their hearts to Him and be converted.
The lesson is given for the instruction of youth, because many youth live as the prodigal did in a careless, pleasure-loving, spendthrift life. Like him they expend their inheritance in pleasure and sinful indulgence, forsaking the fountain of living waters and true pleasure to hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water. After such a life of folly and sin, it is repentance and prayer that lead the son back to his heavenly Father, whose mercy and love he had neglected.
Welcoming Fellow Returners
One who has gone wrong and has come to feel the weight of great sin and neglect needs pity, help, sympathy, and above all free forgiveness. Efforts to make such a one feel the error and reminders of mistakes are out of place, because the erring already suffer in feeling and are often desponding and discouraged. The returning one has suffered and felt need, has come to appreciate the heavenly Father's love and to acknowledge His claims, and comes to the Father as the only one who can supply that need. Though the Father is the one sinned against, He meets the repenting one in compassion, pity, love and forgiveness with the greatest joy, knowing that need for pity and love.
A repentant person coming back like the prodigal, sensing sin and degradation and no longer counting himself worthy of a son's standing, must be met with tender sympathy, encouragement, and love. His repentance is to be accepted and he is to be welcomed as the father welcomed his son, with a message of love rather than rebuke. Censure, suspicion, coldness and resentment after the elder brother's manner have no place, for the returning soul needs encouragement and tender sympathy. He is to be sought instead of wounded and driven away, since harsh, unloving treatment by Christians can keep those gone astray from returning to God and entering His kingdom.
The parable is to move to labor for the erring and to seek their restoration, bringing them to the forgiving Saviour rather than leaving them without hope or treating them harshly. It is meant to soften the heart and to oppose severe judgment of one who has fallen under temptation and into sin. It should shape heart and mind toward tenderness for those fallen into error rather than severe judgment of them. Truth brought into life experience has saving power to guide souls willing to receive it, as seen in those coming to the Sanitarium willing to receive truth who can be guided toward salvation.
An erring child can return, confess sin, and be freely and fully pardoned, with disgrace covered by pitying love. Parents should therefore preserve tenderness toward a wayward child, for God invites His children to return and repent and promises to pardon transgressions. That tenderness does not make the sin seem less grievous; it helps the child recover and return.
When the sinner repents, God receives him with joy and clothes him in the robe of righteousness, and the returning prodigal is received with tenderness, restored, and treated as a son. That welcome exposes the elder brother's stubborn, selfish contempt, jealousy, envy, cold rejection and unforgiveness toward the restored sinner. The same spirit appears in complaining, murmuring, gossiping, planting doubt, questioning and evil surmising instead of rejoicing that the Lord is bringing the wandering sheep to the fold. It is acted out when a church raised up by evangelism becomes envious and jealous because more labor is given to others, resenting labor extended to new interests and suburbs rather than to those who already have the truth and have had great labor, when it ought to rejoice and go after the lost sheep ready to die.
A sinner who repents calls forth tender sympathy and earnest labor, and heaven rejoices over the repentant sinner. Those who have had labor bestowed on them should have a knowledge of God and should rejoice and work when the lost return. A living church with Christ formed within as the hope of glory carries salvation to others, reflects light, prays sincerely, stretches out hands all day long, hunts for souls, and does righteousness at home and in church rather than expecting to be constantly fed with sermons.
The verse is the resolve of the ruined prodigal, perishing with hunger in a strange country after wasting his inheritance in self-indulgence, when he remembers the plenty even his father's hired servants enjoy and determines to return home without first trying to make himself respectable. It is his confession that by leaving his father and wasting his goods he has made himself unworthy to claim a son's place and privileges, and that he will ask only to be received and treated as a hired servant. His request for a servant's place shows humility and penitence, yet also how little he understands his father's love and willingness to receive him. The father does not meet him with reproach or punishment, but discerns him while yet a great way off, hastens with tenderest pity, runs and falls on his neck and kisses him, and rejoices that he who was thought dead is alive. He will not let him ask for a servant's place, but honors him as a son, covering him with the robe of Christ's righteousness and preparing a feast, so that returning to God in repentance is not humiliating but brings forgiveness, restoration to favor, and joy in heaven.
Parable Context and Setting
Luke 15:19 belongs to the parable of the prodigal son, which reveals God's pitying love for those who have strayed from Him. He does not leave them in their misery or abandon them when they turn away and suffer, but is kind and tender toward those exposed to temptation.
The parable presents the Lord's dealing with people who have known the Father's love but have been led captive by the tempter and turned away. His love for those separated from Him remains strong, and when they repent they may return to God, be received with joy, and be clothed in the robe of righteousness. The returning son acknowledges that he has forfeited any claim to be called son and approaches in repentance, and God works to bring such wanderers home.
The setting of the verse is the misery that follows separation from the father, when pursuit of self-indulgence leaves the son degraded and enslaved by sin. Through his own disobedience he comes as low as he can, far from home and perishing with hunger, friendless in a strange country, clad in rags, destitute and emaciated, feeding swine and longing for their refuse. He is brought low by destructive habits, with Satan gaining control of mind and judgment, and the lost in this condition need compassion and saving knowledge. His friendlessness and hunger arise from disobedience and separation, and his ruin through selfish indulgence pictures one brought low by such a course.
In that want he remembers his father's kindness and love and the plenty, privileges, and care freely enjoyed even by his father's hired servants while he himself perishes with hunger. Humiliated by adversity he resolves to return by humble confession, and starving, he does not first try to make himself respectable. His confession that his sin has made him unworthy to be called son comes as he resolves to return home because he remembers his father has plenty of food.
The story of the lost son illustrates the joy in heaven when someone is brought back to God. Even the poorest sinner who comes in repentance and returns calls forth Christ's tender sympathy and earnest labor, and brings joy among the heavenly host.
Christ used this familiar experience from daily life to teach spiritual truth and make the unseen vivid and immortal truth more present in ordinary experience. He illustrates truth in all its bearings rather than proving it by long, farfetched, complicated reasoning, comes right to the point, reads every heart, and draws things both new and old from His treasure-house to illustrate and enforce His teaching. He commends truth to the conscience, touches the heart and awakens the sympathies, and leaves hearers free to accept or reject without forcing belief, and the parable is most pathetic and touching in showing the father seeing his son afar off, running to meet him, and rejoicing that he who had been thought dead was alive.
The parable also represents God's loving fatherly care for Israel, which has resisted mercy, while Jesus grieves over the judgment coming upon Jerusalem. The prodigal can mean those who claim to be commandment keepers while transgressing the law, unthankful and unholy, using entrusted talents to counterwork God. Jesus yearns after such sons and daughters and longs to do them the good He delights to do, but cannot because of the perversity of their characters, for there is no light in them and their influence is not unto sanctification or holiness.
Many prodigal sons become wayward through indulgence at home and parents' failure to restrain, guide, and control them. The story illustrates how a child may become wayward when indulged and not restrained or guided.
Meaning of Son's Confession
The words are the son's recognition that by leaving his father and wasting his inheritance his sin has made him unworthy to claim the place and privileges of a son or any share in his father's goods. He confesses that his wrongdoing has taken away his right to sonship, and he acknowledges his guilt in departing from his father. Knowing he does not deserve to be called son and that he has neglected his father's claims, he is willing to come back in poverty and ask only to be received and treated as one of the hired servants. He does not ask for restoration to sonship but only for acceptance in the lowest place, content to be taken in as a servant despite having squandered his blessings.
His confession is humility, penitence and repentance, with a sense of being lost, degraded, in need, and in need of a Saviour. He comes to the Father as the only one who can supply that need, appreciating His love and acknowledging His claims. His request to be made a hired servant reveals how little he understands his father's love, for he expects only a servant's place and underestimates his father's willingness to receive him. He plans to confess guilt and believes restoration as a son is impossible, so limited is his view of the love waiting for him.
Trembling and fearing to be disowned, his misery has overcome his pride, and he turns from his former life and hurries home to ask for that place.
Father's Loving Reception
The parable teaches mercy and forgiveness in the way the father receives the returning son. He sees him when yet a great way off, discerns his own image under all the degradation, does not wait, but hastens to meet him with tenderest pity and compassion. He runs to him, falls on his neck and kisses him, lifts him up and takes him to his breast and heart. He rejoices that his son, who had been thought dead, is alive.
He does not meet that return with reproach, blame, punishment, contempt, accusations, or reminders of past unworthiness. He does not stand on dignity or set past wrong before him. He meets him instead with compassion, pity, love, forgiveness, and greatest joy.
He does not let the son ask for a servant's place, but receives and honors him as a son. He wraps him in a rich robe, gives proofs of love and tokens of forgiveness, and orders special respect and clothing for him as if he had ever been an obedient son. He clothes and honors him, welcomes him home, and prepares a feast and celebration with restoring gifts.
The returning sinner is covered with the robe of righteousness, even the robe of Christ's righteousness, and given a place at the table. Coming back to God in repentance is therefore not humiliating or degrading. That reception gives the son a much deeper sense of his ungrateful course than he had when he decided to return, and his before-subdued heart is now broken because he has grieved such love.
The wanderer's past is forgiven and forgotten, and his disgrace is covered by pitying love. The father's tenderness does not make sin seem less grievous, but helps the child recover and return. God meets that return with infinite love shown in giving His beloved Son as a sacrifice at Calvary as propitiation not for His own people only but for the sins of the whole world. That gift makes a channel for the outflow of His love so that all who believe on Jesus are restored to favor, brought to saving knowledge, made one with God, and led to obedience to all His commandments and life in Christ.
The wanderer's desire to return is awakened by the Father's Spirit drawing him back with love. Even one step in repentance is met by God, who hastens to enfold him in infinite love. He hears the contrite soul, and even a faltering prayer, a secret tear, or a feeble sincere desire is known and met, with a deep influence calling him to full conversion. Christ receives the sinner and restores him to God's favor, ready to receive not only sinners but those who have strayed, and His dying love on Calvary assures them of acceptance, peace, and love. Acceptance with God comes through Christ, not through a bodily act, but through submitting the human will to God and receiving Christ as Saviour. The verse thus illustrates the loving Father's willingness to bear with a rebellious child and His continuing invitation to return.
Assurance for Returning Sinners
The despairing sinner crushed under sin is not to believe Satan's lie that God has no pity and leaves him to perish, but to arise and go to the Father trusting that Jesus died that he might live, that He loves him and wills not that he perish, confessing sin and abused love and squandered blessings, admitting unworthiness to be called son and asking to be made as a hired servant. With such a promise doubt must go, for to think the Lord sternly withholds the poor sinner who wants to return and forsake sins from coming to His feet in repentance dishonors God and misrepresents Him to the world. That thought hurts the soul, fills the whole spiritual life with hopelessness, and discourages all effort to seek and serve Him. God must not be thought of only as a judge ready to pronounce sentence, for though He hates sin He gave Himself in the person of Christ, one with the Father, to bring eternal life within reach of all sinners so the sinner should not perish but be saved with eternal blessedness in the kingdom of glory.
Turning back to God in the way appointed for salvation is exemplified here, for after long separation with no certain hope of eternal life the only way to get hold again is humble coming confessing unworthiness and asking only to be received. It is a way so lowly that pride will not consent to it, leaving no room for false hopes. God is ready to accept and pardon all transgressions if the sinner will but come, and the sinner's sense of unworthiness does not make him past help. God is willing and able to forgive and receive those who come, contrary to the idea that He is unwilling to pardon, and the Majesty of Heaven meets him even now with mercy inviting him to come for life, with Christ to cleanse him from sin when he lays hold upon Him.
That unworthy feeling after sin must not keep anyone who has failed and been betrayed into sin from praying and coming before the Lord. Jesus waits with outstretched arms to welcome the returning prodigal, who should go to Him, tell Him mistakes and failures, ask strength for fresh endeavor, and trust He recognizes every effort to reach His ideal and will never disappoint confidence. His return is an example not to delay in coming back to God with a humble, enlightened heart, trusting Jesus as personal Saviour and surrendering to Him. Those absorbed in the world are called to come home without delay, no longer claiming the place of a son but asking to be received as a hired servant.
For a thorough backslider who has given up the Sabbath through temptation and discouragement, this means leaving the service of Satan and sin, turning square about without delay even at the cost of position and trade, and coming back to the Father's house and service deciding to be a Christian from that day. That return brings evidenced pardon and love, a new channel of purified thoughts and changed purposes, and solemn happy thankfulness. Returning means turning from sin and Satan and leaving wandering from God and truth to come back into fellowship with God, turning steps toward heaven to confess backsliding and come to Jesus. It is to be done despite unkind treatment from fellow believers, because Christ's love and sacrifice give reason to return.
The story applies to one who had once loved and served the Lord but left the Father's house after faithfulness, and to those like Wessels who have neglected the Spirit's invitation. God still loves him, will accept him as His child, and calls him to return to loyalty to his heavenly Father. Sinners seeking the Lord for the first time and backsliders returning with confession and contrition under the Holy Spirit's convicting power are met by a tender, pitying, loving Saviour whose compassion is greater than all human compassion. He died to save the perishing and can be trusted to do all He promised, so none who turns to Him seeks in vain.
Those who have left the Father's house, far off and perishing with hunger, sick and sinful, are to be encouraged to return to God and pointed to the great Healer, to be brought to saving knowledge and made one with God. The lost are reclaimed through Heaven's sacrifice, labor, and energy expended for their return. They have as incentives the rewards of right-doing, enjoyment of heaven, society of angels, communion and love of God and His Son, and elevation of all powers through eternal ages urging loving service. Serving sin and the flesh and the devil brings no profit but poor wages, so the call is to turn and live rather than die.
Obedience After Return
The welcome home does not end the story, for to enjoy a son's privileges the returned son must comply with the conditions of sonship and accept a son's obligations. Claiming the place of a son means living according to the father's conditions and accepting his authority, remaining under the shepherd's care rather than renewing wandering. That remaining is the answer to the shepherd's love, staying in the fold and giving the whole life in unreserved surrender. Meeting God is not on the sinner's own ground but on God's ground, with cordial assent and willing obedience. Such obedience renounces the favor and friendship of the world, submits to Christ as King to reign in the soul, and walks in accordance with His Word and law.
A wandering son who returns in submission to God's will and way is led by the Lord step by step into a rich experience. That leading brings praise to God and tears of joy. God accepts 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 a place in working with Him, so that those who have been restored can help other lost ones find their way to the Father and give their hearts to Him and be converted.
The lesson is given for the instruction of youth, because many youth live as the prodigal did in a careless, pleasure-loving, spendthrift life. Like him they expend their inheritance in pleasure and sinful indulgence, forsaking the fountain of living waters and true pleasure to hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water. After such a life of folly and sin, it is repentance and prayer that lead the son back to his heavenly Father, whose mercy and love he had neglected.
Welcoming Fellow Returners
One who has gone wrong and has come to feel the weight of great sin and neglect needs pity, help, sympathy, and above all free forgiveness. Efforts to make such a one feel the error and reminders of mistakes are out of place, because the erring already suffer in feeling and are often desponding and discouraged. The returning one has suffered and felt need, has come to appreciate the heavenly Father's love and to acknowledge His claims, and comes to the Father as the only one who can supply that need. Though the Father is the one sinned against, He meets the repenting one in compassion, pity, love and forgiveness with the greatest joy, knowing that need for pity and love.
A repentant person coming back like the prodigal, sensing sin and degradation and no longer counting himself worthy of a son's standing, must be met with tender sympathy, encouragement, and love. His repentance is to be accepted and he is to be welcomed as the father welcomed his son, with a message of love rather than rebuke. Censure, suspicion, coldness and resentment after the elder brother's manner have no place, for the returning soul needs encouragement and tender sympathy. He is to be sought instead of wounded and driven away, since harsh, unloving treatment by Christians can keep those gone astray from returning to God and entering His kingdom.
The parable is to move to labor for the erring and to seek their restoration, bringing them to the forgiving Saviour rather than leaving them without hope or treating them harshly. It is meant to soften the heart and to oppose severe judgment of one who has fallen under temptation and into sin. It should shape heart and mind toward tenderness for those fallen into error rather than severe judgment of them. Truth brought into life experience has saving power to guide souls willing to receive it, as seen in those coming to the Sanitarium willing to receive truth who can be guided toward salvation.
An erring child can return, confess sin, and be freely and fully pardoned, with disgrace covered by pitying love. Parents should therefore preserve tenderness toward a wayward child, for God invites His children to return and repent and promises to pardon transgressions. That tenderness does not make the sin seem less grievous; it helps the child recover and return.
When the sinner repents, God receives him with joy and clothes him in the robe of righteousness, and the returning prodigal is received with tenderness, restored, and treated as a son. That welcome exposes the elder brother's stubborn, selfish contempt, jealousy, envy, cold rejection and unforgiveness toward the restored sinner. The same spirit appears in complaining, murmuring, gossiping, planting doubt, questioning and evil surmising instead of rejoicing that the Lord is bringing the wandering sheep to the fold. It is acted out when a church raised up by evangelism becomes envious and jealous because more labor is given to others, resenting labor extended to new interests and suburbs rather than to those who already have the truth and have had great labor, when it ought to rejoice and go after the lost sheep ready to die.
A sinner who repents calls forth tender sympathy and earnest labor, and heaven rejoices over the repentant sinner. Those who have had labor bestowed on them should have a knowledge of God and should rejoice and work when the lost return. A living church with Christ formed within as the hope of glory carries salvation to others, reflects light, prays sincerely, stretches out hands all day long, hunts for souls, and does righteousness at home and in church rather than expecting to be constantly fed with sermons.