Father Embraces the Prodigal While Elder Brother Stands Apartby CBPepper
15:26Luke 15:26
And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant.
The verse pictures the elder son coming in from the field, hearing music and dancing at the house, and asking a servant what it means, only to learn that his younger brother has come home safely and his father is celebrating with a feast. The father's welcome shows God receiving the repentant sinner without reproach or accusation, as a son and not as a servant, with compassion, honor, and great joy in heaven. The elder son's questioning exposes selfishness, pride, envy, and resentment at that joyful welcome, standing apart from his father's joy with suspicion instead of kindness. His self-righteous contrast of his own service with his brother's course proves his own need of repentance, for service does not earn salvation. The parable therefore calls all to share the father's compassion rather than the elder brother's coldness, seeking the lost and welcoming the repentant with tenderness and free forgiveness.
Story and Context
The elder son is coming in from the field toward the house when he hears music and dancing, calls one of the servants to him, and asks what these things mean, and he learns that his younger brother who was thought dead has come back safe and sound and that his father has made a feast to celebrate the return. His asking with suspicion rather than kindness opens the way to jealousy and anger at the honor given to his repentant brother instead of sharing his father's joy over the lost son's return. Before that moment the younger son had asked for his portion of the estate so he could separate his interest from his father and manage his share to suit his own inclination, bracing his selfish rebellious spirit with the thought that part of his father's property belonged to him when rightfully he could claim nothing and should have had nothing. The father complied, and the son selfishly withdrew so he would not be troubled with counsel, reproofs, advice, restraint, or mutual obligation, going far away so he might even forget he had a father, despising restraint and determined to take pleasure in any way he chose. After receiving treasure of which he was undeserving he spent all in sinful indulgence and extravagant pleasure, and when famine visited the land he felt pinching want, regretted his course, became destitute of the means he had squandered, and came down to the low business of feeding swine. Such a wayward course is bound up with indulgence and with parental failure to restrain and train children. The prodigal also pictures those who claim to keep the commandments while transgressing the law, unthankful and unholy, flattering themselves that they are Christians while employing their entrusted talents to counterwork God, with no light in them so that their light is darkness and their influence is not unto sanctification or holiness. He likewise pictures one who through selfish indulgence becomes a ruined temple of his own making, once standing in pride with ambitious hopes and winning the richest prizes by excelling in seeking victory, then filled with self-sufficiency by praise and flattery and sunk lower and lower by the habit of wine-drinking until courage, God-given manhood, mind, and judgment are lost and he drifts under Satan's guidance and control with no power to leave the snare, and to this discouraged, sick, tempted, and fallen one Christ speaks words of tender sympathy that he needs and can understand. The verse belongs to one of the parables told in response to criticism of association with sinners, teaching mercy and forgiveness through the father's joyful welcome of his returning son who was thought dead but is alive, whom the father sees afar off, runs to meet, and rejoices to receive. It uses facts of life and familiar experience from daily surroundings to illustrate immortal truth, showing an open spirit to the influences of nature and delight in gathering spiritual teaching from ordinary life, so that the daily task is brightened and uplifted by constant reminders of the spiritual and unseen that hold something to interest every mind and appeal to every heart and awaken sympathy. In that setting the father-and-son picture is connected with God's dealings with Israel, representing loving care for Israel, and recalling servants sent to receive the vineyard's fruit who were despised.
Father's Forgiving Welcome
The father in the story is God in His tender, loving and pitying care for those who have turned away from Him and are lost. He does not leave them in misery but is kind and tender toward those exposed to the tempter's influence. His heart yearns for the wanderer far from home, and every longing to return is the pleading of His Spirit drawing the sinner back to the Father's love. The parable itself still falls short of expressing the full measure of that love.
The music and feasting about which the servant is asked show God receiving the repentant sinner without reproach or accusation. He welcomes him as a son and not as a servant, restoring him with honor, compassion, warmth, courtesy, love, and a place at the Father's table, with great joy in heaven over his return. He clothes the returning one with righteousness, forgives him, and does not hold the forgiven sin against him. He rejoices that the erring one has returned and recognized his need, pitying, loving and forgiving him.
This welcome rests on infinite love shown in the gift of the beloved Son for the fallen race, which has made a channel for the outflow of that love so that all who believe may be restored again to favor. That infinite love in Jesus as the sacrifice gives a solid foundation for faith, and believing on Him leads to obedience to all of God's commandments and to life in Jesus Christ. It pictures God's boundless love in assuming humanity in the person of His Son and making propitiation for the sins of the whole world. It shows the amazing sacrifice made for the lost and the labor and energy Heaven expends to reclaim them and bring them back to the Father's house.
God works with loving concern to bring back those who have known the Father's love but have been led away, and when they repent He receives them. Any sinner who comes in repentance can expect to be received and forgiven with love, and one who turns with full decision of soul is accepted. Though long separated and serving sin and the flesh and the devil for poor wages, he is still met even now when he comes, ready to be accepted and pardoned of all transgressions and cleansed from sin as he lays hold on Christ. Christ's message of mercy to such an erring one is Come, for all things are now ready that he may have life, and he must turn and live and not neglect this work or flatter himself with false hopes lest he perish in his sins and die.
The welcome is freely given, but to enjoy a son's privileges one must meet the conditions of sonship. This means meeting God on His own ground with cordial assent and willing obedience, renouncing the favor and friendship of the world and making Christ all and in all, receiving Him as Saviour and obeying His word and living under the Father's authority. The return means unreserved surrender and the gift of the whole life, not giving money alone where no effort is required, but consenting to accept a son's obligations. The son's place in the family is restored, yet claiming its privileges requires remaining under the father's care, submitting to control, obeying direction, denying self, taking up the cross, and making personal effort and self-denial. Like the found sheep remaining under the shepherd's care in the fold and repaying his love by remaining instead of renewing its wanderings, the returned wanderer must remain, for refusing submission is continuing in disobedience and stepping to the devil's side is falling into the devil's hands.
Elder Brother's Resentment
Coming in from the field he hears music and dancing at the house, calls a servant and asks what these things mean, and learns that his younger brother has come home safe and his father has made a feast to celebrate. His question exposes selfishness, pride, envy, jealousy, anger and resentment at his father's joyful welcome, for instead of sharing the father's joy he stands apart from it and meets the news with complaint. He feels insulted by the honor given to the repentant one, asks with suspicion and distrust rather than kindness and tenderness, and stands by stubborn and complaining while his brother is still struggling to return. That complaining answer was natural but not right, and the returning sinner already suffers in feeling and is often desponding and discouraged.
As brother often deals with brother, he watches to criticize and accuse of every fault, magnifies faults, tries to make the erring feel where they have erred, and keeps reminding them of their mistakes. His spirit toward the struggling one is indifference, contempt, coldness, suspicion, dislike, careless disregard and retaliation, refusing to forgive as the father forgives and refusing to help bring the wanderer back. Such a fault-finding and complaining spirit spoils his service even when he bears hardships and burdens. It stands opposite the true Shepherd, who goes after the lost sheep, calls the distressed to return, heals backsliding, loves freely, and rejoices with all heaven when the lost is found.
He feels his own course righteous, supposes he has been faithful in home duties and needs no repentance, contrasts his conduct with the prodigal's, and cannot sympathize with the father's joy in receiving the wanderer. He counts long service and hardship as earning a greater reward and resents goodness shown to others, for service does not earn salvation. By this selfish unwillingness to receive his repenting brother and rejoice at his return he proves his own need of repentance. By accusing his brethren he places himself where he cannot receive God's favor.
His response belongs to the portrayal of unrepenting Israel, which refused to recognize publicans and sinners as brothers who should be sought, forgiven, and led to everlasting life. He represents people who need salvation themselves yet look on a struggling soul with contempt, established believers and handlers of sacred things who resent attention and labor given to wandering people and new converts and fail to help them. Those who should rejoice when wandering people are brought back instead become envious and jealous that attention and labor are given to them. Some called Seventh-day Adventists will act in the same suspicious, distrustful, unkind, retaliatory way, meeting others unfavorably and making the work hard for those who need help most, and those who have felt that distrust must not return it or practice it in labor for others.
He means church members who murmur because ministers go to save the lost instead of laboring constantly for the church, who want to be constantly fed with sermons and nursed while others perish, and who speak as if the church were robbed of labor it should have had. This lacks the Spirit of Christ who left the ninety-nine to seek the lost, and it is gossiping, doubting, questioning, evil surmising, jealous fault-finding selfishness that sorely displeases the Lord. It hinders ministers, keeps souls from being added, and marks those who neglected souls in peril, left them to wander and perish, drove them into snares, and will not rejoice when Christ brings them back. They act jealous and complaining of the Father's favors to the poor prodigal, whom He values as one for whom Christ died.
Seeking and Restoring Wanderers
The parable calls for earnest cooperation with God in seeking the lost sheep and winning back the prodigal. That cooperation requires having the Spirit of Christ in councils and going into the wilderness of darkness and confusion to search for straying sheep, since they can never find their way back without help. Luke 15:11-32 gives the true pattern for this work in the tender, loving, pitying care of the Father who receives repenting, returning children with the joy of an earthly father receiving a long-lost son.
Those who welcome the repentant must reflect the father's compassion and not the elder brother's jealousy, resentment, cold response, complaint, or unforgiving spirit. The erring need tenderness, pity, help, sympathy, and above all free forgiveness rather than reproach, severe judgment, cold rejection, or constant reminding of mistakes, and the parable should soften the heart toward those fallen under temptation. This is because the returning sinner already suffers in feeling and is often desponding and discouraged, while brother often deals with brother by trying to make him feel his error and magnify his faults. A harsh, unchristlike character wounds and drives away instead of welcoming, and keeps people from entering God's kingdom.
The lesson rebukes the church's failure to seek the lost and bring them into the fold, a failure that hindered efforts to reach George Lay. Many are still far from the Father's house and perishing with hunger, and they are to be treated with compassion and brought to saving knowledge of the truth. For youth the story teaches that forsaking God, the source of true pleasure, for a pleasure-loving life of sinful indulgence ends in misery and spiritual poverty, while return to the Father in penitence brings forgiveness, welcome, and restoration. Those who have left the Father's house and service are encouraged to return without delay with a humble heart, turning to God and following an enlightened conscience, as Edson's return showed renewed submission like the prodigal's. Seekers coming to the Sanitarium may likewise turn toward God when truth is lived out before them as a saving power, and people who have themselves been rescued from sin can help bring other prodigals back to the Father.
The Father's house means the Father's service, leaving the service of Satan and of sin to belong to Christ as His property bought by His blood. A thorough backslider who has given up the Sabbath for work through discouragement and temptation must therefore turn square about at once and return to the Father. Mistakes by brethren and severity toward simple errors of youthful indiscretion are no reason to grieve the heart of Christ who died to redeem him. The return requires an immediate, solemn decision before God and angels to be a Christian from that day, even at loss of position, trade, and livelihood. God then evidences pardon and love with purified thoughts, changed purposes, happiness, and thankfulness.
The returning sinner may tell God of failures and trust His welcome and help for a fresh effort. Even the poorest person who comes in repentance is met with warmth, courtesy, love, and great joy in heaven. The call to return is thus a message of love and hope that encourages the wanderer to come back rather than blaming and condemning him, for one in danger through temptation calls forth tender sympathy and earnest effort to save.
The verse pictures the elder son coming in from the field, hearing music and dancing at the house, and asking a servant what it means, only to learn that his younger brother has come home safely and his father is celebrating with a feast. The father's welcome shows God receiving the repentant sinner without reproach or accusation, as a son and not as a servant, with compassion, honor, and great joy in heaven. The elder son's questioning exposes selfishness, pride, envy, and resentment at that joyful welcome, standing apart from his father's joy with suspicion instead of kindness. His self-righteous contrast of his own service with his brother's course proves his own need of repentance, for service does not earn salvation. The parable therefore calls all to share the father's compassion rather than the elder brother's coldness, seeking the lost and welcoming the repentant with tenderness and free forgiveness.
Story and Context
The elder son is coming in from the field toward the house when he hears music and dancing, calls one of the servants to him, and asks what these things mean, and he learns that his younger brother who was thought dead has come back safe and sound and that his father has made a feast to celebrate the return. His asking with suspicion rather than kindness opens the way to jealousy and anger at the honor given to his repentant brother instead of sharing his father's joy over the lost son's return.
Before that moment the younger son had asked for his portion of the estate so he could separate his interest from his father and manage his share to suit his own inclination, bracing his selfish rebellious spirit with the thought that part of his father's property belonged to him when rightfully he could claim nothing and should have had nothing. The father complied, and the son selfishly withdrew so he would not be troubled with counsel, reproofs, advice, restraint, or mutual obligation, going far away so he might even forget he had a father, despising restraint and determined to take pleasure in any way he chose. After receiving treasure of which he was undeserving he spent all in sinful indulgence and extravagant pleasure, and when famine visited the land he felt pinching want, regretted his course, became destitute of the means he had squandered, and came down to the low business of feeding swine. Such a wayward course is bound up with indulgence and with parental failure to restrain and train children.
The prodigal also pictures those who claim to keep the commandments while transgressing the law, unthankful and unholy, flattering themselves that they are Christians while employing their entrusted talents to counterwork God, with no light in them so that their light is darkness and their influence is not unto sanctification or holiness. He likewise pictures one who through selfish indulgence becomes a ruined temple of his own making, once standing in pride with ambitious hopes and winning the richest prizes by excelling in seeking victory, then filled with self-sufficiency by praise and flattery and sunk lower and lower by the habit of wine-drinking until courage, God-given manhood, mind, and judgment are lost and he drifts under Satan's guidance and control with no power to leave the snare, and to this discouraged, sick, tempted, and fallen one Christ speaks words of tender sympathy that he needs and can understand.
The verse belongs to one of the parables told in response to criticism of association with sinners, teaching mercy and forgiveness through the father's joyful welcome of his returning son who was thought dead but is alive, whom the father sees afar off, runs to meet, and rejoices to receive. It uses facts of life and familiar experience from daily surroundings to illustrate immortal truth, showing an open spirit to the influences of nature and delight in gathering spiritual teaching from ordinary life, so that the daily task is brightened and uplifted by constant reminders of the spiritual and unseen that hold something to interest every mind and appeal to every heart and awaken sympathy. In that setting the father-and-son picture is connected with God's dealings with Israel, representing loving care for Israel, and recalling servants sent to receive the vineyard's fruit who were despised.
Father's Forgiving Welcome
The father in the story is God in His tender, loving and pitying care for those who have turned away from Him and are lost. He does not leave them in misery but is kind and tender toward those exposed to the tempter's influence. His heart yearns for the wanderer far from home, and every longing to return is the pleading of His Spirit drawing the sinner back to the Father's love. The parable itself still falls short of expressing the full measure of that love.
The music and feasting about which the servant is asked show God receiving the repentant sinner without reproach or accusation. He welcomes him as a son and not as a servant, restoring him with honor, compassion, warmth, courtesy, love, and a place at the Father's table, with great joy in heaven over his return. He clothes the returning one with righteousness, forgives him, and does not hold the forgiven sin against him. He rejoices that the erring one has returned and recognized his need, pitying, loving and forgiving him.
This welcome rests on infinite love shown in the gift of the beloved Son for the fallen race, which has made a channel for the outflow of that love so that all who believe may be restored again to favor. That infinite love in Jesus as the sacrifice gives a solid foundation for faith, and believing on Him leads to obedience to all of God's commandments and to life in Jesus Christ. It pictures God's boundless love in assuming humanity in the person of His Son and making propitiation for the sins of the whole world. It shows the amazing sacrifice made for the lost and the labor and energy Heaven expends to reclaim them and bring them back to the Father's house.
God works with loving concern to bring back those who have known the Father's love but have been led away, and when they repent He receives them. Any sinner who comes in repentance can expect to be received and forgiven with love, and one who turns with full decision of soul is accepted. Though long separated and serving sin and the flesh and the devil for poor wages, he is still met even now when he comes, ready to be accepted and pardoned of all transgressions and cleansed from sin as he lays hold on Christ. Christ's message of mercy to such an erring one is Come, for all things are now ready that he may have life, and he must turn and live and not neglect this work or flatter himself with false hopes lest he perish in his sins and die.
The welcome is freely given, but to enjoy a son's privileges one must meet the conditions of sonship. This means meeting God on His own ground with cordial assent and willing obedience, renouncing the favor and friendship of the world and making Christ all and in all, receiving Him as Saviour and obeying His word and living under the Father's authority. The return means unreserved surrender and the gift of the whole life, not giving money alone where no effort is required, but consenting to accept a son's obligations. The son's place in the family is restored, yet claiming its privileges requires remaining under the father's care, submitting to control, obeying direction, denying self, taking up the cross, and making personal effort and self-denial. Like the found sheep remaining under the shepherd's care in the fold and repaying his love by remaining instead of renewing its wanderings, the returned wanderer must remain, for refusing submission is continuing in disobedience and stepping to the devil's side is falling into the devil's hands.
Elder Brother's Resentment
Coming in from the field he hears music and dancing at the house, calls a servant and asks what these things mean, and learns that his younger brother has come home safe and his father has made a feast to celebrate. His question exposes selfishness, pride, envy, jealousy, anger and resentment at his father's joyful welcome, for instead of sharing the father's joy he stands apart from it and meets the news with complaint. He feels insulted by the honor given to the repentant one, asks with suspicion and distrust rather than kindness and tenderness, and stands by stubborn and complaining while his brother is still struggling to return. That complaining answer was natural but not right, and the returning sinner already suffers in feeling and is often desponding and discouraged.
As brother often deals with brother, he watches to criticize and accuse of every fault, magnifies faults, tries to make the erring feel where they have erred, and keeps reminding them of their mistakes. His spirit toward the struggling one is indifference, contempt, coldness, suspicion, dislike, careless disregard and retaliation, refusing to forgive as the father forgives and refusing to help bring the wanderer back. Such a fault-finding and complaining spirit spoils his service even when he bears hardships and burdens. It stands opposite the true Shepherd, who goes after the lost sheep, calls the distressed to return, heals backsliding, loves freely, and rejoices with all heaven when the lost is found.
He feels his own course righteous, supposes he has been faithful in home duties and needs no repentance, contrasts his conduct with the prodigal's, and cannot sympathize with the father's joy in receiving the wanderer. He counts long service and hardship as earning a greater reward and resents goodness shown to others, for service does not earn salvation. By this selfish unwillingness to receive his repenting brother and rejoice at his return he proves his own need of repentance. By accusing his brethren he places himself where he cannot receive God's favor.
His response belongs to the portrayal of unrepenting Israel, which refused to recognize publicans and sinners as brothers who should be sought, forgiven, and led to everlasting life. He represents people who need salvation themselves yet look on a struggling soul with contempt, established believers and handlers of sacred things who resent attention and labor given to wandering people and new converts and fail to help them. Those who should rejoice when wandering people are brought back instead become envious and jealous that attention and labor are given to them. Some called Seventh-day Adventists will act in the same suspicious, distrustful, unkind, retaliatory way, meeting others unfavorably and making the work hard for those who need help most, and those who have felt that distrust must not return it or practice it in labor for others.
He means church members who murmur because ministers go to save the lost instead of laboring constantly for the church, who want to be constantly fed with sermons and nursed while others perish, and who speak as if the church were robbed of labor it should have had. This lacks the Spirit of Christ who left the ninety-nine to seek the lost, and it is gossiping, doubting, questioning, evil surmising, jealous fault-finding selfishness that sorely displeases the Lord. It hinders ministers, keeps souls from being added, and marks those who neglected souls in peril, left them to wander and perish, drove them into snares, and will not rejoice when Christ brings them back. They act jealous and complaining of the Father's favors to the poor prodigal, whom He values as one for whom Christ died.
Seeking and Restoring Wanderers
The parable calls for earnest cooperation with God in seeking the lost sheep and winning back the prodigal. That cooperation requires having the Spirit of Christ in councils and going into the wilderness of darkness and confusion to search for straying sheep, since they can never find their way back without help. Luke 15:11-32 gives the true pattern for this work in the tender, loving, pitying care of the Father who receives repenting, returning children with the joy of an earthly father receiving a long-lost son.
Those who welcome the repentant must reflect the father's compassion and not the elder brother's jealousy, resentment, cold response, complaint, or unforgiving spirit. The erring need tenderness, pity, help, sympathy, and above all free forgiveness rather than reproach, severe judgment, cold rejection, or constant reminding of mistakes, and the parable should soften the heart toward those fallen under temptation. This is because the returning sinner already suffers in feeling and is often desponding and discouraged, while brother often deals with brother by trying to make him feel his error and magnify his faults. A harsh, unchristlike character wounds and drives away instead of welcoming, and keeps people from entering God's kingdom.
The lesson rebukes the church's failure to seek the lost and bring them into the fold, a failure that hindered efforts to reach George Lay. Many are still far from the Father's house and perishing with hunger, and they are to be treated with compassion and brought to saving knowledge of the truth. For youth the story teaches that forsaking God, the source of true pleasure, for a pleasure-loving life of sinful indulgence ends in misery and spiritual poverty, while return to the Father in penitence brings forgiveness, welcome, and restoration. Those who have left the Father's house and service are encouraged to return without delay with a humble heart, turning to God and following an enlightened conscience, as Edson's return showed renewed submission like the prodigal's. Seekers coming to the Sanitarium may likewise turn toward God when truth is lived out before them as a saving power, and people who have themselves been rescued from sin can help bring other prodigals back to the Father.
The Father's house means the Father's service, leaving the service of Satan and of sin to belong to Christ as His property bought by His blood. A thorough backslider who has given up the Sabbath for work through discouragement and temptation must therefore turn square about at once and return to the Father. Mistakes by brethren and severity toward simple errors of youthful indiscretion are no reason to grieve the heart of Christ who died to redeem him. The return requires an immediate, solemn decision before God and angels to be a Christian from that day, even at loss of position, trade, and livelihood. God then evidences pardon and love with purified thoughts, changed purposes, happiness, and thankfulness.
The returning sinner may tell God of failures and trust His welcome and help for a fresh effort. Even the poorest person who comes in repentance is met with warmth, courtesy, love, and great joy in heaven. The call to return is thus a message of love and hope that encourages the wanderer to come back rather than blaming and condemning him, for one in danger through temptation calls forth tender sympathy and earnest effort to save.