In our Gospel reading the younger brother and the older
brother appear to be quite different from one another. The younger brother is
irresponsible. He squandered the wealth that he had received from his father.
He did not worry about income and expenses. All he worried about was having a
good time. The older brother stayed at home. He lived responsibly. He continued
to work for his father. You don’t hear about any money troubles with him.
Outwardly, therefore, the two brothers are very different.
Jesus is deliberate in framing this story in just this way,
because it suits his purposes at the time. At the beginning of this chapter
Luke says that all the tax collectors and sinners were coming to hear Jesus.
The Pharisees and experts in the Law were complaining, “This man welcomes
sinners and eats with them.” These two groups of people corresponds to the
younger and the older brother. The tax collectors and sinners lived a very
different life than the Pharisees and experts in the Law. The tax collectors
and sinners were obviously irresponsible. The Pharisees and scribes were
responsible.
Since we are so familiar with this parable and we know how
the story ends, it is easy for us to miss the valid concern of these Pharisees.
We already know the moral of the story—that everybody gets forgiven, that
everybody gets saved by grace—and so we don’t notice the scandal. The scandal
is that Jesus is being kind and generous to people who don’t deserve it. These
people who were coming to him and eating with him were not sinners in name
only. They were real sinners. They hurt people. Perhaps they hurt friends and
loved ones of some of the Pharisees and scribes. The Pharisees and scribes
didn’t hurt people. They did what was right.
To help the Pharisees and scribes, especially, Jesus tells this
parable. He teaches them about the Law and the Gospel using picture language.
Let’s deal with the Law first. The way that the Law works is that if you do
good, then good things will happen to you. If you do evil, then harm will come
upon you. The younger brother did evil things. When he is brought into poverty,
misery, and loneliness, he is only getting the punishment that he deserves. The
older brother did what was right. Good things should have (and probably did)
come to him—we can see that, perhaps, in how he did not experience the
difficulties of his younger brother.
At the heart of the parable, though, is that the Law doesn’t
seem to be working the way that the older brother thinks it should. The younger
brother ends up being accepted by the father. The younger brother ends up
getting good things, even though he had not done good things. This is not how
the Law works. It is a contradiction like dry water or an impossible
mathematical sum. Remember how on those old calculators if you did something
that the calculator couldn’t compute it said “EE?” That’s what’s going on here.
The Law is being contradicted because good things are happening to someone who
has done evil things.
The Gospel is quite different than the Law. The Law says,
“Do this!” and it’s never done. The Gospel says, “Believe this!” and it is done
already. The Gospel does not threaten or squeeze or give tit for tat. The
Gospel gives. It does not look for someone who is worthy. It gives to those who
are unworthy, thereby making them worthy.
In the parable this is shown by all the father’s actions.
When the father sees his son afar off he hitches up his robe and starts
a-running. That’s not something that old men do very often. It does not say
that he opens up his arms and says, “Give me a hug, son.” Instead it says that
the old man fell on his son’s neck. This is not a “keep your distance, let’s
see how this turns out” kind of thing. This is a full and free giving of the
father to the son. Nothing is held back.
Then the father goes all out: He orders that the best robe
be taken out—maybe we would speak of a tuxedo today, to kind of get the idea,
but that’s not altogether correct either because we can rent tuxedos. “Go get
the clothes that are really nice and really expensive.” Meanwhile the son is
standing there, skin and bones, in rags. “Put some sandals on his feet. Go get
that ring, that family heirloom, and put it on his finger. Go kill that
corn-fed calf that we’ve been saving for a special occasion. Here is my son,
whom I love. He was lost, but is found. He was dead, but, behold, he lives.”
Horse sense says that the father’s actions are not very
prudent. Anybody with common sense knows that the son should be put on some
kind of probation. Otherwise, what’s to stop him from heading off to the pawn
shop that night, getting some cash, and doing it all over again? But the Gospel
is altogether different than the Law. With the Law you get what you deserve. According
to the Law this younger son could still, perhaps, have some good coming his
way, but he’s going to have to earn it. As the saying goes, “Trust is not just
given, it is earned.” This is precisely what the father is not doing. He trusts his son and loads him up despite his many and
grievous sins. The older sees this. He’s upset.
So what is the older son’s problem? What is he failing to
understand? Obviously he does not understand and rejects the Gospel. He is
against the father being gracious to his brother. But not understanding the
Gospel is not his only problem. He also does not truly understand the Law
either, which is not surprising. The correct understanding of the Law and the
Gospel go together. If you do not rightly understand the Law, then you won’t
rightly understand the Gospel either, and vice versa.
So let’s speak about the older son’s false understanding of
the Law. There is a superficial understanding of the Law that says if you don’t
murder, if you don’t physically sleep with someone, then you are good to go.
You are a good person. You certainly aren’t like those child molesters and
slave owners and tax collectors. But God has a higher standard of righteousness
than mere outward conformity. Jesus speaks to this in his Sermon on the Mount.
He says that you have broken the fifth commandment, not just when you have
pulled the trigger. It’s not the finger’s fault when someone is murdered, it’s
the evil heart—the core of man—that drives the actions. Therefore you have
broken the fifth commandment with you anger. So also with adultery. Maybe you
can restrain yourself outwardly, but what about the fire burning within?
The world and our reason say that the outward conformity is
good enough. So long as you restrain yourself outwardly with your actions, it
doesn’t matter what you might feel inwardly. Hypocrisy is good enough. This is
the standard of judgment that is used to set apart the good from the bad. The
good manage to live responsibly. The bad live irresponsibly. This is the way
that all people naturally think.
The Scriptures speak differently. God does not just look at
the outward appearance. He looks at the heart. When he looks at the heart he
does not see goodness and truth. He sees a foul, wicked heart. Such a person is
deserving of punishment. God said, “In the day that you eat of it, you will
surely die.” Paul says, “The wages of sin is death.” When you quit
being superficial with your judgments you will see that all people have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God. The Bible says, “No one is righteous,
no not even one!”
Accordingly, apart from the atonement of Christ’s cross,
apart from the reconciliation that Jesus works between sinners and a righteous
God, all people would be doomed to hell. At this point a lot of people like to
sputter and scoff: “Well, if God’s like that, then I don’t want to have anything
to do with him,” and so on and so forth. Too bad. He’s the God you have, and
there is none other. If you want to accuse him of being mean, then go right
ahead. You aren’t going to hurt his feelings.
Instead of thinking that you know better than God does, you
would be much better off believing what he says and fearing his punishment. The
biggest difference between the younger brother and the older brother is that
the younger brother has been humbled. He has nothing left. He is lost. He is
dead. There’s nothing that he can do. The older brother is proud. Punishment is
the furthest thing from his mind.
But the parable reveals that he actually should fear
punishment, for he deserves it. His evil heart spills over in his words to his
father, who encourages him to come into the feast. The older brother hates his
younger brother. He wishes him evil rather than good. He also hates his father.
He thinks his father is a fool who will be hoodwinked by his brother. If he
were able, he would like to rip his father from his position and have himself
installed instead.
I ask you, what is squandering your inheritance compared to
hating your father and your brother? The greater sinner is this blind,
hypocritical, but outwardly upstanding older brother. So it will be on judgment
day too. Those who have lived openly wild and rebellious lives will not be so
surprised that they are going to hell. It will be those who thought that they
were good people, who somewhat denied their passions, who lived relatively
responsible lives, who will hate God with a loathing that is only surpassed by
the devil himself. If they were able, they’d like to rip God from his throne
and be installed instead as the one who has the proper knowledge of good and
evil.
What is needed for this older brother is to quit being a
smug hypocrite. This is, in fact, what all people need. That younger son needed
it too, and it came in the form of a famine. This is what Jesus was doing with
his preaching and teaching. Jesus did not neglect the Law, as Christians imagine
they can get away with today. These tax collectors and sinners were smug
hypocrites too until God’s standard for righteousness was held up to them and
they saw that they deserved God’s punishment. The Gospel cannot be believed by
people who are smug. They will prefer holding on to the fantasy of their own
righteousness rather than only clinging to the cross of Christ alone as their
justification before God.
But I do not believe that all of you are smug. Some of you
know that you deserve God’s punishment now in this life and eternally in hell.
Some of you know how you have squandered and perverted the good things that
your heavenly father has given to you, and you look back on your life or the
past week with regret. I don’t want you to be deprived of one of the most
moving and informative pictures of the Gospel in all the Scriptures. The father
whole heartedly accepts this sinner. So also God whole heartedly receives you.
We who have soiled ourselves have a hard time believing that it can be so. That
is why it is so necessary to preach this. If it were a matter of going on
probation, of making it up to God, of being his slave instead of his son—that
we can understand and accept, but that is not the way that God is.
This is why we have God’s gift of preaching. Jesus is still
active. He searches out his lost sheep. He does this through all those who make
his Word and will known. By the preaching and testimony of Christians the Holy
Spirit converts people so that they do not hold on to silly fantasies that cannot
save them, but rather to their heavenly Father who loves them—their heavenly
Father who has made things right by his all-availing sacrifice of Christ’s body
and blood on the cross.
One Christian writer described the nature of the Gospel
ministry that has been given to all Christians in a memorable way. He said that
we Christians are like beggars who tell other beggars where they can get some
good bread. It has pleased God that I should be called to serve you as your
pastor these past ten years. In the course of my work, there are a lot of
things I have to say. There are a lot of things I have to teach. But all of it
is for the sake of telling you that I, as a beggar, know where there’s some
good stuff. God’s gifts of salvation are here for you. It pleases me when
people think of their heavenly Father with the images of this parable—of the
Father falling upon your neck, the Father receiving and even honoring you. This
is not just some wish on my part, but the way it really is, for Jesus has made
it so. God has humbled you. Now he exalts you. See to it, though, that you do
not look down on your fellow beggars. Point them in the right direction
instead.
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