The wastrel son represents the ‘tax collectors and sinners” with whom Jesus seemed to so often surround Himself and the older son speaks of the ‘Pharisees and Scribes’ who grumbled at the way Jesus ‘receives sinners and eats with them’! All this is in Luke’s gospel chapter fifteen. Everything in this story hinges upon the promised inheritance which the Father wished to bountiful share with His sons. What an inheritance of possessions had been promised of God to His sons the children of Israel! A land of promise that drinks the rain from heaven, a place where each would possess his possessions, every man sitting under his vine and under his fig-tree. A place where none were barren, where knowledge of God through the grace of His law, the sacrifices He had provided and priesthood He had established were to be enjoyed by all from the least to the greatest. Amazing inheritance, “ O Israel, what nation is like thee”! Was the gladsome confession of Moses. “Lift up your eyes and see, all this I give thee” was the word to the father of the nation Abraham.
Yet what did these sons of Abraham the man of faith and friend of God do? Multitudes of them, by the time Jesus was amongst them had taken the path of the wastrel son, turning the wondrous inheritance of their heavenly Father into merchandise, the possession of their souls prostituted to that which leads, in the end, to the pig-sty. Others had stayed at home, like the Pharisees and Scribes, turning all the wonders of the place of streams and rivers, of fruitfulness of soul into a cold legal code where they lived more comfortable in fellowship with the servile ideas, so near and yet so far in heart from the Father. It is all there in the parable. Read it again, refresh your memory and be humbled before the love of our Father. What have I done with this wondrous inheritance that my Heavenly Father has granted me. ‘In patience, possess ye your souls”. “Behold I will give you a new heart wherein all my law and ways shall be written. You shall live in the freshness of the out-flowing of His Spirit ever proceeding from above; this is your inheritance”! Have I turned it into merchandise, is this the way some of us in the churches treat the treasures of His? The young son turned all into cash and squandered it till he had nothing save the memory of his father and the instinct toward home.
Or, are we those who have codified the rich inheritance into a neat belief system corroborated by obedient adherence to the abstractions of the truth we have laboriously extracted rejoicing in our correctness of belief like those who might spend time examining that the ‘ancient landmarks’ are still in their proper places! Remember that they were not to be moved, the inheritance was to be kept secure, protected and not moved. We know the young son returned, ‘re-instated in the Father’s love”. At home in the bounty of the house, clothed, feted, rejoiced in, his soul now drinking at the fountain in the house and feeding upon that which the father had made sure was fatted and sufficient for the appetite of all. Happy home from which no more to depart! He had been dead, so says the Father. Indeed, we know it to be true. It is not true that he was now made ‘alive again’. He had never been truly alive. I think you will find in Luke fifteen Jesus never used the word ‘again’. In fact He says that the Father said to the older son, “ your brother was dead and is NOW alive”! Part of the challenge of the story lies with the unanswered question, did the older son respond to the Father’s loving pleadings or did he remain outside in the servitude which is ever part and parcel of living by the letter?
The book of Acts provides a partial answer, some of those Scribes and Pharisees who heard Jesus’ story must have been amongst those who became obedient to the faith, those who began to possess the gracious bounty of their Father. They are mentioned in the narrative of Acts but that also shows us that they did not always find it easy. Be that as it may, what of my heart and soul, is it becoming a place which drinks the rain from heaven and is becoming fruitful unto God my Father in repentance from dead works, faith towards God and the righteousness which is through the faith of Him? Here is a little, which is in fact a lot to ponder upon.
