Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Lost and Found, Part 35 of 78
TEXT: "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants." ' And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' And they began to be merry" (Luke 15:17-24).
IDEA: Repentance is the result of seeing the Father’s public demonstration of love in humiliation.
PURPOSE: To demonstrate to the listener that repentance doesn’t earn God’s love; it responds to God’s love.
One important clue to reading the stories in the Bible is to look at the conversations people have with one another and note any changes if the conversation is repeated to someone else.
For example, in Genesis 3:1-2, Eve has a conversation with Satan in which she repeats God’s word to Adam in Genesis 2:17. She adds “you must not touch it.”
Listen again to the story of the prodigal son. Listen to what the young man planned to say when he was longing to go home. Then listen to what he actually said when his father ran to meet him and smothered him with kisses. Read it in Luke 15: 17-24.
Repentance means “to change your mind.” But not any change of mind is necessarily repentance.
In the far country the young man thought about how much better the servants in his father’s house had it than he did. He regretted the consequences of what he had done. Is that necessarily wrong?
The young man had gone back home willing to be a hired hand, but he changed his mind and left that out of his little speech after he had seen the public display of his father’s love in humiliation:
The father ran to him.
The father smothered him with kisses.
Why did he change his mind? What are the ramifications of his decision to change what he planned to say?
He had come back home with a common understanding of repentance:
For the rabbis and many others, repentance is a work that we must do to win God’s favor.
He is shattered by his father’s public display of love in humiliation. His father has taken the shame of the encounter on himself.
Given his state of apprehension and fear, how do you think his father’s actions affected him?
He realizes that he can’t offer anything to establish an ongoing relationship with his father. The problem was not that he had squandered the money in a Gentile country. The problem is a broken relationship that he cannot heal:
Any new relationship must be a gift from his father. The offender can offer no solution.
He realizes that his assumption that he can compensate his father with his work is an insult.
“I have sinned . . . I am unworthy”—this is the only appropriate response he can make.
D. O. Via (The Parables p. 174) noted that the boy underwent a significant change at the edge of the village. “Only when the event of forgiveness occurred and shattered his own view of things did his understanding change . . . Natural man’s legalistic understanding of the divine-human relationship is shattered only by the unexpected event of forgiveness which comes to him from beyond himself.”
Godet (St. Luke, p. 154), “There is a wide difference between the confession uttered by the prodigal son, verse 21, and that which had been extracted from him by the extremity of his misery (vv 18, 19). There was a cry of despair; but now his distress is over. It is therefore the cry of repentant love. The terms are the same, I have sinned; but how different is the accent. Luther felt it profoundly; the discovery of the difference of the repentance of fear and that of love was the true principle of the Reformation. He cannot come to the end; the very assurance of pardon prevents him from finishing and saying, ‘make me as . . .’ according to his first purpose.”
Repentance comes as a result of knowing God’s love for you and the pain He endures to bring you to Himself. It is a profound “change of mind” about what you can do to make things right with God.
