We have all heard the biblical story of the Prodigal Son. The
younger of a man's two sons asked his father to give him what he would receive
after the father died. Apparently this father was a very trusting man. Also,
apparently the younger son had a rebellious nature. The younger son would have been an embarrassment to the family for
what he did.
The father thought about it and decided his sons could
have their inheritance now, and he split it
evenly between them. "The prodigal and any male siblings would have split
the inheritance accordingly: 50% for the firstborn. The rest was split evenly
among the remaining sons."[1]
In this case, since there were only two sons, the younger son received the same
amount as the "first born son".
Since the father refers to the son as
being dead, does that mean he sat Shiva[2]
for him? Today, in the Jewish community,
a family will "sit Shiva" in mourning for a loved one who died, and
as rejection of a family member who was to be rejected for some reason (meaning
the person was dead to them). This is sometimes done by families whose child
receives Yeshua (the Messiah) as their Lord and Savior.
It doesn't cost
anything to receive a gift. But what we need to realize is that there is always
someone who has paid for that gift. Jesus paid for our gift of salvation. The
Prodigal Son story illustrates the fact that "You can never out sin the
Grace of God"[3].
12 things you need to know about the
Prodigal Son
Italics are mine
- not the authors.
"In Catholicism, on
the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the gospel reading is the famous parable of the
"prodigal son."It is a moving story that teaches us about God's love for us and his willingness to forgive us no matter what we have done.
But there is more to the story than meets the eye . . . much more.
Here are 12 things you need to know.
1. What does "prodigal" mean?
The word "prodigal" is mysterious to us. Almost the only
time we ever hear it is in the title of this parable.It's basic meaning is "wasteful"--particularly with regard to money.
It comes from Latin roots that mean "forth" (pro-) and "to drive" (agere). It indicates the quality of a person who drives forth his money--who wastes it by spending with reckless abandon.
That's what the prodigal son does in this story.
2. Why does Jesus tell this parable?
This question is answered at the beginning of Luke 15, where we
read:[1] Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him [Jesus]. [2] And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." [3] So he told them this parable . . .
Actually, Jesus tells three parables:
- The parable of the lost sheep
- The parable of the lost coin
- The parable of the lost son (or, as we know it,
the parable of the prodigal son)
Interestingly, the parable of the prodigal son (and the parable of the lost coin) occur only in Luke.
3. What's happening in the parable?
Jesus' parables are based on real-life situations, though they often veer off from the expected course of events in surprising ways. Those surprises teach us lessons.
Here, Jesus relates the situation of a father who has two sons, one of whom can't wait for his inheritance.
In Jewish society, there were laws regarding how inheritances were typically divided. The oldest brother got a double share (cf. Deut. 21:17), while the other brothers got a single share.
When there were two brothers (as here), the older brother would get 2/3rds of the estate, and the younger brother would get 1/3rd. In this case, the Bible says it was divided evenly.
4. What is the prodigal son asking for?
In this parable, the younger son demands "the share of
property that falls to me" (v. 12).That means he is asking for the 1/3rd (1/2) of the father's possessions that he would ordinarily get when the father dies.
Think about that.
He's asking his father to give him 1/3rd (1/2) of everything that he owns right now, before the father is dead, when his father would still have use for these possessions.
How many fathers would receive that suggestion well today? How many would comply with it if one of their children asked it?
Not many!
This is a truly astonishing request, and it would have been even more astonishing in the ancient world.
In a society that highly reverenced parents, it would have been equivalent to saying: "Father, I can't even wait for you to die. Give me 1/3rd (1/2) of everything you have right now."
5. What does the father's reaction teach us?
Despite the breathtaking--and insulting--audacity
of the younger son's request, the
father grants it!Amazing!
This reflects the amazing indulgence that God shows toward us. Even when we are acting as selfishly as the prodigal son, God indulges us.
He yields what is his and allows us to misuse it out of respect for the freedom that he has given us.
But he knows that the misuse of our freedom will have no better results than it did with the prodigal son's misuse of his freedom, and God trusts that we will learn our lesson and come back to him.
6. What does the prodigal son do next?
After he gets 1/3rd (1/2)
of his father's estate, he takes everything he has and goes "into a
far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living"
(v. 13).In context, this means that he abandoned the
He wanted to get out of God's land so that he could live in sin and fund his sinful lifestyle by what he took from his father.
But eventually the resources he had were exhausted and a hard time came.
If he had not spent what he had on loose living (as we will later learn, on prostitutes), he would have had the money he needed to weather the hard time, but he didn't.
Thus he was reduced to a state of hunger and had to subject himself to a pagan (humiliation #1) and to feed the pagan's pigs (humiliation #2).
He would have been happy just to eat as well as the pigs (humiliation #3), but nobody gave him anything to eat, not even from the pigs' slop (humiliation #4).
Having been brought to such a low state, he recalled how his righteous father treated even his hired servants better: "How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger!" (v. 17).
He thus plans to return to his father and say three things:
(a) "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you" (v. 18),
(b) "I am no longer worthy to be called your son" (v. 19a),
(c) "treat me as one of your hired servants" (v. 19b).
Even being treated as one of his father's hired servants would be better than the treatment he is receiving in the gentile world.
7. What do the actions of the prodigal son
teach us?
They teach us the depths to which our own misuse of freedom will
bring us.If we are bent on leaving God, things will go badly for us. We will be humiliated in the uncaring world.
The farther we get from the Father's loving care, the worse off we will be, and our best course is to return to God and his forgiveness.
8. What does the father do next?
When the prodigal son returns to his father, something significant
happens.While he is still at a distance, the father sees him, has compassion upon him, runs to him, hugs him, and kisses him.
This is far from the humiliating reunion that the son might expect based on his previous audacious and insulting treatment of his father!
The returning son must have been astonished!
But he continues by beginning to recite his pre-scripted speech to his father, and he manages to get the first two parts of it out. He says:
(a) "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you" (v. 21a),
(b) "I am no longer worthy to be called your son" (v. 21b).
But before he can say the third part--before he can ask to be treated merely as a servant--the father interrupts things and takes them in a very different direction.
Rather than treating his younger son as a mere servant, he turns to the actual servants and orders a celebration.
9. What do the actions of the father teach us?
The first lesson is that the father will not treat a son as
a hired servant. The younger son is still a
son!As a result, his return is something to be celebrated!
He is to wear a fancy robe! A fancy ring! Shoes! There is to be a fancy feast for everyone! There is to be music and dancing!
Why?
Because "This my son was dead, and is alive again" and "He was lost, and is found."
This shows us God's reaction when we return from being lost in sin.
He doesn't begrudge us what we have done. He doesn't take us back reluctantly.
Like the father in the parable, he takes us back joyously! Eagerly!
But this is not all there is to the story . . .
10. What does the older brother do next?
There is usually at least one major lesson per parable for each
major figure in it, and now we come to the lesson that the older brother can
teach us.He didn't demand his inheritance. He stayed faithful to his father. And now he is angry.
Why should his younger, wasteful, sinful brother receive such a reception by their father?
The older brother is so angry that he refuses to go inside and join the party.
Naturally, his father hears about it and comes to talk to him.
When that happens, we discover that he's not just angry with his brother, he's angry with his father, too.
He points out that he has never disobeyed his father's commands but that his father has never given him a kid (a young goat) so that he could slaughter it and have a party with his friends.
In contrast, the younger brother has "devoured your living with harlots" (wasting a third (1/2) of the father's estate!), but when he comes back "the fatted calf" (that is, the best, most tender and delicious animal, specially raised to be so) is killed!
The older brother sees this difference in treatment as a manifest injustice toward him and is angry with his father because of it.
As we will see, he even seems to be worrying about his own security in the family since the father is showing such seeming favoritism to the younger son.
11. What does the father do?
The father tells the son three things.First, he tells him: "Son, you are always with me." This seems to be a reassurance to the elder son that he has not lost his place in the family. His place is secure.
Second, he tells him: "and all that is mine is yours." This is because the division of property has already taken place. The younger son took his third (half), so the two-thirds (other half) that remain(s) will go entirely to the older son.
This means that the current celebration does not represent a threat to the older brother or his inheritance. Instead, it is a celebration of joy occasioned by the return of the son.
Thus the father thirdly tells him: "It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'"
12. What are the spiritual lessons for us?
From
this parable we can draw a number of spiritual lessons:
We can
be a genuine son of the Father--who is spiritually "alive"--and be
"lost" through sin. We can turn our backs on our heavenly Father and
leave him of our own free will. Mortal sin is a real possibility. Jesus said that those the Father has given
Him, can not be taken away. So the question is, were you really Born Again?
Mortal
sin inevitably lands us in a far worse state than we were in originally.
We can,
however, return to the Father and be accepted by him with great joy. In
fact, he is ready and eager to accept us back and forgive us, no matter what
we've done. If you have been Born Again.
Christians
who have never fallen should not resent those who come back. They should share
in their Father's joy.
Their
own place is secure and their heavenly reward is not threatened. God loves them
just as much as he loves those who come back through a dramatic conversion."[4]
"Only
recently, however, have I begun to discover that the older son in Jesus' story
is every bit as lost as the younger one. In his book The Prodigal God,
Timothy Keller points out that the two brothers represent the two basic ways
people try to make life work. The younger son pursues
"self-discovery"—he's on a quest to find and fulfill himself, even if
a few people have to get hurt along the way. The older brother is committed to
a more socially respectable way of being in the world—the way of "moral
conformity." He's on a program of self-salvation, earning the approval of
his community and the favor of his father; when he feels the terms of this deal
are violated, his good attitude evaporates into resentment.
Kenneth Bailey is a theologian who spent
40 years living in the Middle East, striving to resituate Jesus' stories in
their original Palestinian (Palestinian
Arabic is the language of the "Palestinians, the word Palestinian used here
is a mistake - it should say Aramaic[5]")
context. He points out that for Jesus' audience, respect for one's father is
paramount; the younger son's request for his inheritance from a still-healthy
patriarch constitutes an unthinkable offense. It amounts to saying, "I
wish you were dead. But the older son's conduct—refusing to join the party for
his brother and arguing with his dad in front of the guests—is no less
egregious. Hospitality was of supreme value in 1st-century Palestine
(Israel - There was no such thing as Palestine
The
story of the vineyard workers[7]
amounts to the same feelings as the other son. Some were not satisfied, because
they worked longer for the same end result. The
Prodigal's coming home celebration was for both sons, because of the redemption
of the younger. The Jewish nation, even though it is the 'apple of God's eye' today,
will be redeemed in the last days. There will be 144,000 young Jewish men
preaching the salvation of Jesus during the Tribulation.
"We don't have to receive what we
deserve if we will accept what we don't deserve."[8] The Prodigal Son
received what he didn't deserve. the workers in the vineyard for one hour
received what they didn't deserve. We have received the Mercy and Grace of God,
when we receive the salvation available through Christ, when we accept Jesus as
our Lord and Savior, although we don't deserve it.
I have always heard that the father in
the story is representative of our Heavenly Father. I beg to differ with that.
To me, the father in the story represents forgiveness in an earthly manner. " If ye then, being evil,
know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father
which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"[9]
The father
in the story did not send anyone to seek out his lost son. He waited at home
while he declared his son to be dead. Although I believe it had to have been
the Holy Spirit who drew the son back to his father, the Lord did not send His
Son to pay the price for the prodigal sons sins. The story does tell the value
of being able to humble yourself and beg for forgiveness. "If my people,
which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my
face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will
forgive their sin, and will heal their land."[10] " For God so loved
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life For God sent not
his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him
might be saved. He that
believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned
already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of
God."[11] "That if thou
shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart
that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved. For with the
heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation. For the
scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
For there
is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is
rich unto all that call upon him."[12] As you can see, the Lord has provision for nations as well as
individuals.
"Now may the
God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may
abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Spirit."[13]
[1] Rabbi
Harvey Cohen
[2] Shiva is the week long period of mourning
following a loved one's death. During this time, family members traditionally
gather in one home to receive visitors. The word “shiva” means seven,
signifying the seven day mourning period in which mourners are supposed to sit low to the ground.
[3] David
Jeremiah
[5] Aramaic (אַרָמָיָא Arāmāyā,
Syriac: ܐܪܡܝܐ) is a language or group of languages belonging to the Semitic subfamily of
the Afroasiatic language family.
More specifically, it is part of the Northwest Semitic group, which also
includes the Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician.
Wikipedia
[6] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/february/prodigal-son.html
[7] Matthew
20:1-16
[9] Matthew
7:11
[10] 2
Chronicles 7:14
[11] John
3:16-18
[12] Romans
10:9-12
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