Imagine driving down a narrow road with deep ditches on either side. Which ditch is better to fall into? Do you prefer the ditch on the left? Would you rather crash into the ditch on the right? Either way, you are off the road and suffering harm.
Reading in Luke 15, we see the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. God loves to find wayward sinners and bring them home. We know. We see it. We rejoice in it.
But sometimes we fail to remember that these parables are spoken to a dual audience—two kinds of people in the group. And those two remind us of two ditches we can fall into if we are not careful.
Luke 15:1–3
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable:
If we miss the impetus behind the telling of these 3 parables, we will miss a major lesson from the Lord. Jesus had the religious and the rebellious sitting around him. And in the light of that setting, Jesus spoke 3 parables that offered grace to the rebellious and brought conviction to the religious.
Of course, the rebellious needed to hear these parables. People who had lived far from the ways of God, far from the standards of God, needed to know that forgiveness was possible for them. Sinners needed to know that they were not automatically lost forever without hope. The rebels needed to grasp that they could return to the Lord and find pardon for sin and relationship with the God who made them. The Savior gave a glimpse of the beauty of the gospel.
But think about the end of each of the 3 parables. With the sheep and the coin, Jesus tells us that there is rejoicing in heaven over the righteous who repent. At the end of the parable of the lost son, something else is going on. The rebellious prodigal has returned home. The loving father has forgiven him and thrown a party. But the older son, the supposedly faithful son, was angry.
When the father goes to the angry older son to invite him into the party, the elder son shows his true colors. The elder compares himself to the younger and accuses his father of treating him unfairly. The father, for his part, reminds the elder son that he has always welcomed his older son to all that the father has, but the father will celebrate the return of the repentant son.
What is chilling in the parable is this: We have no conclusion. We do not see the elder son see the light, embrace the father, and enter the celebration. Instead, the elder son is left standing outside and seething. Will he receive the same grace as his brother? Will he refuse it because he cannot stand being thought of as needing it?
The beauty of the parable is that the rebellious son, seeing his condition, remembering the father, runs home and finds forgiveness. In our world, there are rebellious folks. There are people who wreck their lives with acts that God has forbidden. How glorious is it that God would welcome such people when they let go of their rebellion and fall upon his grace? This is gospel, good news. This is how the grace of God in Christ works.
And how perfectly wise is this parable? There are other folks in the world who think they are good. They may be the religious. They may just be the supposedly moral. They are certainly the people who think that they need very little by way of forgiveness. And so long as a person thinks he can make it on his own, so long as she thinks she has earned better from God than what she has received, the supposedly good stand outside of relationship with God, outside of grace, outside of gospel.
Which do you more resemble: the religious or the rebellious? If you remain as either, you are in trouble. Rebellious ones, turn and run to Jesus. The Lord will forgive you. Religious ones, moral goodie-goodies, run too. Do not turn from following the ways of God. These are good things. But do run from self-reliance. Do run from feelings of superiority. Learn to be like your Lord, embracing grace, celebrating repentance, and rejoicing in the gospel. Religious or rebellious, you need the same amount of new life in Christ. Praise God that he loves to give it to those who will turn to him in faith.
Pastor Travis Peterson 