Jesus: The King Who Forgives Sinners

Jesus’s story of the prodigal son is one of the greatest stories of all time. Most of you have heard it before, as it has has been retold in countless plays throughout the centuries, but it is a story worth retelling. In this story we learn much about the heart of God, the gospel, and ourselves. There is a lot of great literature about the prodigal son, the older brother, and the gracious father, but I just want to briefly focus on the gracious father who represents God.

As you know the story starts off with the younger brother asking for his inheritance so he can go spend it on prostitutes and wild living. It is easy to just read the story and think, ah that’s bad, but not really understand culturally how significant it was for the boy to ask for his inheritance at this time. In this culture for one to ask for their inheritance before their father died, was the equivalent to saying “dad your dead to me, I don’t care about you, and don’t want to know you anymore, or bear your name.” This request would have been brutal on any father. We see in the story that the father acquiesces to the son’s request, probably in grief. In this culture the father would have been able to hold a symbolic funeral for his son, for such a evil request. This funeral would be to represent the child being dead to the family. We see no evidence of the father doing this in the story.

So the story moves on, and the son gets his inheritance from the father and goes to travel, and spend his inheritance on prostitutes and wild living. The boy ends up spending all of his money. A famine hits the land, and the son eventually finds himself in a dire situation barely able to feed himself. The son comes to his senses and realizes that even slaves in his father’s house have it better than he does. He decides to go back to his Fathers house in hopes that his father will accept him back at least as a slave.

So the son makes his way back home, probably feeling utter shame and embarrassment. As the son gets close to home his father sees him in the distance. The scriptures say “while (the son) was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

This fathers gracious reaction is extremely significant. The father had every right to shun the son, but instead he does the complete opposite. The father runs to his son in love. (In the Middle East, during this time, it was considered humiliating for men over age forty to run. As the father ran, he would have had to lift his robe, another humiliating act in that culture.) The father didn’t let the embarrassment stop his love, he ran toward his son at full speed and  then threw his arms around his son and kissed him.

The father immediately orders  his servant to put a robe, a ring, and sandals to be put on his son. In this day slaves were bare-footed, but sons wore shoes, so he is reinstating the boy as a son, not as a slave. The ring would have given the son the ability to transact business in the markets in his fathers name, much like a credit card. The boy gets his name reinstated.

The story doesn’t end there. The father immediately orders his servants to throw a party and feast for his son. He tells the servants to go and kill the fatted calf (very expensive) for the feast.