Luke 15:11 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 15:11

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(Synoptics: Luke 15:11-24)What a picture this is of our need as sinners before God, and of the wonderful love of God to us. It is a very well-known parable, but although many know the outline, few grasp that it is a description of God’s view of the human race – like an ungrateful, wayward, and rebellious son. The whole human race is going to be pictured in terms of these two sons, and they are both wayward sons. In fact, they are pretty rotten sons: ungrateful, wretched, self-seeking sons. It is an amazing picture of the human race in its rebellion against God, and our need and how we are to find the Lord. ‘A certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.’ It is often called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, meaning the extravagant or lavish son. It is also about a noble human father, showing amazing patience and indulgence towards an unworthy son. He does not take offence at the son’s terrible insult, but gives him what he asks, and waits for a change of heart far beyond what is reasonable, never giving up hope for his son’s recovery.Now it's so easy to read right across verse 12 and to go straight on into the parable, but we have to stop and to pause because these are astonishing words. It begins with a note of tremendous bluntness. Can you imagine that happening in life? The picture is of a father with two sons, and he seems to be a very good father. He actually pictures God himself, so in the parable he is a perfect father, and he seems to be very tender and very sympathetic towards his boys. Yet at the same time he is a very wealthy father: he has considerable lands, estates, substance, he is a rich father. But here is the thing which is astonishing: one of the sons, the younger son suddenly confronts his father and virtually say this, ‘You are only any use to me from the point of view of what I can get out of you. I want to be out of here. You are only of any use to me because of the inheritance. The only use you have and the only value you have to me is the goods that I will get when you die. I wish you were dead and out of the way, so that I could just get my hands on the lands, on my inheritance.’ That is the picture. It's expressed so simply that we just read across it, but that is what is being said here. Some people seem to think that the Bible as a religious book, as a book representing God, is a book written by men, and full of sentimental statements. They assume that it will be a kind of sales pitch, but the Bible isn't like that at all. The Bible is a very blunt book, probably the most blunt book in the world. It presents things from God's point of view. It tells us the truth about ourselves. It tells us about our failure and our weakness, our sinfulness, our unsightly appearance to God’s view. and it tells us what will happen to us if we go on like that. It tells us our foolishness at rejecting high and holy things, and running away from the living God. It tears down all the vaunted, boasted abilities of the human race, and says that we are nothing at all before God: sinners in the hands of an angry God.

Application

Now of course such a thing wouldn't happen in real life; it only happens in the parable. If any son said this, the father would say, ‘I can't go along with that.’ He may do it gently, or he may do it severely, but it just wouldn't happen, and no son would attempt it. But the point is this: the Lord Jesus Christ is giving us a picture of ourselves. ‘I wouldn't do that to my father’, you think. ‘I may not get along with my father, but I wouldn't confront him like that.’ Yes, but it's a picture of you in your conduct towards your heavenly Father, towards God. This is just what we are like. Sometimes we want to give way to extremes of godlessness, a kind of Dutch courage to bolster itself up in this rebellion against the living God. It's our way of telling ourselves, there's nothing to worry about. There's no God up there. There are no absolute moral standards. There's no day of judgment.

We snarl at God, ‘I wish you were not there; in fact, I'm going to behave as though you were not there. I'm only interested in what you have made me, in my body, my life. But I am not even going to acknowledge that you gave me these. I'm going to own them for myself. I'm going to run this life of mine as though I had made myself. I'm going to pretend you don't exist. I'm going to latch on to every theory, every idea that suggests you don't exist, and I am just going to take what you've created and give you nothing in return.’ It's a picture of a detestable child who wants the parent dead, and just wants to get his hands on what the parent has. That is just how we are in relation to God. ‘Oh God, I wish you were dead. I wish you were out of the way.’ Of course you don't actually say it to God in so many words, but your life says it, your attitude says it. If you are not converted, you don't want to love him, you don't want to serve him, you don't want to find out about him. Before God touches our lives, this is what we are all like. We want to avoid worship and we just want our independence and we want to experiment and do what we like. We want to enjoy ourselves, we want to have possessions, and we want to be free to lie and sin and do whatever comes into our minds.

Here is the remarkable thing in the parable. Amazingly, the father complied. He divided unto them his living. The father gave him what he asked for, and in a sense that is what God does to us. You say that you want nothing to do with God; you don't want to be converted to God, you don't want to be a child of God, you don't want to worship him and serve him, you want to get on without him. ‘God, just let me have my life and my time and everything I want for myself’, and the amazing thing is God lets you do just that. He lets you take your life, your body, your mind, your brain, your gifts, your abilities. He lets you take these things, and go as far away from him as you want. He actually permits you to do it, that is the amazing graciousness of God. He doesn't end your life there and then, because you don't love him, and because you don't want him. He doesn't instantly judge you and terminate your existence. He gives you time, and he lets you go your way. And that is what we all do: we go our own way.

Christianity is not about forcing people to worship God against their will, and trying to make people believe something they do not want to believe. You cannot do it anyway. Try forcing someone to believe gospel – it cannot work. No amount of pressure can make a person believe what they do not want to believe. Yes, they might say otherwise to stop the pressure, but there is no change in heart. God works on same basis. So the father in this parable lets his son go off. He must come to his senses in his own time. God does not want unwilling sons. His kingdom is a kingdom where all love him sincerely, all appreciate his goodness to them. There is no suspicion or secret resentment, but his people worship him unreservedly. The kingdom of heaven advances by persuasion, not by compulsion.

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Luke 15:11 Commentary and Bible Study