Facing the Music

How kind is God to sinners? True Christians struggle for superlatives. How could we possibly articulate the staggering contrast between the vileness of our sin and the mercy of our Creator? It is a subject to which human language can never do proper justice. But Jesus did provide a stunning picture of divine compassion in His most famous parable—the story of the prodigal son.

A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.” So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. (Luke 15:11–13)

For a son to request his inheritance early is tantamount to saying, “Dad, I wish you were dead. You are in the way of my plans. You are a barrier. I want my freedom. I want my fulfillment. I want nothing to do with any of you. Give me my inheritance now, and I am out of here.”

Put yourself in this father’s shoes. How would you respond to your child who demanded his inheritance and then squandered all of it—all while you were still alive? Moral outrage would be completely understandable. In fact, that’s the response the scribes and Pharisees fully expected as Jesus unfolded the parable. They eagerly anticipated the moment in the story where the prodigal’s father would surely drop the hammer hard on the wayward youth. After all, the father’s honor had been turned to shame by his son’s rebellion, and then the father had brought further shame on himself by the lenient way he responded to the boy.

In a culture where honor was so important and the fifth commandment—“Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12)—was a governing law, this young man’s impudence was beyond merely scandalous. Any son who made such a breathtakingly inappropriate request, especially from a healthy father, would have been regarded as the lowest form of miscreant. It was not his prerogative to demand his inheritance early. Not only was he implying that he wished his father were dead, he was in effect purposely committing a kind of symbolic filial suicide. Any son who made such a brazen demand could expect to be written off as dead by his father. Evidently that mattered little to this reckless son—in fact, that would give him the freedom he craved. And if he managed to get the early inheritance to boot, so much the better.

Incidentally, in that culture, the normal response to this level of insolence would be, at the very minimum, a hard slap across the face from the father. This would typically be done publicly to shame the son who had shown such disdain for his father. If that seems too severe, bear in mind that the law of Moses prescribed death by stoning for incorrigibly rebellious children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). So a son guilty of dishonoring his father to this degree could well expect to be divested of everything he had and then permanently dismissed from the family and reckoned as dead. That’s how serious this breach was. As a matter of fact, that is reflected when the prodigal comes back and the father says, “This son of mine was dead” (Luke 15:24). He repeats it to the older brother: “This brother of yours was dead” (Luke 15:32). It was not uncommon in that time and place to hold an actual funeral for a child who audaciously abandoned home and family in this way. Even today in strict Jewish families, parents will sometimes say kaddish (the formal recitation of a funeral prayer) over a son or daughter who is disowned for such behavior.

Any father with a proper concern about the honor of his own name and the reputation of the family would now see to it that a boy like this received the full and just deserts of all his transgressions, right?

The gross improprieties of the prodigal son’s early behavior remained a large, almost impassable obstacle, preventing the Pharisees from showing him any empathy or compassion. They simply couldn’t hear about such shameful behavior without being demonstratively and irreversibly offended. Their worldview demanded it. The very thought of that kind of sin was so utterly distasteful to them that for all practical purposes, they treated it as unforgivable. Their carefully maintained public veneer was, after all, designed to show contempt for everything the prodigal’s self-defilement embodied: rebellion, worldliness, and other overt forms of conspicuous misbehavior. For them, when someone like that expressed any kind of brokenness over their sin, even that was an occasion for scorn. The Pharisees certainly had no category in their theology for showing grace to such a sinner—even if he did come to a place of repentance:

Now when [the prodigal] had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.’” So he got up and came to his father. (Luke 15:14–20)

The boy was coming home, and the Pharisees expected him to get what he deserved. The only question was how and how much the father would punish the boy—to save his own honor, and to shame the son in the way he deserved. To uphold the social order. Here was the part of the story that most captivated and appealed to their legalistic minds.

One thing they were certain of: There could be no instant forgiveness. Nor was the prodigal likely to merit full reconciliation with his father—ever. If the rebel wanted to come back home now, he would simply have to take his medicine in full doses.

In the Pharisees’ idea of a best-case scenario, the chastened son would be excluded from fellowship in his family. He would probably live as a pariah on the outskirts of his father’s estate, shouldering the futile burden of trying to repay his debt to the father for the rest of his life. That, after all, was merciful in the extreme—especially compared to what justice demanded (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).

So as far as the Pharisees were concerned, the prodigal was already dead to his father. He could consider himself fortunate indeed if the father even conceded to his petition that he hire him as a common laborer. That was all mercy demanded, and it was the best option the penitent son could ever hope for. But he would still have to do a lifetime of hard labor in a hired servant’s role. That’s just how such things were supposed to be handled.

Of course, the Pharisees had no appreciation for their own sinfulness. Part of the reason they could sneer at the plight of the prodigal is that they were so full of their own virtue, convinced that they alone were pleasing to God. Their warped sense of righteousness likewise corrupted their view of mercy and compassion, and they salivated at the prospect of the young man’s comeuppance.

We frequently give in to the same kind of thinking. We love to see the villain get his just deserts, and we look forward to the meting out of justice. The shocking truth—for both the Pharisees and for us—is that God isn’t like us. He’s not merely looking for revenge against His sinful enemies (and happens to be strong enough to achieve it). He delights in bestowing His grace, mercy, and compassion on sinners who rightly deserve His wrath. Our eternity hinges on that reality.

The parable of the prodigal son gives us a vivid example that God is not as we might expect. His love and compassion are not like ours—they’re not corrupted by self-interest or a quest for vengeance. In fact, the purity and perfection of God’s compassion are powerfully on display in this familiar story. And that’s what we want to focus on in the days ahead.