On the Road to Jerusalem: The Prodigal

“It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”—Luke15:32

While on the road to Jerusalem, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son.  We all know the details.  A young man asks his father for his share of his inheritance and the father grants his request, and he goes off to a foreign land where he squanders it on prostitutes and other despicable practices.  Eventually he ends up broke and a famine strikes the land.  Destitute, he is forced to take a job feeding pigs—a dirty job to anyone, but to a Jew it was especially despicable.  What made it worse was that the pigs were eating better than he was!  Longing to eat the pigs’ food, he finally came to his senses.  He resolves to return home, confess his sin to his father, and then beg for forgiveness and a job as one of his father’s servants.  But while he was still a long way off, his father runs to him, embraces him and kisses him.  The son confesses his sin, and the father orders that he be finely clothed, and the fattened calf killed in order to celebrate, “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”—Luke 15:24. 

Many of you who are reading this know this story from experience.  You have been the prodigal.  You have been the one who wasted your life indulging in all kinds of sin.  But you also know God’s love, mercy and grace.  You know how undeserving you were of His loving-kindness.  You know that you deserved judgment.  But God treated you better than you deserved.  He forgave your sin because of Christ.  He saved you, cleansed you, and gave you a hope and a purpose. 

All of us have been prodigals at one time or another.  We know how quickly we can give in to our sinful desires and turn from the Lord.  We are like Peter who declared that he would die for the Lord (Matthew 26:35), only to deny him three times a short time later to a lowly servant girl (Matthew 26:69-75).

We know all too well that we have the propensity to become prodigals again, if we don’t continually guard ourselves against the devil and his schemes, while keeping a short account of sin at the same time.  However, we also know that no matter how hard we try, inevitably we will sin.  The important thing to remember is that our God is a forgiving God, ready and willing to forgive us when we come to Him.  We must never forget the promise of 1 John 1:9,  

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Philip Schaff expressed this thought when he wrote,  

“To sin, he says, is human, but to persist in sin is devilish; to fall is not ruinous to the soul, but to remain on the ground is."  

Or as C.S. Lewis wrote,

“A Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble.”—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, book 2, chapter 5, p. 63. 

May we never forget what Christ has saved us from!  And may we cling to Christ, knowing that He is ready and willing to forgive even the worst of sinners who come to Him in repentance and faith.  Amen.