We've been looking at the parable of the Two Lost Sons over the past week or so, using Tim Keller's The Prodigal God as a discussionary launchpad. When last we left it, the younger son had come to his senses, realising that even that servants in his father's house were better off than he was. Here, we might be inclined to say, was his moment of repentance. For reasons that may or may not become in the next few paragraphs, I'm inclined to disagree with my own proposition.
I don't think repentance is what was going on here. Listen closely to the inner monologue of the son:
I don't think repentance is what was going on here. Listen closely to the inner monologue of the son:
All my father's hired workers have more than they can eat, and here I am about to starve! I will get up and go to my father and say, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer fit to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired workers."
What does the son want here? Reconciliation with his father? I would say the simple answer is that he wants bread. The son has come to his senses about his miserable state of affairs, but he has yet to become aware of who his father is. His desire is simply to go back home and start earning money like one of the slaves. There is a humility in his words no doubt, and a recognition of past sins. But at this moment he is still an exile in a foreign land. And more to the point, as he makes his way home and is spotted in the distance by his father, he is still an exile. The son has not made the first step in restoring a broken relationship; he has merely decided that his father's house is better for him economically. But then he gets a revelation of who his father really is, and everything changes.
As the shepherd went looking for his lost sheep, as the woman searched for her lost coin, so the father seeks out his lost son while he was still a long way off. It is the father, always the father, who initiates. One of the things we must come to know is that God is the white piece in a game of chess - He always makes the first move. We do not goad Him into forgiving us by reciting a carefully practiced repentance speech. His love is not a responsive love, but an initiating love. We only love because we are first loved.
In this story we are told of a father running to his son with compassion in his heart and welcoming his rebellious stray home with a kiss and unbridled joy. Here we have a beautiful picture of the cross, the place where Jesus draws exiles to Himself. We can in some sense consider the cross of Christ God's first move, and it is one of reckless grace, putting Himself in the position of judgment in our stead so that sinners might be made sons.
A famous hymn says that at the cross God "kissed a guilty world in love". It is this reality which should shape our repentance. Out with the days of an angry old man who'll get you if you hit your baseball into His garden, and so requiring Jesus to go in and get it for you. Some good news for us is that Jesus knows who God is, and He is describing Him in this parable, which as I said before is a parable about the father first and foremost. If we need to repent of anything, we need to repent of our poorly conceived ideas about God in light of His self-revelation in the man Jesus of Nazareth. From two-thousand years ago onwards, repentance is something done in response to the cross, the place where the Son of God of loved us by giving Himself for us; the place where the Father reconciles the world to Himself.
As the shepherd went looking for his lost sheep, as the woman searched for her lost coin, so the father seeks out his lost son while he was still a long way off. It is the father, always the father, who initiates. One of the things we must come to know is that God is the white piece in a game of chess - He always makes the first move. We do not goad Him into forgiving us by reciting a carefully practiced repentance speech. His love is not a responsive love, but an initiating love. We only love because we are first loved.
In this story we are told of a father running to his son with compassion in his heart and welcoming his rebellious stray home with a kiss and unbridled joy. Here we have a beautiful picture of the cross, the place where Jesus draws exiles to Himself. We can in some sense consider the cross of Christ God's first move, and it is one of reckless grace, putting Himself in the position of judgment in our stead so that sinners might be made sons.
A famous hymn says that at the cross God "kissed a guilty world in love". It is this reality which should shape our repentance. Out with the days of an angry old man who'll get you if you hit your baseball into His garden, and so requiring Jesus to go in and get it for you. Some good news for us is that Jesus knows who God is, and He is describing Him in this parable, which as I said before is a parable about the father first and foremost. If we need to repent of anything, we need to repent of our poorly conceived ideas about God in light of His self-revelation in the man Jesus of Nazareth. From two-thousand years ago onwards, repentance is something done in response to the cross, the place where the Son of God of loved us by giving Himself for us; the place where the Father reconciles the world to Himself.
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