The Prodigal God

Exciting news, everyone! So, awhile ago, I think around late summer or early fall, I posted about how my missional community leader, Tyler Zach, wanted to start an all Greek Bible study on Creighton’s campus. WELLLLLLL, we started one. YEP. We did! Tyler, Anna Peterson, Gordon Kor, Carolyn Wanberg, and I started planning together and we had our first meeting before Thanksgiving and last week, we had our second. We have sent out emails to all the different chapters on campus and a few of us went and spoke at a couple as well just so we could familiarize Greeks with the actual existence of this Bible Study/Spiritual Discussion. There hasn’t been an incredible show up either of the times, but we are hoping that next semester will improve… especially with TONS of prayer and a little more PR J

For these past two sessions, we showed a Tim Keller video called, “The Prodigal God”. Next semester, we’ll be having a 6-week discussion series on certain clips of the video.

If you ever have the chance to watch this, PLEASE DO. It really makes you re-think the entire parable of the lost son. Keller has so many amazing insights into this story…

It’s a look at two sons/brothers, a younger and an older.

The younger son essentially wanted nothing to do with his father except for receiving his inheritance. After asking for his inheritance early, of which he did receive, he left his home and spent all of it on prostitutes and in sin. Inheritance back then was a HUGE deal. It was essentially the life of the father and not something that was given away before his death. However, the father gave it to the younger son freely and openly. It was more than just a giving of money and wealth, but it was the father giving the younger son his life. The younger son wanted nothing to do with the father, but wanted everything to do with the father’s things. To get control of his things, the younger son left and was disobedient. However, after spending all of his inheritance, the son came back to the home. The home was a relationship, not just a place. It was coming back to his family, his father. The younger son came back wanting to make up for his disobedience and repay his father. You’d think that the father would have made the younger son feel guilty about his poor decisions, but no, the father ran to his son and embraced him. He called for a robe, a ring, and a feast of the fattened calf for his son. The son who left and disobeyed. The father didn’t asked for the son to repay his debt, but he accepted him with full grace and full forgiveness.

The older son, however, never left and was never disobedient. He stayed with the father, aware that since his brother had left with his share of the inheritance, everything was now his. But, when the younger brother returned, and the father ran to him and offered him riches and a feast of the fattened calf, a feast only meant for the GREATEST of occasions and celebrations since eating meat was only a delicacy, the elder brother was mad and refused to go into the party. He was mad because the father was essentially giving the younger son the older brother’s inheritance by offering the riches that he still had. The younger brother left and squandered all his inheritance… so why should the older brother suffer for it? With this, the older son was trying to gain control over the father’s things by staying and obeying. Even after the father asked, the elder brother refused to go into the party, and the parable ends.

Most of us have heard this SO many times. We learn to look at both the younger and the elder son as important parts of the story. We learn to see the father’s forgiveness. God wants us to identify with one of the sons… but there are some interesting points Keller brought up that I hadn’t thought about before…

We should and can identify with one or both of the brothers/sons. The younger, which delved in sin, and the elder, in righteousness. God’s making a point though… that no matter GOOD (elder) or BAD (younger), both the sons were lost.

For the younger brother, he was trying to gain control of the father’s things (representation of God the Father) through leaving and disobeying. This describes so many of us at some point in life. We feel like we need to escape, to leave, and find our own path away from God. We think we know what’s best and we really just stick around and go to church until we hit a point and say to ourselves, “This isn’t working out, I have a better plan for self-discovery.” These types of individuals are also commonly compared to the tax collectors of the day. The sinners. This is also a mentality I see in most college students today. They want to do what they want. Essentially, by doing this, they are squandering what God gave them. Drinking, sex, drugs, greediness, envy, and so on so forth. It is a destructive path. They take the Fathers’ things and live the life they thought would be greater than the life they had at home, a close an intimate relationship with the Father.

For the elder brother, he was trying to gain control of the father’s things and the father by being good, obeying, and staying. However, he wasn’t doing this to get closer to the father, but rather to get the good things the father offered. His mentality was that of moral conformity… doing good, complying, and trying hard. Some might be wondering, “What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t we be obedient and doing good?” Well, yes, but we also have to look into WHY we are doing any good at all. Is it to KNOW the FATHER or just to get the good things that come out of knowing the Father? Morality often times becomes simply a means of getting what people want… health, comfort, safety, etc… Jesus becomes a good model and great boss, but to those that have the mentality of the older brother, Jesus is not a Savior. I mean, even looking at Jesus, he didn’t hang out with the righteous people… he hung out with the sinners, the broken people… so why would he want us to be filled with the righteousness like this elder son? Jesus wants new people, not good people.

Tim Keller tells us to repent of both sin and the reasons why we do any good at all. Both goodness and badness separate us and alienate us from God, THE FATHER. It is looking at ourselves in the place of the older and younger sons. Which category do we personally tend to go toward? Wanting to do what we want and straying from God’s path, or living in righteousness so we can receive all of God’s blessings without truly living FOR the Lord DESPITE ourselves.

The parable isn’t just about forgiveness or sin, but it is also a call home. It is a call to recognize that there is actually another son involved in this story.

God, the Father, is calling us home; whether we are the disobedient son that eventually comes home after squandering his wealth and wanting to repay the father for his debt, or whether we are the righteous older son who refuses to come home because he just wants his gifts from the father and to be recognized for his goodness.

God wants us to recognize that the good and the bad are both lost. He wants us to have hope and recognize something is missing in our lives if we have those mentalities. The FATHER initiated love to both of the sons, He wanted them to repent of sin AND righteousness. He also wanted us to recognize the TRUE SON. The REAL older brother.

Back then, if a younger brother left the home or was lost, it was the responsibility of the elder brother to look for him. To put his needs and wants aside to bring the lost son back home. But, in this story, no one searched for the lost son. The older brother didn’t go after him. A TRUE older brother would have went out to find him no matter WHAT it cost him. Coming home was costly… especially to the older brother since that meant it he would be giving up part of his inheritance to welcome him back to the family.

Who is this true elder brother/son? JESUS. This wasn’t a parable to just recognize the two other sons, but so that we could see that there is actually a third son, the most IMPORTANT son. A SON sent by His Father away from home (Heaven). He was sent to bring the younger son (US) back to the Father, back to our TRUE home. But to do this was costly… Jesus, perfect in every way, left the comfort of Heaven, to come to imperfect Earth even though he knew it was going to cost him his LIFE. Jesus, like an older brother, deserved everything the Father gave him, but he was stripped… and did it ALL for US. There was a bad older brother in this story so we could see a GOOD one.

If we follow the true older brother, the real son, we, the lost, will finally be able to go home. God is calling us home… that’s one reason the parable doesn’t end… we are in the midst of this story and are called to be the people he created us to be, while recognizing the FORGIVENESS of the Father, our need to REPENT of both goodness and sin, and the LOVE and COSTLINESS of our older brother’s sacrifice to bring us home.