September 26, 2010
-
The Prodigal Son
I wrote the following this summer as a part of a discussion of Tim Keller’s very worthwhile book, “The Prodigal God.” For the past few years I’ve been thinking a lot about legalism and antinomianism and how to navigate between the two, but it’s too huge a topic for one blog post. Here’s a stab at a beginning.
Tax collectors and sinners were coming to hear Jesus. He was even eating with them and the Pharisees were appalled. After all, the Bible tells us to avoid the company of evildoers and strange women and the like, and here Jesus was hanging out with them. In answer to their mutterings Jesus told three parables about lost things: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin and the parable of the lost son. The three parables all describe the joy of finding lost things, but the parable of the lost son introduces another element, the character of the elder brother.
I’m not sure how the original hearers would have taken these parables. Obviously, the Pharisees would have sympathized with the elder brother, which, I guess, is why Jesus emphasizes the joy of finding lost things in the first two parables. They needed their perspective changed on their brethren before they could be confronted with their own sin. Possibly, they had the idea that once you’ve fallen into sin you can’t ever be restored to good society, or maybe only if you really prove yourself by many years of righteous living or undergoing some sort of horrible penance.
So Jesus told them the story of a young Jewish man who goes off into a far country and squanders his inheritance in profligate living. At first, I thought the issue of his Jewish identity, whether or not he was a covenant child, was irrelevant. Isn’t the rejoicing in heaven just as great for a Gentile sinner as for a Jewish one? Of course it is, but the point of the parable isn’t just about the joy of finding lost things, it’s also about the attitude of the older brother. And the fact that the elder brother despises his own flesh and blood, just as the Pharisees despised their Jewish brethren, is a significant detail in the story.
The character of the elder brother is included to illustrate their selfish, self-centered and uncaring hearts. He needs to welcome back his brother. And his refusal to participate in the celebration shows that, beyond his proud and unloving attitude toward his brother, he’s not really concerned with his father, either. He’s completely wrapped up in himself. His strategy has been all about looking good to his father, without any real affection or love for him. The Pharisees, in not welcoming the repentant tax collectors and sinners, are the elder brothers, more concerned with projecting the image of godliness than actually following the two greatest commandments of the Law: loving God and loving their neighbors.
The parable doesn’t tell us what happens to the elder brother, but the Pharisees go on to participate in the killing of Jesus and the persecution of the Church. Even those who embrace the Gospel end up causing problems in the Church, turning people away from the Gospel of Faith and toward a Gospel of Works. The attitude of the elder brother is a very dangerous one, because the person who thinks he has it all together can never see his need for repentance. So, I can see a case being made for the attitude of the elder brother being the greatest danger facing the Church today.
But I think that to call anything the greatest danger is a great danger in and of itself. As C.S. Lewis said
He always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.
At the end of Galatians, after Paul has spent several chapters dealing with the legalism of the circumcision party, Pharisees who insisted that all Christians had to follow the Law, he reminds them that avoiding the elder brother mentality does not mean that anything goes.
13You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature[a]; rather, serve one another in love. 14The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 15If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
Selfishness can come in all sorts of manifestations. In the story of the Prodigal Son, both the brothers were selfish in their own way. We need to examine our own hearts, to make sure that we aren’t trying to substitute our own Laws for Gods’ and we need to look at all our brethren with eyes of love, the ones who have too many rules, and the ones that have too few.
