The Lost Son

Jesus told a parable in Luke 15:11-32 about a lost son in which the son was self-centred. It made him lose touch with his dad, lose his calling and the purpose his dad had for him. Then hunger hit. It was physical hunger, but there was also hunger in his mind, hunger in his soul, and emptiness inside.

He came to the realisation that he was not where he should have been, not where his father had wanted him to be. He decided he couldn’t return to what he had been, to the position in the family he had had. But if he went back, he thought he could ask to just be a slave. He must have had shame, disgrace, and guilt in seeing how much he had failed.

The son set off on his way back, now thinking of himself as a slave rather than a son. He wanted to earn the right to be allowed back home, to take a different place than that he had before, realising that anything was better than being where he was now, without contact or relationship with his father.

He was busy thinking about how to put this into words. What was he going to say? How could he explain things? What would his father say when he saw him? What would he do?

He knew what the expectations of the people there would have been, that he ought to be stoned and that he no longer had any rights. They would reject him, tell him what he had done wrong.

But what would his father do? Would he stretch out his hand defensively and say, “No. Go away. You stink. You have disgraced me. You can`t come back here anymore. You should have thought of that earlier. Go and get your life in order first. Yes, you can be my slave, but I never want to see you again.”

But what was the reality?

The father stood on the lookout, expecting him, and when he saw him coming in the distance, he ran to meet him, took him in his arms, and kissed him. In those days, the law was that if you touched someone who was unclean, you also became unclean. Bystanders who saw the father running would have gone with him to see where he was going. They would have seen the son, who was dirty and starving, who stank, and yet they saw the father embrace him. They would have held their breath. Oh no, what is he doing? He is making himself unclean!

This is exactly what Jesus did for us. He took our sins upon Himself and thereby made Himself unclean. He embraced us and carried our uncleanness to the cross.