Dr. Gerald Bilkes

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is probably the best known of all Christ’s parables. Indeed, it offers not only a gripping story, but a summary of the gospel of free grace and forgiveness. Yet this parable does more than illustrate and apply the doctrine of repentance. Though it does that stunningly and memorably, this parable gives us a way to view all of life from the perspective of the heart of the Father, as Christ opens it up. Before we trace this, however, we need to take up the key Christ gives us to unlock the parable’s meaning.

The Key

In order to discover this key, we need to examine a few preliminaries. First, we need to notice the form of the parable. Luke 15 is actually one long parable. We are used to seeing three parables in this one chapter: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son(s). However, according to verse 3, we have one long parable with three parts, and these three parts move in a spiral-like motion culminating in the story of the prodigal son. It’s as if Christ were saying: “Think of the care and diligence of a shepherd who seeks a lost sheep, or a woman looking for a lost silver coin. Think of the joy of both when they find what they had lost. Now think of a father who has lost his son.…”

Secondly, we need to notice the occasion for the parable (vv. 2-3). In His travels toward Jerusalem, Jesus had been approachable to publicans and sinners (Luke 15:1-2), much to the evident chagrin of the Pharisees. They complained: “This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them” (v. 2). As true and glorious as this statement is, they utter it as a complaint! It’s sobering to think that it is possible to complain about the gospel. Jonah did something similar when he saw Ninevites being converted: “Was this not my saying … for I knew that thou art a gracious God” (Jonah 4:2).

Thirdly, we need to notice the vantage point of the parable. This parable is Christ’s answer to the bitter complaint of the Pharisees. Much like the father in the parable who “came out, and entreated” the elder brother (v. 28), so Jesus left the company of these repenting sinners to address the Pharisees. This parable is Christ’s entreaty to gospel complainers. Just as the father in the parable said to the eldest son, “It was meet that we should make merry” (v. 32), so Jesus explained to the Pharisees why it was “meet” that both He and they should be merry over these saved sinners. Concerned as they were about propriety and decorum, the Pharisees thought what Christ was doing was not “meet.” But Christ showed precisely how divinely “meet” it was by opening up the Father’s heart. After all, there is joy “in heaven over one sinner that repenteth” (v. 7).

This then is the key to the parable: on the one side there was Jesus with the repenting sinners and joy in heaven. On the other hand, there were the proud and angry Pharisees, who were anything but synchronized with heaven. And Jesus left this feast with repenting sinners to meet these “elder sons” outside. Much like the Lord defended Joshua against Satan’s claims (Zech. 3:2–4), so in this parable Christ defended these repenting sinners by opening up the Father’s heart. God’s heart is filled with love and joy. And Christ knows this, because, as the Bible says, He was “in the bosom of the Father,” and therefore He “hath declared him” (John 1:18). In this parable, He did so by setting forth three things: 1) our removal from God; 2)our recovery by God, and 3) our rejoicing in God. In this article, we will only have time for the first. In the next issue, we hope to pick up the remaining two.

Our Removal from God

The word “lost” occurs five times in this chapter, and is clearly very significant. Most of us are quite familiar with the language of having “lost” God. For these Pharisees, however, this was likely new, though they should have known it from the Old Testament passages such as Ezekiel 34:16. There are two aspects of our being lost that Christ sets forth in this parable. The first is that man is lost with respect to God. Man has departed from God and is now lost, separated from God and cut off from fellowship with Him. Like the lost sheep, he has lost the nearness of the Shepherd and thus His nurture, protection, leading, and ultimately life itself. Like the lost coin, the sinner may have the image of his Maker stamped upon him, but he is unusable until he is found. Like the younger son, the sinner prefers the far country of his own desires to the presence of God. In the presence of God there is light and life, and in the far country there is darkness and death. The elder son is no less cut off from the father. Though he may be in geographical proximity to him, his heart prefers his friends over his father; the fact that he slaves away in his father’s house does not change the matter. Clearly, both sons are cut off from the true source of life and pining away in their self-chosen death —one in a swine trough, the other in the trap of a self-righteous jealousy and bitterness.

The notion of everyone being lost with respect to God would have stunned the Pharisees. Yet this does not exhaust the brilliance of the parable on the point of our removal from God. For the parable goes on to consider the sinner as lost from the perspective of God. Here lies the real power of the parable. Christ spends little time on the sheep’s experience of being lost, but of the shepherd having lost the sheep. He spends no time on the dynamic of the coin being out of circulation, hidden away in the dark, but on the woman missing the coin and her diligent search for it. In the parable of the two sons, when Christ spends some time describing what it looks like for both these sons to be lost, He still twice takes us to the father, and lingers over what he lost and what that entails for him. He has the father repeat it twice: “This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (vv. 24 and 32). The point is this: what is lost is not just itself lost; it is lost from the perspective of God.

The telltale sign that the Pharisees were still lost was their lack of joy at the repentance of sinners. It proved that they were missing God’s view of man’s natural condition, both concerning themselves and others. They had never come face to face with how lost mankind is. They considered publicans and sinners lost: they had lost religion and were lost to religion. They were lost with respect to the twelve chosen tribes of Israel and lost with respect to the Messiah, whom the Pharisees thought would deliver them from the Romans. They were lost to moral righteousness and the Pharisaic way of living. As such, the publicans and sinners needed to be judged and avoided.

But this view of sinners being lost missed the point so entirely. No wonder the Pharisees could give the gospel so succinctly and yet so indignantly at the beginning of the chapter. They failed to understand our being lost from out of the heart of the Father. How we need Christ to show us that we are lost from out of the fatherly heart of God! Essentially, this view runs through the whole of the Bible, from Genesis 3 on. Isn’t this what lies behind God’s first question to lost Adam: “Where art thou?” (Gen. 3:9)? Isn’t this what lies behind God’s voice in Isaiah: “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me” (Isa. 1:2)? Isn’t this what is expressed in Hosea 11:8: “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together”?

When God looks upon a sinner to save him, He regards him as lost and in need of being found, sovereignly and effectually. That is why the father of the parable says that “this my son was dead.” By nature, that is exactly what we are: dead, cut off from the Source of life, namely God Himself. We are lost with respect to God, and lost from the perspective of God.

Published by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, used with permission.