Lessons From Parables: Part 3 - BlessedSample

The Parable of the Lost Son shows how the Father responds to his son's return after spending everything and wasting his inheritance. What's surprising is that the Father had no idea the son was returning, but his Father saw him from a distance and ran to his son. For this boy's Father to have seen him 'a great way off' would imply that the Father had been eagerly awaiting his son's return. Certainly, in the spiritual application of this parable, our Heavenly Father is longing to cleanse and receive the sinner if he will repent and come to Him for forgiveness.

Jesus used this parable to rebuke the Pharisees for their harsh, self-righteous, unforgiving attitude towards sinners. The older brother in this parable was symbolic of the Pharisees. Like this brother, the Pharisees had not lived an outward life of rebellion, and they thought that God indeed hated others who didn't measure up to their standards. But, 'God so loved the world' and 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.'

Just as this older brother was self-centered and jealous, the Pharisees were not operating in the love of God towards sinners because they were so in love with themselves. They resented Jesus for giving the sinners what the Pharisees thought they deserved.

If his relationship with his father had been the genuine desire of the older brother, he would have rejoiced to see his father's joy at the return of his son. The repentant prodigal son had learned the vanity of things, and he had come home to a relationship with his father that neither he nor his older brother had known before.

Like the older brother, the scribes and Pharisees had gotten caught up serving themselves through their religious actions. The publicans and sinners who repented supplied their father with what He really wanted - a relationship.

Relationship with the Father was always available to the scribes and Pharisees, but they chose the temporal praise of men rather than a relationship with God.