Week 42 - Day 6

Luke 13-15; Proverbs 18

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Luke 13-15 YouVersion(NIV)

Proverbs 18 YouVersion(NIV)

In response to the Pharisees muttering about Jesus welcoming and eating with sinners in Luke 15, Jesus tells three parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.  Each one tells of how God rejoices when one who is lost is found.  “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Probably the most powerful of these three parables is that of the lost son.  The young son who asks for his inheritance, skips town, squanders everything and is left starving, comes back home with hopes to just be able to be a servant at his father’s house. 

He doesn’t return to an angry father who turns him away.  He doesn’t return to have the father allow him back only as a servant and to keep holding what he had done over him for the rest of his life.  No, as Jesus’ parables often did, there is an unexpected twist in the outcome.  The father runs out to the son when he saw him still a long way off and hugs and kisses him.  He interrupts the son’s speech -the son had practiced that he would 1-confess his sin, 2 –declare himself unworthy, and 3 –ask to be like a hired man.  Before the son could get to his third point the father called out for the celebration to begin!  There would be no coming as a hired man; no chains were going to remain around the son … forgiveness, freedom, and son status were given immediately by the father.

I think that was the main part of the story that got to me today … the fact that the father who represents God, wiped the slate clean.  The son was not only accepted back, he was welcomed home.  The father was not going to hold onto the son’s past choices; He offered him a fresh start to a new life together with Him.  That is what God does for us.  We shouldn’t keep holding our own failures over our heads because He doesn’t. 

Then of course there is the other brother in the story who represented the Pharisees.  The older brother was angry that the father was celebrating with the son who had sinned.  Just like the Pharisees his focus was on his own righteousness when it is not all about what we do; it is about what He does for us … for all of us, no matter how far we’ve gone from home.

Another amazing picture of just how much the Father loves us.  Seek His forgiveness, accept His freedom, and walk in His love.