In his book, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, Tim Keller analyzes the parable of the prodigal son and demonstrates how the story is a hopeful message.
Father and son division is a familiar story. The father loves and adores his son, pushes him hard to reach his full potential, then the son rebels. The more the son pulls away, the more the father tightens the reigns. The divide grows. Son resents being told what to do, blames father, judges him for his faults and short comings personally or in business. The father’s resentment grows, grows, and grows. The son takes, takes, and takes. At family gatherings, the tension is palpable. Harsh words and actions magnify the divide. Often, the son leaves forever.
Keller’s book makes sense of this all too familiar refrain. He does not excuse it but instructs how to avoid it and overcome it. He does this by showing God’s extravagant love (prodigal love) and breaking down the characters at the heart of the story. Hint: The story is much more than a wayward son and a father.
The Two Lost Sons
“The two lost sons” is more fitting name for the parable. Chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel features the parable of the Prodigal Son. Most people know the story: The youngest of two sons demands his affluent father give him his inheritance, then he squanders it. After wasting all his money on sinful pleasures, the younger son returns home, prepared to grovel at his father’s feet. Instead of making him beg, the father welcomes his son home and prepares a feast to celebrate his son’s return.
The less obvious problem presented by the parable is the oldest son. The son who did everything his father ever asked is angered by the celebrated return of the youngest son. He’s angry with his father and his brother. It’s that brother who draws Keller’s attention.
Prodigal?
Prodigal is an adjective meaning recklessly spendthrift, wasteful, lavish. It’s an interesting title for the story because it’s not just the youngest son who engages in prodigal expenditures. The father shows prodigal love for his son, even though his son offended him. In this way, Jesus’ parable revels how the prodigal love the father has for his son is just like God’s love for each of us.
According to Keller, “God’s reckless grace is our greatest hope, a life-changing experiences and the subject of this book.” The reason he focuses on the older, “good” son is because most people miss it – and that’s the one we most often know.
According to Keller, the story redefines by addressing “two basic ways people try to find happiness and fulfillment: the way of moral conformity and the way of self-discovery.” The elder brother, like the Pharisees, looks to moral conformity. The younger brother takes the path of self-discovery. Both are problematic.
The younger son is conspicuously wayward, but the older son fixates on his good deeds. Keller observes, as the story concludes, “Jesus the storyteller deliberately leaves the elder brother in this alienated state. The bad son enters the father’s feast, but the good son will not. The lover of prostitutes is saved, but the man of moral rectitude is still lost.” By doing all the right things it’s easy to believe “God owes you answered prayers, and a good life, and a ticket to heaven when you die. You don’t need a Savior who pardons you by free grace, for you are your own savior.”
In essence, service to others and being “good” just to get to heaven is the wrong heart. That’s a selfish heart just like the “bad” son. “Elder brothers obey God to get things. They don’t obey God to get God himself in order to resemble him, love him, know him, and delight him.”
Lost and Found
Younger brothers are lost. It’s obvious. Elder brothers, however, are also lost – resentful and angry when they feel God isn’t rewarding them. The thinking is they deserve something because they do good deeds. Doing moral things just so you are blessed is classic older brother.
Older brother lostness is in many ways worse than young brother because it shows a desire to be your own savior and lord.
One revelations Jesus helps us see is that the older brother should have gone out looking for younger brother – resentment is not the answer. Keller also observes the story discusses “home” and what it means Biblically. “It is no coincidence that the story contains the pattern of exile. The message of the Bible is that the human race is a band of exiles trying to come home. The parable of the prodigal son is about every one of us.”
Keller rounds out the book with sweeping Biblical truths: salvation and what it means to be saved…
“Younger brothers are too selfish and elder brothers are too self-righteous to care for the poor.”
God hates suffering and is on a mission to restore the natural order of the world – a world without suffering.
According to Keller, Christianity works like this: I am accepted by God through the work of Jesus, therefore I obey. Not the other way around. Paul shows how accepting can strengthen marriage and other valuable institutions. And later, Martin Luther instructs: “We are saved by faith alone (not our works), but not by faith that remains alone.”
Keller’s Central Theme
Bring it back to the opening problem, Keller concludes: Fathers and sons, parents and children, don’t have to live in fear of an inevitable divide. The parable of the prodigal son, as explained by Keller, provides hope for a better type of relationship.
“Jesus’s great Parable of the Prodigal Son retells the story of the entire Bible and the story of the human race. Within the story, Jesus teaches that the two most common ways to live are both spiritual dead ends. He shows how the plotlines of our lives can only find resolution, a happy ending, in him, in his person and work.”
Keller explains, Jesus is the only way. “And to enter that way and to live a life based on his salvation will bring us finally to the ultimate party and feast at the end of history. We can have a foretaste of that future salvation now in all the ways outlined in this chapter: in prayer, in service to others, in the changes in our inner nature through the Gospel, and through the healed relationships that Christ can give us now. But they are only a foretaste of what is to come.”
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