Here is a youth who has discovered suddenly that a disease has fatally stricken him, deep in the springs of life. After struggling some days against conviction, and clinging to false hopes, he has at length acknowledged that sentence of death has been passed. When the first tumult subsides, a species of calm succeeds,—the calm of earnest occupation with one over-riding and absorbing theme. The world, with its hopes and fears, is conclusively cut off: his business with time is closed. He has bidden farewell to the crowd that he has left behind, and has entered the solemn vestibule which at the other end opens on eternity. With all the energy of his being, he applies himself now to the question, Am I lost or saved?
He looks alternately backward on his own life, and upward to God’s throne; both prospects trouble him. Backward he sees only sin; forward, only judgment. Himself seems the stubble, and the Judge a consuming fire. As these two approach, and their meeting seems near, he fears with an exceeding great fear, and cries with an exceeding bitter cry. He greatly wonders, meanwhile, that he never saw things in this light before. Now, in man’s extremity, is God’s opportunity to show him the Father. While the eyes of the body are closed in weariness, the mental vision remains active; and a picture appears, as if it were hung in light upon the wall. To the soul’s eye Christ appears, and appears in the act of revealing the Father. The Father whom Christ reveals runs forth to meet his prodigal son, falls on his neck, weeps, and kisses him. There is no upbraiding, no bargaining for terms. The returning son is forgiven, accepted, clothed, honoured, loved. He has all, and abounds. This is doubtless a true picture, the dying youth reflects, for it is Christ that displays it; but, alas, it brings no hope to me. I have stifled convictions, and lived for my own pleasure; and though I often heard of mercy, I never sought it, until I found that death was on my track. How can I expect that God should receive me, when I make him a do-no-better, for I never thought of seeking him until all my chosen idols had forsaken me, and I was left destitute?
Brother, look; what good thing was in the lost son, that served to recommend him to his father? He would not remain at home; he could not enjoy his abundance as long as the father, whose face he loathed, abode under the same roof. He went away, that he might enjoy the pleasures of sin. He did not return while he had enough; he did not return when he began to be in want; he endured the extreme of misery and shame rather than return; he came back to his father only when all other resources failed;—and yet his father received him with great gladness. Sinner, look on this love,—look on it till you live in its light. It is not him that never departed, or came back while he yet had plenty, or came back soon, or came back with an improved heart,—it is, “Him that cometh I will in no wise cast out.”
Those who from this parable conclude that God receives sinners into favour without a propitiation, and those who endeavour to escape from that conclusion by affirming that the father in the parable represents Christ, err equally, although on opposite sides.[84]
The notion that a mediator is not needed, because a mediator is not here specifically represented, proceeds upon the assumption, obviously and inexcusably erroneous, that all truth must be taught in every parable. While occasionally visiting the printing works of the publishers as these sheets are passing through the press, I have observed the process of printing coloured landscapes by lithograph. One stone by one impression deposits the outline of the land; another stone, by another impression, fills in the sea; and a third stone, on a different machine, subsequently adds the sky to the picture. No observer is so foolish as to complain, while he sees the process in its earlier stages, that there is no sea or no sky in the landscape. It is thus with the parables in general, and with this group in particular. By the two first, certain portions and aspects of the scene are represented; and by the last one, when it is impressed on the same field, the remaining features are completed.
Hitherto we have been occupied exclusively with the younger of the two sons; but the notice given in the first sentence of the parable prepares us for meeting with the elder in some significant capacity ere it close; and here, accordingly, he comes up to sustain his part.
At the moment of the prodigal’s return, his elder brother was in the field, whether for his father’s profit or his own pleasure we are not informed. When he came home in the evening, and before he had entered the house, he heard the sound of the festival within. Surprised and displeased that a feast on so large a scale should have been instituted without his privity and participation, he assumed and maintained an attitude of haughty reserve. Instead of going in at once and seeing all with his own eyes as a son, he went to a servant, and in the spirit of an alien, inquired the reason of the mirth. Having learned the leading facts, instead of imitating his father’s generosity, he abandoned himself to selfish jealousy, and went away in a pet. The father, on every side true to his character, came out and pleaded with him to enter and share the common joy. Hereupon the true character of the soi-disant model son is revealed; he peevishly casts it in his father’s face, as a reproach, that he had never provided such a feast for his immaculate and superlatively dutiful child.
The elder son, in his statement of the case, introduces an elaborately constructed double contrast between his brother’s experience and his own, which is peculiarly interesting in relation to the mercy of God and the methods of the Gospel. To the jaundiced eye of this sour-tempered pharisaic youth, it seemed that his father gave much to him that deserved least, and little to him that deserved most: to the profligate son, the fatted calf; to the eminently dutiful child, not even a kid. Here the hard, self-satisfied formalist, like Pilate and Caiaphas, preaches the Christ whom he did not know. The envious contrast portrayed by the elder son is a dark shadow which takes its shape from the Light of life. It is a law of the Gospel that nothing is given to the man in reward for the righteousness which he brings forward as his boast; but all is given to the man who has flung away his own righteousness with loathing as filthy rags, and come, “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked,” to cast himself on the mercy of God. The greatest gift is bestowed on the most worthless; for “God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. v. 8).
At this point the line of our parable touches that of the lost sheep, and thenceforth runs coincident with it to the close: it points to the same features of human character, and teaches the same principles of divine truth. In the first place, it repeats the answer already given in the two preceding parables to the question embodied in the complaint of the Pharisees,—“This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them.” The father announces with great clearness and fulness, the grounds on which he rejoiced more that day over the prodigal restored than over the elder son, who had never left home. It is a rule in human experience, universally understood and appreciated, that though a son never lost is as precious as one who has been lost and found, parents experience a more vivid joy in the act of receiving the exile back than in the continuous possession of a son who has been always in their sight.[85]