The Great Shepherd

“Life” apart from God is really a slow death. Apart from God we are living to die. But repentance is dying to live. It is dying to self that allows us to find life in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Three adjustments come to the son’s life. First comes a recognition. “When he came to his senses” (v. 17) suggests he had been out of his mind in rebellion and sin. He lived a nightmare but called it a dream for a season. But something snapped back into place. All of a sudden he came to his senses and began to recognize something.

He recognized the goodness of God. He’s a servant in fields begging for the pods that swine eat, but in his father’s house the hired servants have more than enough bread! Unlike the master in the far country, the younger son’s father is generous toward those who serve him. A man cannot repent until he sees the insanity of sin in light of God’s goodness. Living apart from God and God’s gracious rule amounts to craziness, depravity.

Second comes a resolution. The son decides his place is with his father. More than that, he decides to make one of the greatest confessions in the Bible. He confesses his sin against heaven (God) as well as his father. “He was aware of a holy God and a broken Law” (Chantry, Today’s Gospel, 48). As Terry Johnson puts it,

He confesses without conditions and without qualifications. He makes no excuses. He offers no explanations. He had sinned. Period. The problem with most confessions is that they primarily express regret for the consequences of sin rather than regret for sin itself. (Parables, 286)

That’s the difference between worldly sorrow and godly repentance (2 Cor 7:10).

Third comes a resignation. He sees himself and his sins in light of God’s goodness and greatness. He knows his depravity, so he resigns any thoughts of sonship. He would settle to be a servant in his father’s house. Given his sin, he can’t claim to be a son; he can only hope to serve.

Charles Spurgeon comments:

The prodigal, when he said, “I will arise and go to my father,” became in a measure reformed from that very moment. How, say you? Why, he left the swine-trough: more, he left the wine cup, and he left the harlots. He did not go with the harlot on his arm, and the wine cup in his hand, and say, “I will take these with me, and go to my father.” It could not be. These were all left, and though he had no goodness to bring, yet he did not try to keep his sins and come to Christ. (“Number One Thousand,” 340)

So it is with true repentance. The man or woman who turns to God begins to see God as they never have before. They begin to recognize the greatness of God’s love. They begin to see his generous character. They understand the holiness of God and the wretchedness of sin. They’re brought low. They’re humbled. They know God is generous, so they come to him. But they know their sins are great, so they make no demands on God. The humility of repentance does not set its gaze on much, just the hope of inclusion. Repentant people plead only for a servant’s place, and they would leave all their sins for the lowest place in the kingdom of heaven (see Ps 84:10).

Repentance is beautiful because it finds God beautiful, just as this young son now sees his own father as wonderful. Heaven rejoices when God is valued.

Sure enough, the son returns to the father and makes his confession in verse 21. He’s no doubt filthy and ragged. He was once finely manicured, a prince at the party, but now he returns a pauper, thinking himself orphaned by his sin. He has no claim to the family. He prematurely requested and then subsequently wasted his inheritance, his share in the family. He does not expect to be treated as a son.

But his repentance creates a theater for the display of God’s rich grace. See how the father responds to the lost son.

“So he got up and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him. . . .

“But the father told his servants, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it, and let’s celebrate with a feast.’” (vv. 20,22-23)

See the excellent qualities that shine forth from the father. The father recognized the son’s sin and destruction long before the young man did. He saw the folly coming. He also saw his son coming home from a distance (v. 20). There is compassion. There is tenderness in his embrace and his kisses. There is adoption and generosity. The father receives his son as a son. He places a robe and ring on him, signs of his sonship (v. 22). And there is that joy again—kill the fatted calf and let’s celebrate!

Here’s where the gospel defies every human expectation. We think the son might be chastised. We think the father would have been generous simply to allow the son back as a servant. We think the son could and perhaps should have been cut off. He has spent his inheritance; how can he come back asking for anything?

But the father in the story, a reflection (although faint) of God the Father, pours out the storehouses of his grace and mercy at the faraway sign of his son’s repentance! The distant sighting of a sinner’s return elicits the fountain of God’s love! The sinner who turns finds that he turns right into the waiting arms of his God. God receives the penitent with the riches of heaven: the robes of Christ, the signet of sonship, the banquet of salvation! A kingdom for a beggar—that’s what heaven is! It makes the riches of God’s grace all the more glorious.

My friend, if you’ve wasted your life in sin, turn to the merciful arms of God the Father. The Father will be tender and compassionate. You may come to him without fear. He will receive you.

“This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” (v. 24). When we see a repentant man, we know a resurrection has happened. The one who was dead in trespasses and sins in which he once walked has been made alive again through Christ!

The lostness wasn’t just a misplacement; it was death. The son had been dead to the father. But in the miracle of repentance he has been raised to newness of life. He has been brought back—not as a corpse for a funeral but as a living soul for a banquet.

Heaven finds repentance beautiful because it brings back to life those whom sin had killed. There is never any downside to repentance. We may sometimes feel our confessions and repentance will result in our loss, more pain, or something worse. These parables challenge us not to think that way. Though we find ourselves in the pig trough, the reward of coming back to God will be far and away greater than anything we risk losing from that trough! If we repent, God will be our Father. And unlike our human fathers, who have sometimes failed us, God will be the perfect Father who will never fail us, never forsake us, never punish us for his own convenience, but clothe us, love us, and rejoice over us. There’s no father like this Father. So come to God ready to be loved!

Luke 15:25-30

There’s one final reason heaven finds repentance beautiful: the repentance of one sinner exposes the lack of repentance and the self-­righteousness of others.

The second son, the older brother, comes into the picture. He hears the party (v. 25) and seeks an explanation (v. 26). When he hears the brother has returned and the fattened calf killed because his brother is “safe and sound,” he loses it. “Then he became angry and didn’t want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him” (v. 28). In this refusal the older brother dishonors his father every bit as much as the younger brother. He refuses to share in his father’s happiness. Further, in requiring his father to come out to him, he causes the father a second indignity; he fails to honor his dad as he should have.

Though his father entreats him gently, all the older son can see is his own righteousness. Leon Morris writes, “The proud and self-righteous always feel that they are not treated as well as they deserve” (Luke, 267). So the elder brother makes his case with his father (vv. 29-30). The older son feels self-righteous: “I have never disobeyed your orders” (v. 29). He feels a scandalous amount of disdain about the entire situation. See how he refers to “this son of yours” (v. 30) rather than to his brother. He recounts the younger brother’s sins. Pharisees are expert at confessing the sins of others. He is exasperated to the point of dishonoring everyone.

Pride, entitlement, and self-righteousness keep him from repenting. If we think we have something to boast about before God, then we won’t see our need for turning to God in repentance. This man thinks his obedience justifies him before his father just as the Pharisees through their self-righteousness made them right before God.

How many of us have a difficult time detecting the fault in the older son’s thinking? How many of us sympathize with him? The Pharisees certainly did. In fact, Leon Morris writes, “We can easily imagine the elder brother saying of his father, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’” (Luke, 267).

The father’s response reveals the son’s blindness. The elder son did not know what he had: “He said to him, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours’” (v. 31). Again, to quote Leon Morris: “He did not really understand what being a son means. That is perhaps why he didn’t understand what being a father means. He could not see why his father should be so full of joy at the return of the prodigal” (Luke, 267). He could not see that celebration is necessary. The father says, “But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (v. 32).

The sinner’s repentance exposes the hardness of the self-righteous. A sinner’s repentance should be good for a saint’s heart. Though we like to imagine ourselves to be the younger brother, many of us are actually the older brother. In our self-righteousness we tend to think that self-help is how we made it. We tend to think those broken by sin ought to go on and mend themselves and mend their ways in order to become the “deserving spiritual poor.” Then maybe—just maybe—we will celebrate at their repentance.

But in God’s sight, the first sign of repentance requires a celebration by the godly. Repentance is for the joy of the church. It’s for our revival and celebration.

There are five things I am fighting to remember as an evangelist as a consequence of studying and now preaching Luke 15.

Repentance is for the joy of heaven, the joy of the church, and the joy of the sinner. When we call a man to repent, we call him to his joy. We need never be embarrassed about calling people to an eternal joy that satisfies every party concerned.

Calling a person to repent of sin is calling the person to recognize their worth in God’s sight. Sin has been destroying their dignity and value as beings made in the image of God. It is repentance that restores that value.

What we are calling people to in repentance isn’t merely to give up this life’s pleasures; it is to gain heaven’s greater pleasures. In the presence of the Lord is pleasure forevermore. Repentance returns a lost man to the presence and pleasures of the Lord.

Our emphasis on repentance isn’t so much an emphasis on dos and don’ts in the Christian life. It is more fundamentally an emphasis on seeing life as it really is—including God. Christianity and moralism are two different religions. While the Christian subscribes to high morality, his morality is not what makes him a Christian. It’s his unique covenant relationship with God wherein he comes to enjoy God forever that makes him a Christian. Repentance opens his eyes to see and savor God.

When we call a person to repent, we’re calling them into what God finds beautiful.