Thursday, March 31

Thursday

Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.  So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on.  ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied,  ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’  “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.  But he answered his father,  ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.  But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’  “‘My son,’ the father said,  ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.  But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”   - Luke 15:25-32

What did it cost to bring the younger brother home?  At first glance, it seems not to have cost anything. There is no punishment—he is just taken in.  The father opens his arms, puts new clothes on him, and that’s that. It’s free.  Some critics of evangelical Christianity have pointed to this and then argued something like this: “God in heaven is like this father, He just accepts and forgives anyone who asks. There is no need for the classic Christian doctrine of the sacrifice on the cross for our sin.”  As Christians we believe that God cannot simply ignore sin, that there must be payment for sin—but here we see that reconciliation is completely free (or is it?).

The reconciliation is free to the younger brother.  But it is very costly for someone else.  The elder brother is furious with the father for receiving his younger brother back into the family.  He alludes to it when he says, “you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But... you kill the fattened calf for him!”  The elder brother is angry because of the cost of this reconciliation.

Remember—the father had given the younger brother his entire legal part of the inheritance.  And he had wasted it all —all gone.  Yet now the father is restoring him into the family.  He has already put a robe on him, and given him a ring, which was probably the family signet ring, symbolizes his status as a son again.

The younger brother’s fair share of the wealth is all gone, but now he is back, and every robe, ring, fatted calf is coming out of someone else’s pocket (you know who).  Everything the father has, now is legally the elder brother’s.  He is the only heir of all the father has left. So every robe, every ring, every fattened calf, every cent of the father’s, is ultimately the elder brother’s.  When the father says to the elder brother, “everything I have is yours” (Luke 15:31) he is speaking the literal truth.

So the salvation of the younger son is not free after all. It has already been extremely expensive.  The father cannot forgive the younger brother, except at the expense of the elder brother.  He is the one who must bear the cost of the reconciliation. 

Did you catch that?  The Father cannot forgive the younger son without the older son paying the price.  He (the father) could make the boy a slave, or a servant, but he cannot receive him back into the family as a son without the older son bearing the cost!

Lord Jesus, what an amazing older brother you are to us!  You have borne the cost of our rebellion so that we could be called children of the Father! 


Jeff Frazier