The prodigal son teaches us how not to repent
Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 is one of the most well-known and beloved stories in the Bible. It’s also a popular text for churches and preachers who emphasize the sinner’s volition in coming to repentance.
After all, in this obvious allegory of Christian salvation, it’s the son who decides to return to his father, who is back home and does nothing to prompt his son’s choice. Does that mean, then, that sinners are capable of repentance on their own, and that it’s their decision that establishes a saving relationship with God?
To answer that, let’s take a good look at what the son does, what he’s thinking, and compare it to what the father does.
The son’s selfish repentance
We’ll pick up the story in verse 15, where the son, who spent all of his father’s inheritance, is suffering the effects of a famine:
15 Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!’
As you can see, the son’s repentance, his change of direction, is motivated entirely by his hunger. According to his own words, he wants to go back home because he can eat there. He’ll be better off, which is the reason he left in the first place. He’s repenting because he’s suffering the consequences of what he did. This resembles what’s described in 2 Corinthians 7:10 —
For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.
The son’s sorrow sure sounds like “the sorrow of the world”; therefore, it is not “leading to salvation.” The prodigal son is not a model for Christian repentance, and that’s not the only reason.
The son’s unacceptable plan
The son came up with a plan for what he would do, and with the terms of his repentance:
18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”
What he does here is punish himself. He disowns himself from his family. He demotes himself from a son to a servant. He proposes to work off his debt. His solution is one of penance, and it shows that he, like his older brother, had no concept of grace or mercy.
If these terms are supposed to reflect Christian repentance, then they’re unacceptable. They’re wholly inadequate. There is no way we can ever work off the debt of our sin, and we are in no place to determine how we relate to God in any way. This is all the son could do, and any repentance that people are capable of can never be nearly enough.
The son set off for home, but in his own ability, he never made it. Verse 20 says “he was still a great way off”; that is all our own initiative will get us. Not even close. His father had to act.
The father’s unilateral grace
When the father saw his son, he didn’t walk out to him; he ran. While the son was motivated by self-interest, the father was moved by his compassion for the rebel who rejected him. When he reached his son, the father fell on him, covering him with unconditional love.
The father did not give the son a chance to lay out the terms of his return. Instead, the father took over and set them himself. There would be no penance, no debt to work off. He effectively declared, as Jesus said on the cross, it is finished — paid in full.
The father then went above and beyond anything the son even thought of asking for. He clothed him with his robe, echoing Isaiah 61:10 — “For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.” He gave him his ring, signifying his sonship. He declared (twice), “for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found,” illustrating what Ephesians 2:4-5 says:
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)
It was the father who made his son alive. Right up to the moment his father fell on him, the son was as dead as when he left.
But in another sense, nothing had changed. The son was always his son. His place was always reserved. His departure was always freely forgiven. It’s not like the father held it over him until he returned. It’s certainly not like the son raised himself from the dead or restored the relationship himself. This is not a story about what the son did, but what the father did. It all glorifies the father, for only he could bring about reconciliation. That’s why it came right after parables of finding a lost sheep and a lost coin — neither of which were able to return on their own.
This is a story of amazing grace and abundant love, which culminates in a joyous feast, reflecting the celebration in heaven when one sinner repents. All three parables ended in rejoicing, the glorious joy of a Savior who takes it entirely upon Himself to seek and to save that which is lost.
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