Luke 15:20-24

Vers. 20b-24. Free pardon, entire restoration, the joys of adoption, such are the contents of these verses. The heart of God overflows in the sayings of Jesus. Every word vibrates with emotion, at once the tenderest and the holiest. The father seems never to have given up waiting for his son; perceiving him from afar, he runs to meet him. God discerns the faintest sigh after good which breaks forth in a wanderer's heart; and from the moment this heart takes a step toward Him, He takes ten to meet it, striving to show it something of His love. This history was exemplified at the very moment as between the publicans present and God, who was drawing near to them in Jesus. There is a wide difference between the confession uttered by the prodigal son, Luke 15:21, and that which had been extracted from him by the extremity of his misery (Luke 15:18-19). The latter was a cry of despair; but now his distress is over. It is therefore the cry of repentant love. The terms are the same: I have sinned; but how different is the accent! Luther felt it profoundly; the discovery of the difference between the repentance of fear and that of love was the true principle of the Reformation.

He cannot come to the end; the very assurance of pardon prevents him from finishing and saying, make me as..., according to his first purpose. The Alex. have not understood this omission, and have mistakenly added here the last words of Luke 15:19.

Pardon involves restoration. No humbling novitiate; no passing through inferior positions. The restoration is as complete as the repentance was sincere and the faith profound. In all those touches the shoes, the robe, the signet ring (the mark of the free man, fitted to express an independent will) a sound exegesis should limit itself to finding the expression of the fulness of restoration to the filial standing; only homiletic application may allow itself to go further, though even it should beware of falling into a play of wit, as when Jerome and Olshausen see in the robe the righteousness of Christ, in the ring the seal of the Holy Spirit, in the shoes the power of walking in the ways of God. Others have found in the servants the image of the Holy Spirit or of pastors! The Alex. reject τήν before στολήν, and that justly. There is a gradation: first a robe, in opposition to nakedness; then, and even the best, because he who has descended lowest, if he rise again, should mount up highest. In the phrase, the fatted calf, Luke 15:23, the article should be observed. On every farm there is always the calf which is fattening for feast days. Jesus knows rural customs. Augustine and Jerome find in this calf an indication of the sacrifice of Christ! According to the tout ensemble of the picture, which should be our standard in interpreting all the special details, this emblem represents all that is most excellent and sweet in the communications of divine grace. The absence of every feature fitted to represent the sacrifice of Christ, is at once explained when we remember that we have here to do with a parable, and that expiation has no place in the relations between man and man. By the plural, let us be merry, the father himself takes his share in the feast (as in Luke 15:7). The two parallel clauses of Luke 15:24 recall the two aspects in which sin was presented in the two previous parables; he was dead relates to the personal misery of the sinner (the lost sheep); he was lost, to the loss felt by God Himself (the lost drachma). The parable of the prodigal son combines those two points of view: the son was lost, and the father had lost something. With the words, and they began to be merry, the parable reaches the exact point at which things were at the moment when Christ uttered it (Luke 15:1-2).