2.27.11 // The Lost Son, Part VI, The Other Prodigal, Luke 15:29-32

Fifth and final leg of the trek in the land of the lost son (Lk 15:29-32)

Then he burst out, 'Look, how many years have I slaved for you and never disobeyed a single order of yours, and yet you have never given me so much as a young goat, so that I could give my friends a dinner? But when that son of yours arrives, who has spent all your money on prostitutes, for him you kill the calf we've fattened!' But the father replied, 'My dear son, you have been with me all the time and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and show our joy. For this is your brother; I thought he was dead - and he's alive. I thought he was lost - and he is found!'" (Phillips New Testament Translation, Luke 15:29-32).

  

The sinfulness of the Pharisees and scribes are about to be unmasked. In Luke 15:2 we see the Pharisees resenting the idea that Jesus was inviting sinners (outcasts, law violators, Gentiles, tax collectors, and et cetera) to be part of His kingdom – And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, "This Man receives sinners and eats with them" (cf. Mt 9:11; Lk 7:34; 19:7). And like the older son in this parable refusing to participate in the feast,But he was angry and would not go in (v28), the Pharisees refused Jesus’ offer to enter the kingdom. They felt they deserved God’s favor without repentance for they were not like the sinners who needed to repent by working their way in favor with God.

Lk 15:29  So he answered and said to his father, 'Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends.

Lo. Or look (behold, see) the older brother is drawing his father’s attention to something.

These many years I have been serving you. Serving is from the Greek word doulos (G1401), a slave. This is really how the son saw his service for his father - “For many years I have been slaving for you.” 

In other words everything he has been doing for his father has been under a sense of compulsion, not of his free will, not with love, not with joy and gladness. He was slave-minded, not son-minded. Bondage is how the older son characterized his relationship with his father. He hung in there for the inheritance, what he could get out of his father once he kicked the bucket. There was no love or appreciation for what the father had in store for him because he already had a sense of entitlement – these many years I have been serving you.

I never transgressed your commandment at any time. His refusal to participate in the joy of the father showed his contempt of his father and the younger brother. Like the Pharisees, the older son does not recognize his sin (I never transgressed your commandment, yeah right; it reminds me of the story of a rich ruler in Lk 18:18-24). How certain was the older son of his obedience – at any time! His righteousness was based on his own effort to obey every command to the letter (Lk 18:11), but what about his attitude? Did he ever grumble? Was he ever resentful? Was he ever angry? The letter, Paul said to the Corinthians in 2 Cor 3:6, kills (Rom 7:10-11), but the Spirit gives life (Rom 8:2). 

Therefore, he saw no need to repent and refused to enter into the festivities, or as in the case of the Pharisees, they refused to repent for they didn’t see themselves as sinners; self-righteous people never do, and refused Jesus’ offer of the kingdom and ultimately rejecting Him at the cross.

The Pharisees externalized the law but never internalized it, making it personal by being shaped and molded by the inner truth of the Law or the spirit of the Law. It simply illustrates 2 Cor 4:4. This kind of thing happens when people only read the Scriptures but never making personal application or internalizing it. They are reading and even memorizing but never personalizing, never going beyond the intellectual to the experiential. Some are a virtual Bible data bank storing a wealth of information as if this alone is being spiritual. But internalizing is more than knowledge; it is applying or merging that knowledge or the spiritual realities of God’s Word into the daily routine of life, walking by the Word day by day by day.

There are at least three major whammies (the sin nature, a lifeless Law, and a sinless nature) opposing the soteriology of the Pharisee. It demolishes and declares the utter futility of any doctrine that advocates assimilating the holiness or the righteousness of God through keeping of the Law of Moses or any rules, regulations, rituals, or observances (rabbinic doctrine or traditions) based on an interpretation of the Law through human effort. These practices had in effect nullified the law of faith (cf. Hab 2:4) by substituting a law of flesh, works of righteousness, with the objective of obtaining holiness or a right standing before God.

They twisted the command to “be Holy for I am holy” to a “look holy for I am holy” which is how they approached and applied the Law of Moses, externalizing rather than internalizing or making personal application of holiness through faith. Looking into the true mirror of the Law reveals an image of a sinner in need of repentance; the Pharisees never saw such an image. They would chant, 

“Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Who’s more righteous than them all?”

 And the mirror of their own minds would speak back to them while they admired and absorbed their self-righteous reflection, 

“The reflection that you see  

Is the man you think to be.

If it were my judgment call

the answer would be thee.”

Another descriptive way of saying it is Paul’s words to Timothy concerning the end times, having a form of godliness but denying its power (2 Tim 3:5) or They will maintain a facade of ‘religion’, but their conduct will deny its validity (Phillips). The Pharisees circumvented these objections to salvation by works by simply ignoring or rejecting the spiritual realities behind the triple whammies. The New Testament records only three Pharisees (There were probably others but in the minority) that realized the fallacy behind the soteriology of their own religious sect: Nicodemus (Jn 19), Joseph of Arimathea (Mt 27), and Paul (Acts 9); the majority, as far as we know, went south with their rejection of Jesus.

 Whammy #1: the sinful nature of man. Because man is a sinner he is unable to keep the Law perfectly. The Pharisees saw it differently. Everyone else was a sinner so they considered themselves an exception.

Without considering all the manifold purposes behind the giving of the Law, let’s look at one of the main reasons – for by the law is the knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20). Now isn’t that odd; the Pharisees never figured that out while they spent their whole life in trying to keep something that was designed to point out their own sinfulness!

     All are guilty before God (Rom 3:19).

     The law cannot justify (or judicially declare righteous) anyone (Rom 3:20). It cannot save anyone. It can only point out an infraction and condemn the violator. It only tells us what to keep and the consequences if we break it. 

     The Law reveals that we are sinners (Rom 3:23). Note JB Phillips paraphrase of for by the law is the knowledge of son, indeed it is the straight-edge of the Law that shows us how crooked we are. The Pharisees,  never personally realized their own sinfulness, only in others.

What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed (Jesus the Messiah, added) should come to whom the promise was made…  

(Gal 3:19). As David Guzik commented, God had to give us His standard so we would not destroy ourselves before the Messiah came. The law was pedagogical in nature (Gal 3:24). It was a tutor assigned to us for the purpose of protecting from the evils of surrounding pagan societies, but also pointed to a higher standard of living not found elsewhere in the world; in other words, it gave the Jews a moral compass in an ocean of immorality. Men were in protective custody of the Law and its strict discipline until Christ came.

Our sinful nature is what gives birth to the GOOGOA firewall (pronounced, Geu – go – uh). You have heard of the term firewall; it has two main usages. It can refer to a containment wall designed to prevent a fire from spreading or a security measure to prevent unauthorized electronic access to a computer system.

I am employing it here metaphorically as a spiritual firewall (figuratively speaking, not literally like in Gen 3:24), providentially designed to prevent a hacker (like the Pharisees) to gain access to God’s righteousness by the works of the Law or by any other manmade rules or regulations, no matter how noble the effort, ethically, or morally.  

I know GOOGOA sounds silly, but is it any sillier than the word GOOGLE? Actually, it is an acronym based off of an interpretation of the verse found in James 2:10, “guilty of one guilty of all.”  Supposedly, though I have never personally tallied them up, there are 613 commandments in the Mosaic system. There are 365 negative commands (One for every day of the year! Be sure to order your new 2012 Levitical calendar, “Moseying on Upward” at your local Working My Way to Heaven store no later than October of this year.) and 248 positive ones; that’s about 60% negative! 

To make the dynamic of this whammy more emphatic, we cannot violate any of these commands by acts of commission or omission (through neglect or ignorance). Entertaining just one bad thought in the whole life, like anger (Mt 5:21-22), lust (cf. Mt 5:28), revenge (Mt 5:38-39), hate (Mt 5:43-44), and et cetera, makes us guilty of violating all according to the half-brother of Jesus. Did I mention everything must be done with the whole heart as well, according to the number one command in all of Scripture (Deut 6:5; Mt  22:40)? That means, folks, any half-hearted compliance to the 613 is, well, you guessed it, a violation, guilty of the whole shebang. 

GOOGOA represents the absolute impossibility of satisfying the Divine requirements of the Law through human effort. The whole concept of works never worked because sinful man cannot achieve holiness before God in his own strength; to the contrary the Pharisees spent their whole life believing that it was possible (cf. Rom 11:6). The externals of the Law could not be divorced from the internal truth of the Law. This is exactly what the Pharisees attempted to do to their condemnation and shame. Are you conjuring up any idea of futility here? I hope so.

The sin nature acts as an inhibitor (retards or prevents) in man’s obedience to the Law of God. The Law demanded perfection, and all man could was condemn his imperfection because the sinfulness of his heart exacerbated his efforts. The Pharisees sought salvation by obedience to the Law. The Law in turn condemned him as a sinner in the attempt.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight (Rom 3:19-20).  

Whammy #1 indicates that it is impossible for man to keep the Law because his very sinfulness prevents him from doing so. Even a believer cannot keep the Law good enough for God due to the dynamics of sin.

Whammy #2: the sterility of the Law. Galatians 3:21, Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.  

Had righteous come by the Law, the cross would not have been necessary (cf. Gal 2:21). There is no moral law (e.g., keeping the Decalogue minus the Sabbath) or codified law (Levitical system, including the Sabbath) can give eternal life! The Pharisee probably labored over their own traditions more than the Law of Moses because Jesus often charged them with nullifying the Word of God (Mk 7:13); even keeping the traditions of the Elders which "shadowed" the Law could not give life. 

To spend a life striving to obtain a right standing with God through a Law that was not designed by God to give life is a frightening prospect, particularly when you consider  that this same group had Jesus nailed to a Roman cross. I told you before a pharisaical mentality can get downright mean, cruel, and vicious. Remember that Paul, author of the book of Galatians, was at one time a rising star among the Pharisees himself (Acts 23:6; 26:5; Php 3:5). The teaching of Jesus rocked the world of the Pharisees with the truth, and they hated Him for it and hated Paul, too.

Let’s review the impossibility of keeping the Law for salvation. Our sin nature will cause us to be guilty of all in short order, but even if it was theoretically possible to keep the law, the Law was not designed to give life anyway. Salvation by keeping the Law was and is a dead end.

Whammy #3: the sinless nature of Christ. The life of Jesus Christ reveals that He was the one and only exception of complete, perfect obedience to the Law. Obviously it wasn’t for the purpose of salvation but love for the Father through obedience to His holy and righteous standard.

Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill (Mt 5:17). 

Only Jesus was able to keep the whole Law every moment of the day (24/7) and be pleasing to God (Jn 8:29). Folks, you have to be sinless in order to do that; Jesus was without sin (Heb 4:15; 1 Jn 3:15) ; everybody else was a sinner (Rom 3:10, 23 5:12). Here is the cool thing,

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8, emphasis added).

The sinless Son was made sin for us at the cross, in other words, He bore in His body the penalty of our sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor 5:21). That is some heavy stuff. So what we have is God giving a Law to man which no one could keep except His Son. But the Pharisees did their best to become the righteous of God, not in Him (Jesus Christ) by the law of faith, but by keeping a non-life-giving Law by the works of the flesh. In essence it was a spiritual tragedy.

The Pharisees had to have overhauled or overlooked Habakkuk 2:4, But the just shall live by his faith. This is quoted by Paul in Gal 3:11, But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for "THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH." People don't do that with the Word of God today do they?...

Rom 3:28  Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.

Gal 2:16  knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.

Gal 3:2  This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith (cf. Rom 8:9)?

Php 3:9  and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;

This set of whammies alone reveals all attempts to obtain the righteousness of God through works as a futile or useless effort; it is absolutely impossible.

• Whammy #1: Nobody with a sin nature can keep the Law perfectly; anything less than perfect is guilty of violating the whole Law.

• Whammy #2: The Law cannot give eternal life.

• Whammy #3: Only a sinless nature can keep the Law perfectly. There are no sinless people here on earth to be found!

Only by the law of faith can we be in a right standing with God. Futility takes flight and faith takes hold. In one sweeping moment we can become the righteousness of God in Christ, no longer under the bondage and burden of the Law. Paul’s salvation statement in Eph 2:8-9 leaps out here.

Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,

Eph 2:9  not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Allow me to list a few more passages of Scripture without comment.

Rom 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Rom 4:3  For what does the Scripture say? "ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS ACCOUNTED TO HIM FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS."

Rom 4:13  For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

Gal 3:7  Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.

And yet you never gave me a young goat. The father slew the fatted calf; the “faithful” elder son never was given even so  much as a goat to celebrate with his friends.

My friends.  His friends were considered separate from those congregating around the younger brother. “Any friends of my younger brother are no friends of mine.” This would have to include his father.Like the Pharisees, the son had a "higher" standard.

You never gave me a young goat. What motivated the older son in all his years of service was a selfish ambition. His actions would be socially acceptable in comparison to his brother's outrageous behavior. Both dishonored their father and needed repentance.

Lk 15:30  But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.'

This son of yours. This is derogatory and reveals the contempt the older brother had for his younger brother. My brother is not in his vocabulary. In his mind the younger brother lost brother status and son status when he took his portion and headed off to a far country. His father took a completely different view point. 

Who has devoured your livelihood with harlots. His brother may have shared his intentions with him during the separation process. Given the talk among brothers over the years, the younger probably knew how his older brother really felt about his Dad before he split to a far country.

Lk 15:31  "And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours.

Son, you are always with me. This is the feeling of the father toward the older son, but it is not reciprocated. “Sir, your older son never was, but if he was, it was a long time ago. These kind of feeling doesn’t surface overnight.”

All that I have is yours. This was technically correct for the portion to the younger son had already been distributed (cf. v12). The older son still had the right of usufruct (see posting 2.3.11 // The Lost Son, Part IV, The Father’s Love, Luke 15:20-24 in Lucottos for further discussion on usufruct or go to Search This Blog in Lucottos and type in usufruct). Though the remaining inheritance was going to the older son, he even begrudged the love bestowed upon his younger brother. How could the Father's love for the son hurt or take away from the older son? In the older brother's mind it wounded his pride.

The Pharisees and scribes had easy access to all the riches of God’s truth. They spent their lives dealing with Scripture and public worship – but they never really possessed any of the treasures enjoyed by the repentant sinner (JM, The MacArthur Bible Commentary, p. 1311). Only repentant sinners will ever enjoy the riches of the inheritance of the saints in Christ Jesus.

According to BKC, all that I have is yours suggests the religious leaders’ privileged position as members of God’s Chosen People. They were the recipients and guardians of the covenants and the Law (Rom 3:1-2; 9:4).
 

Lk 15:32  It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.' "

It was right that we should make merry and be glad. This summarizes all three parables.

Note what is said about Jesus after concluding his Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1- 7:29).

Mt 7:28  And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching,

Mt 7:29  for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

The Pharisees weren't astonished; they were angered with Jesus. Piety has a long track record according to the Pharisees; the outcasts just don’t become instantly righteous or in right standing with God. In their thinking it takes years of arduous discipline, sacrifice, and obedience to the traditions of the Elders and the Law of Moses for that to happen. No one should automatically enter the kingdom of God without bearing the burden of obedience to prove a person’s worth before God. Jesus offering the kingdom of God to sinners and tax collectors by a simple act of repentance is preposterous and to be rejected.  

The Pharisees never understood the value or appreciated the gem of God’s grace. For them to receive grace they had to admit they were sinners; their spiritual pride wouldn’t allow that to happen. The rejection of grace was finalized at the Cross.

The major difference between the younger son (who represented the sinner) and the older son (who represented the Pharisees) was that the younger son believed he was unworthy of his father’s favor (Lk 15:21) whereas the older son believed he had earned God’s favor (Lk 15:29).Without grace (unmerited favor) there is no hope for any of us, no forgiveness, no restoration, only misery and death in this life and then the heat is turned up for an eternity.

Postscript

Since our trek through the land of the lost sons, I have discovered skeletal remains of Phariseeism scattered all over the landscape of my heart, in this chamber and that chamber. Spiritual house cleaning is no easy task. Sometimes, I am afraid to open the door for fear of what I might find about myself. 

Also, I cannot seem to shake my working hypothesis of a core feature of an ancient or post modern day Pharisee. It orbits around a negative attitude or indifference toward those apart from Christ.  Do religious people like the Pharisees and scribes go after the lost or even care about them? No; they are as negative and indifferent as all get out.  Everybody is a sinner but them. The elder son proved to be another prodigal; go figure, a kind of self-appointed righteousness by “proximity” to the Father like the Pharisees. 

Both boys had wrong ideas about their father. Both boys dishonored their father by being disrespectful and resentful. Both took advantage of him and spurned his love, mercy, and grace. Both boys were prodigals in their own right. Only one repented from of all of this and experienced the grace of his father.. This is the only positive coming out of the story, and it was the cause of great happiness and rejoicing.

The Pharisees related only to the older son. He was their hero in this real true to life story, and the younger son (representing the sinners) was the villain. We know that one of the lost was found, and this brought great rejoicing. It would be nice to know how it all turned out, but in some way I think we know. 

The elder brother hated and resented his father and younger brother until dooms day (the Pharisees and scribes). The Pharisees and scribes got angry and rejected Jesus’ offer for making them out to be the bad guys. The tax collectors and sinners present may have accepted or rejected Jesus’ offer. 

Everybody hearing the parables had a shot at redemption, few if any took it. But know this; if but one took the offer, just one, we know there was great jubilation in heaven! This is the way it is in heaven when the lost are found! We share in that joy when we reach others for Christ, and this is what the disciples took away with them. The Father loves the found and He loves the lost, and when the lost is found, there is joy in heaven.

Jesus came to earth as a missionary to do what? To seek and to save that which was lost (Lk 19:10). This was to be the disciples mandate in the Great Commission in Mt 28:18-20.

Where are you at in all of this? I so wanted to beat the stew out of the younger son for his irreverence, greed, and self-centeredness, but that was the old nature talking. I cooled down a bit when I realized that this was one of those Pharisee bones God had to pick with me that needed to be discarded from this poor boy’s heart. I saw myself in the younger son. Then I discovered that I fit the profile of the older son as well; more than I cared to admit. There was a closet full of bones I had to clean out; I’m still working on it.

I wanted to identify with the father so much, but I was nowhere close to relating to him. I was far away from having an attitude of love like Him toward both of his lost sons, for God so loved the world. This is not a confession that I am spiritually lost, but rather an admittance that I was not as Christ-like as I needed to be toward those estranged from the Father. 

This is where I saw a garage full of dead man’s bones in me; I’m working on that job, too. But I didn’t tell you where the hammer hit the hardest. It fell right on my indifference to the lost; one of the biggest skeletons of all dangling in the  the great room. You get so comfortable hanging around fellow believers that you can become isolated and insensitive to the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20).  There is a danger of losing a sense of urgency of finding the lost because so much time is taken up with the found. 

I hope you found this hiking adventure in the land of the lost sons to be beneficial to your spiritual health. Just keep in mind that God must have the preeminence in our lives which only happens when we are Christ-minded. If God is not the center focus in our lives, we will realize it eventually; an imbalance occurs and remains as long as God is in the backseat of our priorities; it’s really a love problem. 

We either go prodigal-minded (self-driven) or pharisaical-minded (self-righteous driven). The best thing to do at the moment of that realization is to acknowledge our disobedience, confess our sins, and make an about turn (180 degrees) and get back on the track and start running the race of faith (cf. 1 Jn 1:9).  We will never know the joy this brings to the Father until we get to glory, but rest assured, He is very joyful when believers are Christ-minded (3 Jn 1:4) and the lost are found (Lk 15:7; 10, 32).  It was right that we should make merry and be glad. If we don’t have that attitude, it was right, God may have a few Pharisee bones to pick with us! 

For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost (Lk 19:10).  

It was our sin, beloved, that nailed Jesus to the cross, not as a victim but as a willing Sacrifice on His part in order to redeem us from the penalty of sin - eternal separation from God in the lake of fire. Envision the markers of Jesus Christ on His hands, His feet, and His side. 

These are Pharisaically induced marks, our marks; the only man made thing in heaven. You and I put them there…. Maybe, just maybe, we are more like the Pharisees than we realize. We can hate something so much that we become the very thing we despise. It’s called hypocrisy. Before leaving the land of the lost sons, maybe we should leave any traces or resemblances here before leaving this place. Then there would be two positives coming out of this story: the younger son and us. <><