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Galatians 3:26, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ,” and Galatians 4:6, “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts crying out, ‘Abba, Father.’ Therefore, you are no longer a slave but a son, and of a son, then an heir through God.”
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints of God, this parable by our Lord Jesus has such profound wisdom, such profound comfort, and such profound peace that meditating on this parable could really take us from now until the Lord comes in glory.
But I want to consider it this morning under this rubric: that is, the devil has three kinds of slavery in which he would bind us, and Jesus would set us free from all of them. Three kinds of spiritual slavery, and each one of them is seen in the parable.
The first slavery is hedonism, the slavery of sin, of pursuing your own pleasures, living for yourself. St. Paul says it like this to the Philippians: he says that their God is their belly, the service of our own lusts and desires.
And this is the younger son on the day that he leaves the father’s estate. He comes to his father and he says, “Father, give me my share of the inheritance.” The way that it worked in the ancient world was that the older son would inherit the land and that the younger son would inherit some of the property. And so he says, “I wish…” but remember, the inheritance would happen when the father died.
And so the son comes to the father and he basically says, “I wish that you were dead. I would rather have the money than you. Give me the inheritance.” And the father, stunningly—I mean really, it turns out that the whole parable, the surprise is always how the father acts. The father stunningly gives it to him.
He gives him the money, and he gathers it up, and he goes shopping for some new clothes. So this is what I like to imagine, stopping the younger son, the prodigal son, to stop him as he leaves the father’s estate, you know, as he steps over the cattle guard, and he’s on the road, and he’s got his new shoes on, he’s got his traveling clothes, his belly is full, his wallet is full, his imagination is full of all of the things that are coming in the foreign country where he can finally be out from the tyranny of his father who has all these rules for life in the estate and in the family.
“I can finally do what I want. I’m finally,” the son says, “I’m finally free.” He has no idea that months down the road is the pigsty and the moaning belly and the desire to eat the slop. This is hedonism, serving our own lusts.
It’s an old lie of the devil who comes and says, “If you want to be free, it means doing what you want to do, living how you want to live.” If it’s Psalm 2, “Come let us break their chains and cut their swords asunder,” to throw off the Lord’s commandments as if the commandments were burdensome, as if Jesus was trying to hold us back from fun by giving us His Ten Commandments.
This is the understanding that the way of life is the way of choice and doing whatever that you want, but we know—it is basic wisdom—we know that that way ends in destruction. It’s the way of death. It’s the way of darkness. Jesus says it like this: “Whoever commits a sin is a slave to sin.” A slave to sin. Sin is not freedom; it’s the opposite of that.
Paul says in Romans 6, “Whatever you present yourselves to obey, that is your master.” And you can be slaves either of sin that leads to death, or of God and obedience which leads to righteousness and life. We then see this first slavery. It’s probably each of these slaves has its own confession.
The confession of the first slavery to sin sounds like the groaning stomach as this Jewish kid looks with jealousy— saliva running off of his mouth as he looks at the pigs eating the trash, and he just wants a bite of it. That’s where that road ends.
But he comes to himself, and here we see the second spiritual slavery, the second danger enter into the conversation. When he came to himself, he says, “How many of my father’s hired servants have plenty of bread to eat, and here I am dying of hunger? So I’ll arise, and I’ll go to my father and I’ll say to him, ‘Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.'”
Let’s recognize this as the slavery of despair, the slavery of guilt, and the slavery of shame. This is the confession. It says, “I’m not worthy to be called one of your sons. Make me as one of your hired hands.”
And that word there, hired hand, is a surprise. I would expect there to see the word for slave or servant, doulos in the Greek. I think that’s all over the place, but it’s a different word, misthios, or something close to that. It means a wage earner, because the servant would at least have a place to stay on the estate. The servant would sit at the table and even eat along with the children, but this younger son says, “I’m not even worthy to live on the estate. I’ll commute to work. I’m going to drive in—or walk, I suppose—I’m going to walk in, I’m going to work, just give me a little bit of bread to eat. I’m not even, I’m not…”
This is the point.
“I’m not worthy, and that’s what despair sounds like. I’m not worthy to be a son; make me a slave.” Now this is the first move; it’s a religious move that happens in every human heart when we recognize our own sinfulness, when we recognize that we’ve broken the law of God, when we recognize that we are truly unworthy to be God’s children, when we recognize that we are poor, miserable sinners, and that we have deserved God’s temporal and eternal punishment.
When we realize that, then we want to come before the Lord and say, “Lord, we’re not worthy. We can’t be Your children. We’ve lost that. We’ve fallen from that. We can’t be Your children. Just make us Your slaves. Make us Your servants. Make us Your wage earners. We’ll do the work. We’ll work hard. We’ll make it up to You. We’ll make it right. We’ll do what we can.”
And I think, dear friends, that that’s probably at the basis of every human religion, trying to appease God by our own works or by our own efforts. And the confession of it, we heard, “I’m no longer to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.”
But look at what the Father has to say about that. He arose, came to his Father, but while he was still a long way off, the Father saw him and had compassion on him. That word compassion in all of the Gospels is only used of Jesus and the father waiting for his son. His bowels are spilling for him. He longs for his son. He sees him at a distance. He has compassion on him, and he pulls up his robes and he runs down the street.
I remember when I was a kid, there was one time that I saw my dad run. My brother had apparently fallen off the fence and scraped his belly and hit the ground, and I didn’t know what exactly was happening, but my father ran by me in a dash. I didn’t even know he could run. And he ran by me, and I thought something terrible must be happening; something important must be happening. I ran behind him. You know, we were kids. We ran everywhere. But dads didn’t run, and especially, especially in the ancient world. Men, landowners, important people, they did not run.
But look at the father here, running, sprinting, dust flying behind him. He didn’t care who saw him. He didn’t care who was looking at him. He didn’t care if the neighbors would shake their heads at him. There was his son, and he was back, and he ran to him, and he takes him up in his arms and he starts kissing him.
And the son is trying to confess his sins. The son is trying to tell the father that he shouldn’t be a son anymore, and he cuts him off. We have to see the words that the father won’t let the son say. He had it all planned out, remember? “Father, I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” But he grabs him, and he’s kissing him.
And the son says, “Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and before you. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.” And the father says, “Enough! None of that.” And he says to the servants, “Get shoes for his feet! Get a robe, the best robe! Put it on him. Put the ring on him, the ring of inheritance, the ring of sonship, the ring with the family crest that shows he’s part of the family. Kill the fatted calf. He was dead and now he’s alive again.”
The father, dear Christians, the father does not want servants. He does not want slaves. He wants sons, children. We come in here and we confess our sins, but our confession is not that we are unworthy to be called his sons because the Lord does not want to hear it. He will call you his son. He will call you his daughter, and you can’t do anything to stop him. He will adopt you into the family.
It doesn’t matter if you want to be a slave, to be a hired hand. He won’t have any of it. The Father wants sons, and he brings them into the house. Can you imagine, you know, imagine this younger son? All of his dreams and imaginations as he was leaving the father’s house are all crushed by the pigsty, but now what were his dreams and imaginations coming home?
That maybe, maybe the father would only throw him in prison for a couple of weeks, that maybe the beating wouldn’t be that severe, that maybe, just maybe the father would listen to his entreaty and give him a job at the edge of the field, looking at him with disgust, spitting on the ground every time he saw him, so that he always would remember his sin. Maybe that would be the best thing that he could imagine.
But he comes home, and here comes the father, running down the street, grabbing him up into his arms and carrying him home with his bare feet and his nasty, smelly clothes and his empty belly with his ribs showing. And he carries him into the house and he sets him down at the table and he puts the feast before him, the stunning joy of it all, the overwhelming mercy of it all. This is what the Lord does for you.
But there is a third slavery, and maybe the most subtle of all, and this is why Jesus tells the parable. Remember, the Pharisees were sitting there watching Jesus eating with the sinners and the tax collectors, and they were, “What is he doing? Doesn’t he know who they are? He shouldn’t be doing that if he calls himself a teacher.”
And so Jesus has a parable; in fact, he has three parables. He tells first the parable of the one lost sheep out of the hundred, and then he tells the parable of the one lost coin out of ten, and then he tells the parable of the one lost son out of two, but it’s the older sons that Jesus is after because they also think of themselves as slaves.
But it’s a different kind of slavery. It’s not the slavery of sin. It’s not the slavery of despair. It’s the slavery of pride. The slavery of thinking that they had done enough. The slavery of self-confidence. This is a tricky one. It’s the Pharisee slavery. It’s the slavery that refuses to celebrate the mercy of God, to kind of consider our own hearts and to ask, “Am I, is this slavery happening, finding a place in my own heart?”
We can ask, “What is my attitude towards other people’s sins? What do I think about the people that I don’t like that are breaking God’s commandments all the time and God’s offer of mercy for them? What is my attitude towards the joy of salvation?”
Here’s what it sounds like: The older son was in the field, and he starts to come in, and he hears the festivities happening; and so he says to the servant, “What does this mean?” And the servant says, “Your brother’s back. Your father killed the fatted calf for him.” And he turns around and turns his back to the house and to the father and refuses to go in. He’s out there pouting.
So the father gets to surprise us a third time. I mean, first he surprises us by giving the inheritance—that means, I mean, that’s the freedom that the Lord gives us to really destroy things. And then the second surprise is that he runs to welcome the son back. But here’s the third surprise, is the father goes out to find the pouting older boy.
I mean, I think if I’m in the party, I say, “Well, let him pout. He can skip dinner if he wants to,” but he doesn’t. He goes out to him. Jesus is coming also for the Pharisees. Jesus—we can’t miss this—Jesus loves those Pharisees and those scribes just as much as he loves the tax collectors and sinners. He’s after them too.
But listen to what the confession of this third slavery, the slavery of pride, sounds like. He was angry; he refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him to come in, but he answered his father and he says this: “Look, all these many years I have served you, I’ve enslaved for you. I never disobeyed one of your commandments; and yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. My younger brother took half of our wealth and he spent it on prostitutes, and I’ve been working my tail off to try to make up the difference, and you never gave me anything good. I’ve been slaving and working and striving to keep this whole thing together, and you never even gave me a gift, a birthday party that I could celebrate, but this one comes back and you killed a fatted calf.”
All these years I’ve slaved for you; and listen to what the Father says to him. “Son, son, you are always with me. Everything that I have, everything that is mine is yours. It was right to celebrate and to be glad. Your brother was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found.”
And so, the kingdom of God is marked by joy and salvation. And in this way, joy first in that the Lord saves you, a lost and condemned creature; and then secondly, joy that the Lord saves the person next to you, also a lost and condemned sinner.
God the Father, even though we constantly return to this and want to be slaves of our flesh, or slaves of despair, or slaves of pride, God the Father will have none of it. He comes and calls you his child, his beloved, the one who will get the inheritance, the one whose repentance is celebrated by the choirs of angels in heaven because you are the one that Jesus loves.
He looks at you in the trough, in the road home, in the backfield. He looks at you and He has compassion for you, and He runs to you, arms spread open to die on the cross, and He sets a table for you of His own body and blood so that you might feast and rejoice in this, that you are His beloved children.
And this freedom, dear saints, this freedom no one can take from you. God be praised. Amen.
And the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
