Verses 1-32
Chapter 15
15:1-7 The
tax-collectors and sinners were all coming near to Jesus to hear him,
and the Pharisees and scribes were murmuring, saying, "This man welcomes
sinners and eats with them."
He spoke this parable
to them. "What man of you," he said, "who has a hundred sheep, and who
hast lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness
and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he finds
it, rejoicing he lays it on his shoulders; and when he comes home he
calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, 'Rejoice with
me because I have found my sheep which was lost.' I tell you that just
so there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents more than
over ninety-nine just people who have no need of repentance."
There is no chapter of the New Testament so well known and so
dearly loved as the fifteenth chapter of Luke's gospel. It has been
called "the gospel in the gospel," as if it contained the very distilled
essence of the good news which Jesus came to tell.
These parables arose out of definite situations. It was an
offence to the scribes and Pharisees that Jesus associated with men and
women who, by the orthodox, were labelled as sinners. The Pharisees gave
to people who did not keep the law a general classification. They
called them the People of the Land; and there was a complete barrier
between the Pharisees and the People of the Land. To marry a daughter to
one of them was like exposing her bound and helpless to a lion. The
Pharisaic regulations laid it down, "When a man is one of the People of
the Land, entrust no money to him, take no testimony from him. trust him
with no secret, do not appoint him guardian of an orphan, do not make
him the custodian of charitable funds, do not accompany him on a
journey." A Pharisee was forbidden to be the guest of any such man or to
have him as his guest. He was even forbidden, so far as it was
possible, to have any business dealings with him. It was the deliberate
Pharisaic aim to avoid every contact with the people who did not observe
the petty details of the law. Obviously, they would be shocked to the
core at the way in which Jesus companied with people who were not only
rank outsiders, but sinners, contact with whom would necessarily defile.
We will understand these parables more fully if we remember that the
strict Jews said, not "There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who
repents," but, "There will be joy in heaven over one sinner who is
obliterated before God." They looked sadistically forward not to the
saving but to the destruction of the sinner.
So Jesus told them the parable of the lost sheep and the
shepherd's joy. The shepherd in Judaea had a hard and dangerous task.
Pasture was scarce. The narrow central plateau was only a few miles
wide, and then it plunged down to the wild cliffs and the terrible
devastation of the desert. There were no restraining walls and the sheep
would wander. George Adam Smith wrote of the shepherd, "On some high
moor across which at night the hyaenas howl, when you meet him,
sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, armed, leaning on his staff and
looking out over his scattered sheep, everyone of them on his heart, you
understand why the shepherd of Judaea sprang to the front in his
people's history; why they gave his name to the king and made him the
symbol of providence; why Christ took him as the type of
self-sacrifice."
The shepherd was personally responsible for the sheep. If a
sheep was lost the shepherd must at least bring home the fleece to show
how it had died. These shepherds were experts at tracking and could
follow the straying sheep's footprints for miles across the hills. There
was not a shepherd for whom it was not all in the day's work to risk
his life for his sheep.
Many of the flocks were communal flocks, belonging, not to
individuals, but to villages. There would be two or three shepherds in
charge. Those whose flocks were safe would arrive home on time and bring
news that one shepherd was still out on the mountain side searching for
a sheep which was lost. The whole village would be upon the watch, and
when, in the distance, they saw the shepherd striding home with the lost
sheep across his shoulders, there would rise from the whole community a
shout of joy and of thanksgiving.
That is the picture Jesus drew of God; that, said Jesus, is what
God is like. God is as glad when a lost sinner is found as a shepherd
is when a strayed sheep is brought home. As a great saint said, "God,
too, knows the joy of finding things that have gone lost."
There is a wondrous thought here. It is the truly tremendous
truth that God is kinder than men. The orthodox would write off the
tax-collectors and the sinners as beyond the pale and as deserving of
nothing but destruction; not so God. Men may give up hope of a sinner;
not so God. God loves the folk who never stray away; but in his heart
there is the joy of joys when a lost one is found and comes home. It is a
thousand times easier to come back to God than to come home to the
bleak criticism of men.
Souls of men! why will ye scatter
Like a crowd of frightened sheep?
Foolish hearts! why will ye wander
From a love so true and deep?
Was there ever kindest shepherd
Half so gentle, half so sweet,
As the Saviour who would have us
Come and gather round his feet?
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
15:8-10 Or, what woman
who has ten silver pieces, if she loses one piece, does not light a
lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And
when she has found it she calls together her friends and neighbours,
saying, "Rejoice with me because I have found the silver piece which I
lost." Even so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels
of God over one sinner who repents.
The coin in question in this parable was a silver drachma (Greek #1406)
worth about 4 pence. It would not be difficult to lose a coin in a
Palestinian peasant's house and it might take a long search to find it.
The houses were very dark, for they were lit by one little circular
window not much more than about eighteen inches across. The floor was
beaten earth covered with dried reeds and rushes; and to look for a coin
on a floor like that was very much like looking for a needle in a
haystack. The woman swept the floor in the hope that she might see the
coin glint or hear it tinkle as it moved.
There are two reasons why the woman may have been so eager to find the coin:
(i) It may have been a matter of sheer necessity. 4 p does not
sound very much but it was more than a whole day's wage for a working
man in Palestine. These people lived always on the edge of things and
very little stood between them and real hunger. The woman may well have
searched with intensity because, if she did not find, the family would
not eat.
(ii) There may have been a much more romantic reason. The mark
of a married woman was a head-dress made of ten silver coins linked
together by a silver chain. For years maybe a girl would scrape and save
to amass her ten coins, for the head-dress was almost the equivalent of
her wedding ring. When she had it, it was so inalienably hers that it
could not even be taken from her for debt. It may well be that it was
one of these coins that the woman had lost, and so she searched for it
as any woman would search if she lost her marriage ring.
In either case it is easy to think of the joy of the woman when
at last she saw the glint of the elusive coin and when she held it in
her hand again. God, said Jesus, is like that. The joy of God, and of
all the angels, when one sinner comes home, is like the joy of a home
when a coin which has stood between them and starvation has been lost
and is found; it is like the joy of a woman who loses her most precious
possession, with a value far beyond money, and then finds it again.
No Pharisee had ever dreamed of a God like that. A great Jewish
scholar has admitted that this is the one absolutely new thing which
Jesus taught men about God--that he actually searched for men. The Jew
might have agreed that if a man came crawling home to God in
self-abasement and prayed for pity he might find it; but he would never
have conceived of a God who went out to search for sinners. We believe
in the seeking love of God, because we see that love incarnate in Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. who came to seek and to save that which was
lost.
15:11-32 Jesus said,
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his
father, 'Father, give me the part of the estate which falls to me.' So
his father divided his living between them. Not many days after, the son
realized it all and went away to a far country, and there in wanton
recklessness scattered his substance. When he had spent everything a
mighty famine arose throughout that country and he began to be in want.
He went and attached himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent
him into his fields to feed pigs; and he had a great desire to fill
himself with the husks the pigs were eating; and no one gave anything to
him. When he had come to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's
hired servants have more than enough bread, and I--I am perishing here
with hunger. I will get up and I will go to my father, and I will say to
him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no
longer fit to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired
servants."' So he got up and went to his father. While he was still a
long way away his father saw him, and was moved to the depths of his
being and ran and flung his arms round his neck and kissed him tenderly.
The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before
you. I am no longer fit to be called your son.' But the father said to
his servants, 'Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a
ring on his finger; put shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and
kill it and let us eat and rejoice, for this my son was dead and has
come back to life again; he was lost and has been found.' And they began
to rejoice.
"Now the elder son was
in the field. When he came near the house he heard the sound of music
and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what these things
could mean? He said to him, 'Your brother has come, and your father has
killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.' He
was enraged and refused to come in. His father went out and urged him to
come in. He answered his father, 'Look you, I have served you so many
years and I never transgressed your order, and to me you never gave a
kid that I might have a good time with my friends. But when this son of
yours--this fellow who consumed your living with harlots--came, you
killed the fatted calf for him.' 'Child,' he said to him, 'you are
always with me. Everything that is mine is yours. But we had to rejoice
and be glad, for your brother was dead and has come back to life again;
he was lost and has been found.'"
Not without reason this has been called the greatest short
story in the world. Under Jewish law a father was not free to leave his
property as he liked. The elder son must get two-thirds and the younger
one-third. (Deuteronomy 21:17.)
It was by no means unusual for a father to distribute his estate before
he died, if he wished to retire from the actual management of affairs.
But there is a certain heartless callousness in the request of the
younger son. He said in effect, "Give me now the part of the estate I
will get anyway when you are dead, and let me get out of this." The
father did not argue. He knew that if the son was ever to learn he must
learn the hard way; and he granted his request. Without delay the son
realized his share of the property and left home.
He soon ran through the money; and he finished up feeding pigs, a
task that was forbidden to a Jew because the law said, "Cursed is he
who feeds swine." Then Jesus paid sinning mankind the greatest
compliment it has ever been paid. "When he came to himself," he said.
Jesus believed that so long as a man was away from God he was not truly
himself; he was only truly himself when he was on the way home. Beyond a
doubt Jesus did not believe in total depravity. He never believed that
you could glorify God by blackguarding man; he believed that man was
never essentially himself until he came home to God.
So the son decided to come home and plead to be taken back not
as a son but in the lowest rank of slaves, the hired servants, the men
who were only day labourers. The ordinary slave was in some sense a
member of the family, but the hired servant could be dismissed at a
day's notice. He was not one of the family at all. He came home; and,
according to the best Greek text, his father never gave him the chance
to ask to be a servant. He broke in before that. The robe stands for
honour; the ring for authority, for if a man gave to another his signet
ring it was the same as giving him the power of attorney; the shoes for a
son as opposed to a slave, for children of the family were shod and
slaves were not. (The slave's dream in the negro spiritual is of the
time when "all God's chillun got shoes," for shoes were the sign of
freedom.) And a feast was made that all might rejoice at the wanderer's
return.
Let us stop there and see the truth so far in this parable.
(i) It should never have been called the parable of the Prodigal
Son, for the son is not the hero. It should be called the parable of
the Loving Father, for it tells us rather about a father's love than a
son's sin.
(ii) It tells us much about the forgiveness of God. The father
must have been waiting and watching for the son to come home, for he saw
him a long way off. When he came, he forgave him with no
recriminations. There is a way of forgiving, when forgiveness is
conferred as a favour. It is even worse, when someone is forgiven, but
always by hint and by word and by threat his sin is held over him.
Once Lincoln was asked how he was going to treat the rebellious
southerners when they had finally been defeated and had returned to the
Union of the United States. The questioner expected that Lincoln would
take a dire vengeance, but he answered, "I will treat them as if they
had never been away."
It is the wonder of the love of God that he treats us like that.
That is not the end of the story. There enters the elder brother
who was actually sorry that his brother had come home. He stands for
the self-righteous Pharisees who would rather see a sinner destroyed
than saved. Certain things stand out about him.
(i) His attitude shows that his years of obedience to his father had been years of grim duty and not of loving service.
(ii) His attitude is one of utter lack of sympathy. He refers to
the prodigal, not as any brother, but as your son. He was the kind of
self-righteous character who would cheerfully have kicked a man farther
into the gutter when he was already down.
(iii) He had a peculiarly nasty mind. There is no mention of
harlots until he mentions them. He, no doubt, suspected his brother of
the sins he himself would have liked to commit.
Once again we have the amazing truth that it is easier to
confess to God than it is to many a man; that God is more merciful in
his judgments than many an orthodox man; that the love of God is far
broader than the love of man; and that God can forgive when men refuse
to forgive. In face of a love like that we cannot be other than lost in
wonder, love and praise.
THREE LOST THINGS
We must finally note that these three parables are not simply three
ways of stating the same thing. There is a difference. The sheep went
lost through sheer foolishness. It did not think; and many a man would
escape sin if he thought in time. The coin was lost through no fault of
its own. Many a man is led astray; and God will not hold him guiltless
who has taught another to sin. The son deliberately went lost, callously
turning his back on his father.
The love of God can defeat the foolishness of man, the seduction
of the tempting voices, and even the deliberate rebellion of the heart.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)