The Father Who Runs

Jesus told this story to people who were grumbling that He welcomed sinners and ate with them. So before we enter the parable, we should feel the weight of the audience. The Pharisees and scribes were not cold, indifferent men, they were deeply religious people who believed that holiness required distance from the unclean. And Jesus answered their grumbling not with an argument, but with a story about a father.

The younger son's request, "give me the portion of goods that falleth to me" (Luke 15:12), was, in that culture, roughly equivalent to wishing his father dead. He wanted the inheritance without the relationship. He wanted what the father had, not the father himself. And the father gave it to him. That alone is a portrait of grace, the freedom God gives us even to walk away from Him.

The son ends up feeding pigs in a far country, which for a Jewish listener would have been the lowest imaginable degradation. And then, the text says, "he came to himself" (Luke 15:17). That phrase is worth sitting with. Coming to yourself is not the same as becoming worthy. The son's plan when he rises is still transactional, he will offer to be a hired servant, to earn his keep. He is not yet expecting restoration. He is rehearsing a speech.

But the father is watching. "When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him" (Luke 15:20). The father was looking. And when he saw the boy, he did not wait for the speech. He ran. In the ancient Near East, a man of dignity did not run, it was considered undignified. The father ran anyway, and he fell on his son's neck and kissed him. The boy begins his rehearsed speech, and the father interrupts it with a celebration.

This is the God Jesus is revealing to grumbling religious people, and to us. He is not standing at the door with crossed arms, waiting to hear whether your apology is adequate. He is running. He has been watching for you. And before your words are finished, He is already calling for the robe, the ring, and the feast.