Luke 15:29
And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:
The elder son protests that after long years of obedient service he has never received even a small gift to celebrate with his friends, while his wasteful brother is honored with a feast on his return. The complaint belongs to the parable of the prodigal son, told with the lost sheep and the lost coin to answer the scribes and Pharisees who murmured because Jesus received sinners, showing that heaven rejoices when the lost repent and return. His words expose pride, self-righteousness and resentment, treating sonship as unrewarded labor for expected profit rather than joy, begrudging mercy to another as injustice to himself and refusing to share his father's gladness. The father answers with patient tenderness that the elder son has always been with him and all is his, yet rejoicing is right because the brother once dead is alive and once lost is found, picturing God's yearning welcome, pity and forgiveness toward every repentant sinner without accusation. The elder son stands for unbelieving Israel and the Pharisees, and for professed believers who grow jealous when labor is spent on the wandering and the newly restored, and the lesson calls those who have remained not to censure or begrudge but to pity, forgive freely, welcome the erring, and cooperate with God in seeking the lost.
Parable Setting and Words
Luke 15:29 belongs to the parable of the prodigal son, which stands grouped with the lost sheep and the lost piece of silver to show God's pitying, tender love toward those who stray from Him. The grouping teaches that He does not abandon those who have turned away and followed their own course, nor leave them in misery when exposed to temptation, but is kind and tender toward them. Though His children err and stray, if they repent and return He receives them with the joy of an earthly father receiving a long-lost son returning in penitence. The verse is set in Jesus' teaching about the lost sheep and the lost being brought back to the fold, which bears on the failure to seek the lost and help bring them in.
Jesus told these parables of the lost sheep, the lost silver, and the prodigal son in response to the murmuring of the scribes and Pharisees that He associated with sinners and publicans. They show mercy and forgiveness toward sinners and present His mission as recovering the lost, not condemning them. Those who think themselves just are associated with the ninety-nine, in contrast with the repentant wanderer. The teaching is that heaven rejoices over restoration, with greater joy over one repentant sinner than over the ninety-nine who need no repentance, and with joy among the heavenly host when a sinner comes to the Father in repentance.
The elder son's words claim many years of service and never transgressing a commandment at any time, while complaining that he was never given even a young goat or kid to make merry with his friends. His complaint contrasts with the father's joyful welcome, feast, and honor for the lost, returning brother, whom he regards as wasteful, sinful, and undeserving. His protest arose because the father welcomed the returning prodigal with honor while he himself had continued performing his duties. The words reflect a self-righteous attitude like that of those who condemned Jesus for seeking sinners, showing how apparent faithfulness and continued duty can coexist with a selfish, jealous, and unforgiving spirit stirred by welcome to a repentant sinner. The same welcome shows that one who has sinned can return to the Lord, confess failure, and receive welcome and help for a fresh endeavor. The prodigal sons are also connected with children whose parents indulge them and fail to restrain or guide them, so that parental neglect lets self-willed ways grow into destructive courses.
The father responds patiently and tenderly, explaining why welcoming the returned son is right and urging the elder son to share in the joy. He assures him that he has always been with him and that all his possessions are his. He declares that rejoicing is right because the lost brother is found and is alive again. The elder brother's complaint is natural, but not right, for the joy of the brother's return outweighs every other consideration.
The parable is a most pathetic and touching illustration drawn from familiar daily life and experience to teach spiritual truth and to keep people mindful of spiritual and unseen things, lifting ordinary daily work beyond mere toil. It commends truth to the conscience, coming right to the point without long, farfetched, complicated reasoning, drawing things both new and old from the treasure-house. It reads every heart as an open book, touches the heart and awakens the sympathies, and leaves hearers free to accept or reject without forcing belief. In it the father sees his son afar off, runs to meet him, and rejoices that he who had been thought dead is indeed alive.
Elder Son's Resentful Heart
The complaint lays bare pride, self-righteousness and resentment, for the elder son begrudges the welcome given to his returned brother and treats his father's kindness as an injustice done to himself. Although he pleads many years of service and unbroken obedience, he will not join in rejoicing that the lost is found, and his words are disrespectful toward both father and brother. His grievance that not even a young goat was ever given him for merry-making with his friends stands in sharp contrast to the father's feast and honor for the returning son, whom he regards as wasteful and undeserving.
He treats life in his father's house not as the joy of sonship but as unrewarded service, having forgone sinful pleasures for expected profit rather than from love. His plea of obedience is put forward as grounds for special reward, revealing pride and a circumspect life centered on what he expects to gain. In this he follows the temper of those who treat service as earning salvation and expect a fixed return for work done. Had he been in his father's place he would not have welcomed the prodigal at all, and he resents the favor shown as a personal wrong.
His claim of faithful obedience coexists with selfishness, jealousy, coldness, unthankfulness, unholiness and an unforgiving spirit. Though he remained at home and served, he felt insulted and entitled to more when his father rejoiced over the returning son. He is stubborn and complaining, standing by the struggling soul with contempt instead of helping him return, even while himself needing salvation. Apparent faithfulness thus proves able to coexist with resentment toward a repentant sinner.
That resentment turns outward in fault-watching, for he scrutinizes his brother, magnifies mistakes, criticizes and condemns. He uses those faults to justify contempt, indifference and refusal to forgive as the Lord forgives. His jealousy feeds an unforgiving spirit that will not share the father's compassion.
He is stubborn, self-willed, selfish and complaining, standing without compassion while his brother struggles rather than sharing the father's tenderness toward the repentant. He looks on those who have gone wrong and on the struggling, returning sinner with indifference or contempt instead of bringing him back to God. Even hard endurance and burden-bearing are spoiled when joined to such a fault-finding and complaining spirit.
He supposes his own course righteous and faithful in home duties, imagines he needs no repentance, and expects to be commended and honored in contrast to the prodigal. In so doing he fails to understand his father's mercy and his brother's continuing kinship, is unable to sympathize with the father's joy, and is unwilling to receive the repenting brother and rejoice at his return. Thereby he reveals his own need of repentance, humility and spiritual renewal. The same temper appears in those who claim to be commandment keepers while transgressing the law, unthankful and unholy, retaining the form of godliness but denying its power, conformed to worldly principles, exerting influence on Satan's side, with no light in them unto sanctification or holiness.
His spirit is one of suspicion, dislike, distrust, retaliation and careless disregard for those ready to die. Instead of partaking in the shepherd's seeking and in heaven's joy over the rescued lost, he meets returning souls with censure, suspicion, reproach and unkind, untender treatment, repaying them as he himself has been treated. Those who have learned by experience what it feels like to be met with suspicion and distrust must not cherish dislike, encourage retaliation, or carry that spirit into labor for others, but keep Christ's prayer before the mind, remember that with every temptation Christ has made a way of escape, refuse discouragement, trust Jesus at the right hand irrespective of what others think or how they treat them, and become overcomers through the blood of the Lamb and the word of testimony.
Father's Welcoming Love
The parable shows how God deals with the erring who come back to Him in repentance, for the father waits with yearning love to receive the returning son and prepares a feast to welcome him. The returning son recognizes his sin and need and comes back to his father as the only one who can help him, and he is met with pity, forgiveness, and joy. The father sees his son afar off, runs to meet him, and rejoices that he who had been thought dead is indeed alive, commending truth to the conscience and awakening sympathy without forcing belief. When a sinner repents and comes to the Father, heaven responds with joy, warmth, courtesy, and love.
In the gift of His beloved Son the Father has shown His love for the fallen race and made a channel for the outflow of His infinite love, so that all who believe on Jesus Christ are restored again to His favor. This gives grand themes for thought and a solid foundation for faith, for nothing more can be asked of God beyond what He has given in infinite love in Jesus as the sacrifice. Those who believe on Him will be obedient to all of God's commandments and have life in Jesus Christ.
The welcome means that repentance is not degrading, and a sinner who turns to God is received with love, forgiveness, and the robe of Christ's righteousness. One who has sinned can return to the Lord, confess failure, and receive welcome and help for a fresh endeavor. Sinners seeking the Lord for the first time and backsliders who have turned away from God turn unto the Lord with confession and contrition of soul, and none who seek Him in this way seek Him in vain, because Jesus loves them with tender, pitying compassion and died to save them. Christ is ready to receive and restore the sinner who comes to Him, and His dying love assures acceptance, peace, and love. The Father's gracious reception of the one who returns includes the robe of Christ's righteousness and a place at His table.
Enjoying the privileges of being a son is by complying with the conditions of sonship, for belonging to the father's household entails accepting the father's authority and terms. Claiming a son's privileges also means accepting a son's obligations, so the restored wanderer is to remain under the shepherd's care rather than return to wandering. The returning prodigal must give his whole life, not money alone, submitting to the Father's control and direction for deliverance from sin. Like the found sheep remaining in the fold, he must not renew his wanderings but stay under care and repay love with obedience, denying self and taking up the cross.
The return pictures a backslider or one long separated from God coming back to the Father's house and service, whom God is ready to accept and pardon of all transgressions if he will come humbly to Christ. The Majesty of Heaven will meet him even now, cleanse him from sin when he lays hold on Christ, and give him life, for all things are now ready. Serving sin and the flesh and the devil brings no profit but poor wages, and to go on neglecting this humble way is to perish in sins with no certain hope of eternal life, so the erring one is called to turn and live and not die. People who have wandered from God can return to their Father's house when they turn to God and humble themselves, and such are urged to confess backsliding and return to God, who will help them. The Father still loves the son who has left his heavenly Father and calls him to return, for worldly business cannot satisfy his desire for something better and his talents have lasting worth only when he puts Jesus first. Christ has bought him with His blood, and if he believes in Christ, learns from Him, and follows Him, he will receive eternal riches and life with God.
Returning like the prodigal means turning square about at once, leaving sinful work even at loss of position and trade, declaring to be a Christian from that day, and receiving pardon and love with purified thoughts, changed purposes, and solemn responsibility. The Father's house is the Father's service, set against the service of Satan and of sin, and Christ loves the backslider so much that He died to redeem him, so that leaving Him over the mistakes of brethren grieves His heart. People who have been rescued from sin can help bring other prodigals back to the Father.
When the prodigal links himself with God and turns to Him with full decision of soul, giving his heart and soul to God, God will accept him, bless him, and work with him to help other youth give their hearts to God and be converted. The prodigal remains accountable for all the good he might have done and which Jesus died that he might do. God still invites him to take Christ's yoke, lift His burden, learn His meekness and lowliness of heart, and find rest unto his soul.
The parable of the prodigal son also represents God's loving treatment of Israel, showing that Israel had resisted the mercy offered by God. God patiently gave His people privileges and blessings, bore with their sins, and sent messengers with warnings and invitations, yet they resisted His grace, neglected their opportunities, and despised and mocked His servants. The parable illustrates the return to the father, applied to people who become willing to receive truth so that they can be saved.
Who Elder Son Represents
The elder son stands for unrepentant, unbelieving Israel, and for the scribes and Pharisees who condemned Jesus for seeking sinners. His claim of many years of service and obedience, with resentment that he never received even a young goat for a feast with his friends, exposes a self-righteous spirit set against the father's joyful welcome of the lost and returning brother. That complaint shows a failure to understand the father's mercy and the brother's continuing kinship, and a refusal to recognize publicans and sinners as brothers who should be forgiven, sought, and led to everlasting life, whereas Jesus came to recover the lost and not to condemn them.
He illustrates Jews who treated service as earning salvation, expecting a fixed return for the amount of work done, enduring hardship while counting themselves entitled to greater reward. He also illustrates those who claim to be commandment keepers while transgressing the law, unthankful and unholy, flattering themselves that they are Christians while using entrusted talents to counterwork God. Such retain the form of godliness but in practice deny its power, having no light in them so that their light is darkness and their influence is not unto sanctification or holiness. By becoming conformed to the spirit and principles of worldlings they exert their influence on Satan's side and must give an account before God, though Jesus yearns after them as sons and daughters acting the prodigal, longing to do them the good He delights to do but cannot do because of the perversity of their characters.
He represents professed Christians and established church members who should rejoice when the Lord brings wandering people back into the fold, but instead become envious and jealous when new believers receive attention and labor. Their resentment that work is given to those newly come to the faith, rather than welcoming and helping them, reveals a need for conversion and can hinder God's work.
He means selfish displeasure and murmuring when time and labor are given to save the lost instead of to those already in the church. It is grumbling that ministers hunt up the lost sheep rather than constantly feed church members with sermons, thinking all attention and labor belong to themselves and expecting to be nursed, speaking as though the church has been robbed of labor it should have had and as though complaining builds up the church. God is sorely displeased with this attitude, hears the words and sees the attitude, for those who have had labor bestowed on them should know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent and, with Christ formed within as the hope of glory, should seek to save the lost as light bearers. Instead of wearing the yoke of Christ and using strength and talents to help the minister carry the burden and seek perishing souls by precept and example, by burden for souls and sincere prayer, by stretching out hands all the day long and hunting for souls, they act selfishly, show they have not the Spirit of Christ, and hinder soul-saving. A living church is not a gossiping church planting doubt and questioning with evil surmising and jealousy, and to expect to be constantly fed with sermons while doing no righteousness at home or in the church is a curse instead of a blessing.
He stands as a warning to those handling sacred things who claim to love God, that they must properly represent Him by sharing His spirit toward the returning lost instead of complaining. Self-righteous and selfish, feeling his own course righteous and faithful in home duties, supposing he needed no repentance and deserved to be commended and honored, contrasting himself with the prodigal, unable to sympathize with the father's joy and unwilling to receive his repenting brother and rejoice at his return, he thereby revealed his own need of repentance. The same elder-brother spirit appears when some who are called Seventh-day Adventists meet souls for whom Christ gave His precious life with suspicion, dislike, distrust, retaliation, and unkind, untender treatment, repaying them as they themselves have been treated, without patience and forbearance. Those who have learned by experience what it feels like to be treated with suspicion and distrust must not return that spirit, cherish dislike, encourage retaliation, or carry it into labor for others, but must keep the prayer of Christ ever before the mind and answer it in daily attitude and practice. They must remember that with every temptation Christ has made a way of escape, refuse discouragement, trust Jesus at the right hand irrespective of what others think or how others treat them, and become overcomers through the blood of the Lamb and the word of testimony, for such envy and refusal to rejoice reveal a need for conversion and hinder God's work.
The prodigal sons are connected with children whose parents indulge them and fail to restrain or guide them, so that self-willed, own-willed ways grow into destructive courses. The lesson of the prodigal is given for the instruction of youth as a warning against a careless, pleasure-loving, spendthrift life of pleasure and sinful indulgence. Such a life expends the inheritance in riotous living and forsakes the fountain of living waters, the fountain of true pleasure, for broken cisterns which can hold no water, leaving the sinner friendless in a strange country, clad in rags, hungry and longing even for the refuse fed to swine. The last hope is to return penitent and humbled to the father's house, where the wanderer is welcomed, forgiven, and taken back to a father's heart.
Call to Restore the Erring
Those who have stayed faithful must not begrudge the compassion and joy shown to one who erred and has returned, for dwelling on another's mistakes is wrong. The complaint at the welcome given to the repentant brother may feel natural, but it is not right, because that return is a source of the greatest joy. The erring need pity and help and sympathy, and above everything else free forgiveness.
The verse warns against resenting a sinner's restoration and refusing to share the father's compassion, pity, forgiveness, and joy. Christ's example calls for welcoming the returning sinner with rejoicing. Men are to earnestly cooperate with God in seeking the lost sheep and winning back the prodigal, for though His children err and stray, if they repent and return He receives them with the joy of an earthly father receiving a long-lost penitent son. To practice this lesson involves eternal interests, and none should assume the complaining attitude toward a returning prodigal.
Tempted and erring people need a loving welcome and an opportunity to recover, not cold, condemning treatment that keeps them at a distance. Presenting years of service and obedience as grounds for special reward while resenting the generous welcome of the returning brother is the opposite of Christ's compassion that restores. Jealousy and pride and uncharitable feelings in those who claim to be Christians can help keep prodigals from returning to God. A cold, Pharisaical spirit must not be indulged toward them.
Believers frequently pursue a wrong course toward an erring brother by working to make him feel where he erred and keeping his error before him. Those who have erred do not need this reminding, for they already suffer in feeling and are frequently downcast and discouraged. What they need is tenderness, not severe judgment after falling under temptation. The parable shows the love and tenderness of Jesus for erring, fallen people and should soften hearts toward tenderness for those who have fallen.
To neglect people in peril and then resent their restoration is to repeat the elder brother's part. He stands by without compassion while his brother struggles, rather than sharing the father's tenderness toward the repentant son. Looking on those who have gone wrong and on the struggling, returning sinner with indifference or contempt instead of helping bring him back to God shows that the onlooker himself needs salvation. His stubborn, self-willed, complaining spirit and sense of deserving more than his returning brother stand in contrast to the father's loving welcome and encouragement.
Those who have learned by experience what it feels like to be treated with suspicion and distrust must not return that spirit and must not carry it into labor for others. Meeting returning souls with suspicion, dislike, distrust, retaliation, and unkind, untender treatment, repaying them as they have been treated, is the elder-brother spirit shown when the prodigal came home. Dislike must not be cherished, retaliation must not be encouraged, and others must not be treated as one has been treated. Christ's prayer is to be kept ever before the mind and answered in daily attitude and practice, trusting Jesus at the right hand irrespective of what others think or how they treat, refusing discouragement, remembering with every temptation that Christ has made a way of escape, and becoming overcomers through the blood of the Lamb and the word of testimony.
The complaining because the father rejoiced over the returned prodigal means selfish displeasure when time and labor are given to save the lost instead of to those already in the church. It is grumbling that ministers hunt up the lost sheep rather than constantly feed members with sermons, thinking all attention and labor belong to themselves, expecting to be nursed, and speaking as though the church has been robbed of labor it should have had. God is sorely displeased with this attitude. Those who truly know God and Jesus Christ whom He sent, with Christ formed within as the hope of glory, will not gossip and plant doubt and questioning nor cherish evil surmising and jealousy, but will seek to save the lost. A living church is not a gossiping church but an earnest, working church whose members are the Lord's chosen vessels and light bearers carrying salvation to others, taught to reflect truth to all they meet, delivering an effective testimony by precept and example, by burden for souls and sincere prayer, stretching out hands all the day long and hunting for souls, taking Christ's yoke and using strength and talents to help the minister carry the burden and seek perishing souls instead of hindering soul-saving by complaint. To expect to be constantly fed with sermons while doing no righteousness at home or in the church is a curse instead of a blessing.
The perishing far from the Father's house, hungry and in need and at a distance illustrating the condition of people perishing in sin, are to be regarded with compassion and helped toward salvation. Prodigals who have left the Father's blessing and turned away are to be encouraged to return to God, to confess backsliding, and not to delay humble return with a humble heart, for God will help them. They are to be led step by step into rich experience, to the praise of the Lord with weeping joy.