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4 Things You Have in Common with the Prodigal’s Older Brother
God Is Gracious—So We Do Not Have to Prove Ourselves
I lay awake long into the night, replaying the conversation in my mind. The next morning, the brooding continued. Our team meeting had developed into what my daughter later described as “war.”
Same place, same time, but the night before, a woman in our church had come to me with a profound pastoral crisis. That night I’d slept soundly. How crazy! I could forget a genuine crisis, happy to leave it in God’s hands, but an argument about nothing totally preoccupied me. It was my desire to be vindicated that had consumed me. That’s why I’d played my role in creating the conflict in the first place. I wanted to be proved right, so I fought on. What set me free from my self-centered brooding was the truth that God is gracious. I didn’t need to justify myself. I couldn’t justify myself. But God has graciously justified me through the finished work of Christ. God is “ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Neh. 9:17).
The parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 reveals the remarkable grace of God. Asking for your inheritance was tantamount to the younger brother saying, “I wish you were dead.” Selling off that inheritance was shameful because it meant losing the family’s land. Moving to another city was a rejection of his family. And we haven’t even got to the wild living! Feeding pigs was as low as you could go for a good Jew because pigs were unclean—then wanting to eat their food! This son is a picture of you and me. We’ve wished God dead, rejected his love, and moved as far from him as we can. We’ve tried to break free from love and ended up in the pigsty, longing to be satisfied by rubbish.
You Can Change
Tim Chester
You Can Change is a practical, interactive, and solidly biblical book designed to help Christians in all stages of life find victory over sin by focusing on what God has done and is doing in their lives.
But the gracious behavior of the father is even more shocking. This would have left Jesus’s hearers gasping. If a son asked his father for his inheritance while the father was still alive, the father would have disinherited him. If a son tried to break free from his father’s rule, the father would have beat him. If a son left home to indulge in wild living, the father would have disowned him. But this father runs to meet his returning son. He doesn’t wait for his son to honor him but honors the son with a robe, a ring, and a party. This is God—embracing us, welcoming us, honoring us.
I used to think that when I let God down, I would probably have a bad day or my prayers would be unanswered. I assumed that God would act in the way I act when people let me down, giving them the cold shoulder. Or I thought that I could atone by having a miserable day or sweating it out in prayer—as though the death of Jesus hadn’t quite done the job. When we think like this, we stand at a distance from God. And the entire time he’s looking for us, ready to embrace us, ready to welcome us home. Indeed, as the other parables in Luke 15 remind us, it’s God who takes the initiative to bring us home (Luke 15:3–10).
If the story of the younger brother reveals God’s grace, in the elder brother we see many characteristics of not truly believing that God is gracious.
1. Restless Anger
“But [the elder brother] was angry and refused to go in” (Luke 15:28). He’s angry because the younger brother is being honored as though he’s in the right. All the elder brother’s hard work seems to count for nothing. That’s the scandal of God’s grace. Without grace, we view life as a contract between us and God: We do good works, and in return, he blesses us. When things go well, we’re filled with pride. But when things go badly, either
- we blame ourselves (we feel guilt or anger toward ourselves) or
- we blame God (we feel bitterness and anger toward God).
Because we often leave God out of our explanations, this anger toward God may be ill-defined. We’re not even sure why we’re angry.
The reality is that the contract or covenant between us and God already reads “Paid in full by the blood of Jesus.” Only when we grasp God’s grace are we free to serve him for his own sake, not for reward.
2. Joyless Duty
“These many years I have served you” (Luke 15:29). It literally says “slaving for you” (NIV 1984). The elder son doesn’t think of himself as “partnering” or “working” with his father, but “slaving.” Imagine a woman who cooks for an ungrateful and unkind family. For her, work is drudgery. Now imagine a young bride whose husband is attentive, kind, and loving. Whatever she serves up, he thinks it’s wonderful because he receives it in love. Does the loved bride find her work drudgery? Of course not. Joyless duty will characterize our attitude if we think of God as an uncaring manager. But when we see him as a gracious Father, our attitude will be to offer him our joyful service.
3. Anxious Performance
“I never disobeyed your command” (Luke 15:29). The elder brother wants people to know about his good works because he’s trying to prove himself. There are people trying to perform day after day— Christian leaders trying to preach a wonderful sermon every week, parents trying to produce lovely children, workers putting in long hours at work—all in a desperate attempt to prove themselves. Some weeks they feel like they’ve pulled it off; other weeks it seems so fragile—as though it all might shatter. So they live in a constant state of stress and busyness, always striving to put in another great performance, always worried that the charade might be exposed. The truth is we can’t justify ourselves, but then we don’t have to! God is gracious: He throws his arms around us as the father did to the returning prodigal.
Will we live believing that God is gracious?
4. Proud Comparisons
“This son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes” (Luke 15:30). This is the first mention of prostitutes. But the elder brother has assumed this to paint his brother in the worst possible light. We highlight other people’s faults so that we look better. Or we disguise pride as kindness and patronize people. We think of righteousness as a ladder and our position on the ladder is what matters. We feel good about ourselves when we can see people below us who are less godly, less knowledgeable, less fruitful. But God’s grace turns our assessments on their head. We all stand together at the foot of the cross, equally guilty and equally accepted. Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son because the Pharisees are muttering about him welcoming sinners and eating with them (15:1–2). It turns out that the Son of God isn’t interested in respectability or self-righteousness; he’s interested in repentant sinners. Jesus is right to party with notorious sinners because heaven is a party for sinners (Luke 15:7, 10, 23–24).
Many of us are confident that we’ll be justified on the last day— acquitted before God through the death of Jesus. But what about justification today and tomorrow? Are you still trying to prove yourself?
- Do you ever get angry or brood after an argument because you want to prove you’re in the right?
- Does your Christian service feel like joyless duty?
- Do you ever feel the pressure to perform?
- Do you serve others so you can feel good about yourself or impress people?
- Do you look down on others or exaggerate their failings?
- Do you worry that you won’t make the grade in life?
- Do you enjoy conversations about the shortcomings of others?
The elder son doesn’t see himself as a son at all but as a slave. The father has his obedience but not his love. Does God the Father have your obedience but not your love?
Here’s the shocking truth: Without justifying faith, people “never do anything out of love to God, but only out of self-love or fear of damnation.”1 There are acts that look like good works but, in fact, reflect a belief that the best way to get on God’s good side or prove myself to others is through what I do. In effect, I declare myself to be a better savior than Jesus. We think that we must finish off what Christ left undone. That’s why Jesus says, “This is the work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:29). There’s only one thing God wants us to do—have faith in his Son. Everything else will flow from that.
Richard Lovelace claims that the main reason Christians do not change is a failure to really grasp God’s grace:
Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons. . . . Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others.2
All is not lost. The father goes out to plead with the elder brother (Luke 15:28). He welcomes his prodigal son, and he welcomes his self-righteous son. At the end of the story, the elder brother is still on the outside of the party. We’re left wondering what he’ll do. It forces us to wonder what we would do—what we will do. Will we live believing that God is gracious?
In the temple, the work of atonement was never done. The priests were at it day after day (Heb. 10:11–12). But Jesus’s work is finished. He’s done all that’s required. So we can sit down, too. We don’t have to be up and busy atoning, proving ourselves, earning God’s blessing, performing.
View him prostrate in the garden;
on the ground your Maker lies;
then on Calvary’s tree behold him,
hear him cry before he dies:
“It is finished! It is finished!”
Sinner, will not this suffice?3
Conclusion
We can only sin whenever we suffer from a radical loss of perspective or forget that God is great and good. But that is what we do time after time. We forget our God and the identity he has given us.
Change takes place through faith in our great and good God. It takes place as we preach truth to our hearts. This doesn’t mean that it’s easy. Jesus says “only believe” because it’s faith and faith alone that makes the difference (Mark 5:36). But that’s a big “only”! Faith is a daily struggle. Lies about God are all around us: the world, the flesh, and the devil whisper them continually to our hearts. It’s a struggle. But it’s also possible: “This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4).
What does this mean in practice? First, we need to nurture our trust in God’s greatness, fear of God’s glory, delight in God’s goodness, longing for God’s future, and rest in God’s grace. We need to do this day by day through the word, prayer, and the Christian community.
Second, when we face temptation, we need to say not only “I should not do this” but also “I need not do this.” When tempted to envy, we should say not only “I must not envy” but also “I need not envy because I have Christ.” When tempted to worry, we should say not only “I must not worry” but also “I need not worry because God is in control.” Whatever sin offers, God is bigger and better. To say to temptation “I must not do this” is legalism. To say “I need not do this because God is bigger and better” is good news.
Notes:
- Belgic Confession, art. 24.
- Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (IVP Academic, 1979), 211–12.
- Joseph Hart, “Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched” (1759). Public domain.
This article is adapted from You Can Change: God’s Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions by Tim Chester.
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