THE GOSPEL MESSENGER—MAY 1889

THE PRODIGAL SON

In replying to the request of Sister E. J. Burns, of Damascus, Miss., a few general remarks on the text in Luke xv. with regard to the Prodigal and Home Son must suffice at present.

Our Lord Jesus Christ taught the people many things by parables; and while each parable was designed to illustrate some particular thing of itself which no other parable did illustrate, yet no one of them conflicts with, or contradicts another; and all of them put together are so many links in the chain of revealed truth, to prepare the mind and faith of his disciples for the coming change, from the Legal to the Gospel Dispensation. And while each of the three parables of this 15th chapter of Luke are instructive in a special sense, to show that the poor, the needy, the lost and the humble penitents are objects of God’s special love and care, yet there is also a general sense in which they all agree in showing that those “other sheep” among the Gentile and heathen nations, which were not of the Jewish lineage, should hear the voice of the Son of God and be brought into one gospel fold with the Jews, and be fed and nurtured by One Shepherd, while all legalists and formalists who assumed to themselves to have a superior righteousness and Superior claims for divine favor over these poor, lost, prodigal and penitent sinners should be rejected, and would, like the home son, even deny themselves the privilege of partaking of the Fatted Calf of the gospel of the grace of God, which extends pity, love and mercy to poor helpless, needy and guilty sinners.

If Sister Burns and other readers will turn to the 14th chapter of Luke, they will see something of the rigid test by which a disciple of Christ is to be known. He must be cut loose from everything else but Christ, whether father, mother, sister, brother, wife or children, houses or lands; yea, and his own life must be held in utter abhorrence, in comparison with the Lord Jesus Christ in his .doctrine, his laws, ordinances, commands and precepts. He must have such a feeling sense of his polluted, sinful and lost condition as to know that neither his own polluted self nor any of his fleshly relation, or earthly possessions, can atone for his sins or give any help in time of his deep soul troubles. Christ illustrates this by speaking of a man intending to build a tower, and counting up the cost, else he should make a failure after beginning to build. “So, likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, ho cannot be my disciple.” A disciple of Jesus must be stript of all things but Christ as a ground of hope for salvation, and count all things but dross and loss in comparison with the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord.

In noticing the first of chapter 15, it will be seen that the self-righteous Scribes and Phairisees murmured when they saw all the “publicans and sinners” come with such eagerness and draw near to hear Jesus. They, like the home son, or elder brother, were angry to see so much attention given to these profligate sinners, while such as themselves, who had never at any time done wrong, had no such attention given them, nor any kid to make merry with their friends.

But the wisdom of our Lord is displayed in taking these self-righteous and murmuring Jews upon their own ground, and showing thereby, how inconsistent they were. The man with a hundred sheep in the wilderness would have more concern for one that had gone astray than for ninety-nine that had not. And so with the woman with the lost piece of money, and the father with regard to his poor, ragged, profligate, but now penitent, son. If these self-righteous are the good people they assume to be, they have no need of Christ, for he came to save sinners. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and if any, without his call, are already righteous, they exclude themselves front him.—M.