Luke 15:11-32 And he said, A certain man had two sons:… It was a joyless life, that of the old son. While his dull round of duty lacked the colour and merriment of the prodigal's gay time, it found no compensation from any sympathy of affection betwixt himself and his father. They were men of very different characters. The father's heart yearned incessantly after his lost boy; but this worker in the field wasted no love on him. Alone or with the labourers he wrought; and his chief intercourse with his father was when he took his orders. Hear his own account of it: "These many years do I slave to thee, nor did I transgress at any time thy command." To be a bondservant, that was his chosen place; to have wilfully disobeyed no injunction, that was his boast. Yet he had friends elsewhere who were not his father's friends, and desires after other company than met at his father's table; for, had he earned any pleasure by his toil, it would have been, he says, a kid with which to make merry with his own companions. Even this he did not get. It was thankless service. No glow of family love warmed it. Yet, if not quite satisfied, the old son was in a measure content to hold this unsonlike place, just because his cold heart had never dreamed that sonship meant anything more than this. The problem was, how to teach him that; how to open up what tender. ness the heart of his father held, and what the claim of a son really meant, so that he shall discover that he for one has never yet entered into the joy of that relationship, nor known what is the deep confidential love which binds true parent and true child in one. What, then, does sonship really mean? It means that there is more sacred strength in that single word "son" than in ever so many years of laborious servitude; for it is the power of love and not of law which says, "All that I have is thine." It means that this Father of yours, whom you have been observing as a taskmaster, and misjudging as a niggard, you have never really known in His Fatherhood; for see, to this scapegrace, just because he is become again a son indeed, and dares to trust the father's heart, that father's heart brims over instantly with unutterable tenderness and a generosity that knows no bounds. Oh, it means, if you will learn it, that you have been as little of a true son as this pitied outcast; else might you also have rejoiced all through these weary years past, in a love no less strong, in a joy no less deep, than the love and joy of this festive day; nay, more deep and strong, if less noisy or exuberant, because springing out of the calm depths of an unbroken intercourse, unmarred by the memory of separation or the shadow of guilt; for "Thou art ever with me"! (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said, A certain man had two sons: |
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