A New Inheritance

I have posted about the Prodigal Son before, but I wanted to get into a little different aspect of that parable. At the beginning, it says that the younger son asked his father for his share of the inheritance, and then journeyed to a far country. I think that we should consider that as kind of a strange request. Generally, a person doesn’t inherit anything until at least one of their parents is dead; how does one even calculate what half of the estate would be if the father were dead? Anyway, the father managed to work out something, so that the younger son could get his inheritance, and walk away happy.

Now that younger son takes his inheritance, and travels far away, and he wastes what he has on riotous living. Soon he has nothing. Of course, he wouldn’t have anything to speak of really if he had stayed with his father, but all of his needs would have been met, and he would still have an inheritance coming at the end of his father’s life.

So, he comes to the realization that his father’s servants are living better than he is, and, although he realizes that he has no right to even ask to be treated as a son again, surely there is enough love left that his father will hire him to work for him. Of course, when he returns, the father immediately reinstates him as his son.

Now, one of the arguments that I have heard is that once one becomes a son (or a daughter), then one will always be family. That is true. Of course, just because one is a relative (by blood or by adoption) is doesn’t necessarily follow that one will collect an inheritance. If the prodigal son’s father had died while the prodigal was still in that far country, well, he had already received his inheritance, he wouldn’t have received anything more. Quite frankly, no one would have even known where to look for the younger son. The older son would have been the sole heir of the estate, even though he would not have been the only son.

In the parable, the inheritance represents what God has for us; it represents our salvation. The younger son received salvation, but then he went and just did what he wanted to with it, and gave no reverence to God for it. He wasted it; at some point he no longer had it. When he repented, and returned to his father, he gained salvation all over again. Keep in mind that, at that time, he hadn’t done anything to earn his salvation; he had only repented of the life he had been living.

The father rejoiced, because his son was home. The father said, “My son, was dead, and is alive again.” Is it not clear that if the son had died living his own way, that he was dead to God? It would have been worse for him than if he had never known the Father. I think that it is significant, too, that if you look at Luke 15 (the chapter where the parable of the Prodigal Son is), the other parables told at that sitting all have to do with lost items. The is the parable of the lost sheep (which in this case was found, but there is no guarantee that it would be), and a woman that had ten pieces of silver, but lost one, and rejoiced when she found it (don’t you wish that every time you lost money, you were able to find it again?). Jesus was teaching us about repentance, but also that, just because we have salvation now, it doesn’t mean that we can’t lose it. In these three parables, the lost were all found, because they were parables. Real life doesn’t always work out that nicely; just ask Esau.

Friends of God

Relationships with God are interesting, to say the least. At one point, God told Miriam that He would speak to Moses directly, but that He would only speak to most prophets through their dreams. To be honest, not many people have had that kind of relationship with God. God spoke to Abraham directly, long before Moses. God also spoke to Balaam directly (and he wasn’t even a Jew). There were, a lot of faithful men in the Bible to whom God never spoke to, even in a dream. I’m sure God had His purpose for maintaining a relationship with Balaam, though.

In the New Testament, we find that God spoke to a few individuals here and there, and not all of them because they were good Christian people. God talked to Saul the Pharisee on the road to Damascus, evidently because Saul thought he had a relationship with God, and God particularly wanted Saul to have such a relationship, and because God had a laundry list of things for Saul to do as a Christian. Interestingly enough, God told Saul to go on to Damascus, to see what he needed to do, and then God told Ananias to go meet with Saul. In fact, God told Ananias that He had already told Saul that Ananias was coming. Peter, on the other hand, seems to have been one that God would only speak to in a dream.

Jesus said that we are His friends if we do whatsoever He commands us to do. Of course, Jesus understands that we are human, and we will never be able to do everything that we are commanded. Keep in mind, though, that He can see what’s in your heart, so He knows whether you are honestly giving Him your best. He knows whether we are His friends or not. Jesus also said that He laid down His life for His friends.

It’s clear that we should want to be friends with God. Some among us are happy to be just servants of God. Certainly, you won’t hear Him say the words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” unless you have actually been a good and faithful servant. Jesus isn’t going to lie to you and call you a servant if you haven’t been one. More importantly, though, you shouldn’t want to be just a servant of God, you should want to be a friend of God. Why settle for anything less?

When the Prodigal Son came to his senses, he realized that he would be better off as a servant in his Father’s household than feeding swine (and feeling jealous of how much food the pigs got). He knew that his Father was a just individual, and took care of His servants, whereas whoever he was working for cared more about the pigs than the servants. The prodigal didn’t feel right even asking to be let back into the family again, he just hoped that his Father still cared enough for him to put him on the payroll; he would have been happy just to be a servant in the house where he grew up. The Father wouldn’t have it, though; this was His son, who was back from the dead. We have the Spirit of adoption, God wants us to be His servants, but He also wants us to be His friends, and, more than that, He wants us to be His children.