A FATHER
FINDING HIS LOST SON
By
D. M. PANTON
In
the pearl and crown of our Lord’s parables, entire humanity is embodied
in a
wandering youth. As
Adam, "the son of God" (Luke 3: 38), left his
Father’s presence for a far
land, so has every one of us since, becoming spiritually bankrupt
beyond. Then in
that far-off godless world a mighty
revolution takes place in the lost soul; and the whole of the saved are
embodied in the returning lad. He hungers; he
prays; he retraces his
steps; he reaches his father’s arms; re-clothed and re-fed, he dwells
in his
father’s house for ever.*
[* The parable
of the lost son is a
parable of restoration;
not one of regeneration. Upon
repentance he was restored back into
fellowship again: “This son of
mine was dead and is
alive again;
he was lost and is found” (Luke
15: 24). See also Rev.
3: 1. That is, the indwelling Holy Spirit, after his
confession and repentance,
once again restored fellowship with his father, and placed him once
again in
his father’s servive.]
Now
the young man’s [initial
and eternal]
inheritance is God’s magnificent gift of
a clean, strong, upright life. So
he
says to his father, "give me the
portion of thy substance
that falleth to me" (Luke
15: 12).
Our heritage, which
falls to us simply
as made in the image of God, is a wealth we little conceive. The body,
with its
exquisite functions, powers, pleasures; the mind - reason with its
limitless
range of vision, culture, powers that can master a world; the spirit,
holding
infinite possibilities of affection, capable even of fellowship with
the
Godhead; the circumstances into which we are born, vast in
possibilities,
resources, unforeseen developments:-
lo, the heritage
every one of us receives before we leave for the Far Country. Without a word the father
grants him what he
asks.
And
now the human tragedy begins. "Not
many days after"
- how early in childhood sin starts! - "the
younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far
country."
The gigantic mistake the soul makes is to claim and enjoy all that God
gives
without God: God is, to him, the ‘kill-joy’:
therefore the far distance which the sinner between himself and God
amounts to
oblivion. "God is not in all
their thoughts";
and His Christ, His Scriptures, His call, His awful revelations of the
eternity
beyond - all these, to the [redeemed] man of the world, are
the baseless fabric of a
dream. The man of the world is out to enjoy the only world he knows. In a pathetic word the
Almighty Himself says:
- "What unrighteousness have
your fathers found in
me, that they are gone far from me,
and have walked after
vanity?" (Jer. 2: 5).
Now there
mounts up the horizon a terrible truth which
confronts us
every day in a
lost world.
"He wasted his substance"
- his noble
heritage God-given - "with
riotous living."
[Wilful]
sin [in
the life of a regenerate believer] is
the most fearfully expensive luxury in the universe. The
very gifts of God are his ruin: blessings
actually become curses. It
is a profound
truth that we cannot break the laws of God - we can only break
ourselves
against those laws; and the prison, the hospital, the lunatic asylum
are only
rehearsals of eternal [age-lasting]
ruin.* The subtilty that would have made a
great scientist makes a great criminal, and the greater the
gifts, the more
dangerous the ruffian. "Hunger
caters to
gluttony; thirst to drunkenness; the eye administers to lust; it reads
wicked
books, delights in wanton shows, in pomp, and vanity, and folly. The ear drinks in blasphemy,
irreligion, and
indecency. The
heart is made the
residence of evil affections; the head and understanding, of wicked,
ungodly,
infidel principles. The winter of life brings a bloated, enfeebled,
disordered
body - a foolish head, an unregenerate heart, a guilty conscience. There is now no more
capacity for enjoying
pleasure; the appetite is vanished, the health squandered, the
faculties ruined"
(T. D. Gregg, M.A.).
[* Reaping
corruption of the flesh
for a regenerate believer, is the lying of his/her body
in the grave for 1,000 years before the resurrection of all
the dead: and that
is his/her loss of an inheritance in the millennial
kingdom of Christ.]
We
are next given a photograph of the heart of a lost soul. "And when he had spent all, there arose a
mighty famine in
that country; and no man gave unto him." The famine is a
soul-hunger which always comes when earth’s wealth has ceased to
satisfy, and
the soul-hunger never ends. Nothing
earthly can satisfy soul-hunger: science, philosophy, art, politics,
travel,
business, pleasure, even religion without Christ - all are "husks which the swine" -
our Lord calls the
outsiders swine (Matt. 7: 6)
- "did eat," for it
is all the spiritual food the
worldly have. No
man gave unto him, for
in matters of the soul no man has anything to give: there is never any
famine
of husks, but husks are no food for man made in the image of God. No one in English history is
more the
embodiment of all elegance and taste in life than Lord
Chesterfield; and
it was he who wrote:- "I
am now sixty years of age; I have been as
wicked as Solomon;*
I have not been so
wise; but this I know, I am wise enough to test the truth of his
reflection
that all is vanity and vexation of spirit."
[* Solomon “did evil in the eyes of the Lord:”
(1
Kings 11: 6).]
The
crisis arrives, and a fearful truth confronts us. Very
few prodigals ever
return. Mr.
Joseph
McCabe, a Jesuit who became an Atheist, says:-
"I have had thirty years'
intercourse, by letter
or conversation, with men and women over the whole English-speaking
world, who
have given up the belief in God, and though in some cases the critical
period
was painful, I never met one who wanted to get back the belief or
deplored the
loss of it." The
poet Chatterton,
while a mere lad, composed what claimed to be ancient poems with such
consummate skill that the connoisseurs were deceived, and he
immediately sprang
into fame. He
came to
The
parable now faces us with an unutterably solemn truth. The entire
responsibility of returning
rests on the individual soul. An
awful power is lodged in the human heart: a man can choose his path,
and walk
in the road he selects: God allows each of us absolute liberty to
create his
eternal [and
age-lasting]
destiny.* Therefore,
as the father made no demur the prodigal’s departure, so now
the whole
return is the responsibility of the son alone; and this
son
shoulders it to complete
salvation.** "I will arise and
go to my father, and I will say unto him, Father, I have sinned."
The confession - "I have sinned" - is all
that God asks, but He accepts no less.
For every soul
returns a bankrupt. There
is no other road back to God: we can
never return on any ground but that of mercy alone. "Let the wicked
man forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him
RETURN UNTO THE LORD,
and he will have mercy him; and to our God, for he will
abundantly pardon"
(Isa. 55: 7). So,
as we watch that strained and anxious
face, we learn the unutterably solemn truth: not one is forced
home, even
now, in the day of grace; and inconceivably less when love and mercy
are over
for ever, and when final judgment has overwhelmed the Far Country.
[* The
age-lasting destiny for a regenerate believer is to
remain in Hades – the place of the dead.
**
The ‘Complete’
salvation refers to a double portion of the inheritance. That is, an inheritance in
the age to come as
well as an eternal inheritance in “a
new heaven and a
new earth” (Rev.
21:1)]
Another
fact now dawns still more fearfully critical. The
lad made for God. The
supreme question for a man drowning at sea
is not whether he is a powerful swimmer, but whether he is heading
towards
shore: if he strikes out away from land, nothing can save him. Salvation is found in God
alone; and it is
found when a man is alone. Throughout
the whole landscape, in the moment of this typical salvation, from horizon
to horizon there are two figures,
and two figures only, the father and his boy. It
may be in a concourse of five or ten
thousand souls in an evangelistic hall, or in a revival in the mission
field
sweeping in its thousands, or in the last moments on a
battlefield, or
on a sinking ship, or in a lonely attic: no matter where it be, when a
soul
comes to God everything, everybody vanishes; God and my soul must
settle my
eternal [and
age-lasting]
destiny alone.
So
now all closes on what might almost be called something utterly
unintelligible
- the love of God. Every
stroke of the
picture is meant to drive home on us all the warm and joyous welcome
that
awaits every emigrant from the Far Country. The son
walks, the father runs - what a revelation! The
father meets his boy with a wonderful
silence, a silence that is Godlike for the sins are a fact, and nothing
can
change the awful past but what cannot be excused
can be forgiven;
and the moment the boy says, "I
have sinned,"
the father says, "Put on him the
best robe"
- the best of all robes, the righteousness of Christ.* The boy said that he would
ask to be made a
hired servant: one look in his father’s face shows him that he will be
a son
for ever.** It
is all summed up in one
divine word:- "In Christ Jesus
ye that once were
far off are
MADE NIGH in the blood of Christ"
(Eph. 2: 13).
[* It is true
that the imputed righteousness
of Christ is the best
robe; but there is another robe for regenerate believers to wear: “The righteous acts of saints”
(Rev. 19: 8):
and without the latter robe, attained
only by the Christian’s good
works, there cannot be the
required qualification for entitlement to a double portion of the
Father’s inheritance: “Let us [regenerate
believers] therefore, make every effort
to
enter that
rest,” (Heb. 4:
11;
Num. 14: 22, 23.)]
[**
This parable is the solitary New Testament Scripture which seems to
assert
God’s fatherhood of all men. (Acts
17: 28)
speaks of ‘offspring’ not ‘sonship’). But the prodigal himself gives
the clue. After his
fall, he says:-
"I am no more worthy to be
called thy son."
In the inspired genealogy of mankind un-fallen Adam alone is described
as
"the son of God" (Luke 3: 38), and - as
the rest of the genealogy
proves - the Fall
forfeited the sonship. Ever
since, a man has to be re-born into the
family of God. "This my son was dead,
and is ALIVE AGAIN."]
-------
FOOTNOTE
LIT LAMPS
It is
impossible for a lamp to be lit - to hold or to transmit light -
without contact with fire, or with that which contains fire; we must
catch
fire, ignite and to do so we must contain oil. The contact
is asking; the oil is the Holy Spirit. A clever agnostic doctor in