Month: June 2014

It was such defiant grace! How could it be that a rebel son be welcomed back. He had spent all his unearned inheritance on his own pleasures and now he was given a second chance? And not only a new start, but a party as well?

The older brother was not to be a part of such foolishness. Obviously, his father had gone mad. And his father needed to hear just how wrong all of this was:

Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him! (Luke 15:29-30)

How can it be that the one who obeys all the rules seems to get shafted? It’s just not fair! But we need to hear the heart of the father before we jump to such a conclusion.

“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.  But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

The older son had so much. All the father had was his. But he missed out on understanding the heart of his father. He was so bent on keeping all the rules that grace never entered his worldview.

For this older son, his younger brother deserved to be vanquished. If anyone deserved a party, it was him.  According to his view, he had played by the rules all his life and had gotten nothing.

Bottom line: the grace of the father was too much for the older son. It stirred him to anger and revealed his heart of judgmentalism. Grace, to him, was an offense and as Michael Spencer writes, was “simply inexplicable, inappropriate, out of the box, out of bounds, offensive, excessive, too much, given to the wrong people and all those things.”

The older son could not see how much he needed grace for himself. And this can be a danger for many of us in our walk with Christ. When we begin to think that our relationship with Christ is defined by us keeping the rules, then we not only deny our need for grace but look down upon non-rule keepers with disdain. We become like the Pharisees!

Dane Ortlund writes that “the real question is not how to avoid becoming a Pharisee; the question is how to recover from being the Pharisees that we already are, right from the womb.”

The answer is to continually “bathe our hearts and minds in gospel grace.” By preaching the gospel of grace to ourselves daily, we encounter the grace that “defies our domesticated, play-by-the-rules morality.”

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)

A son from the Middle East leaves home, takes his portion of his inheritance, and squanders it all on himself. In doing so he shames his father and an entire community. This son should never be allowed back in his fathers house or the town!

Eventually however, as this son gets tired of being poor and hungry, he becomes courageous and decides to head home. Now he’s smart enough to realize that there is no way he can be accepted in his father’s house, but perhaps he can become a servant. At least as a servant, he can have three meals a day and a roof over his head.

So as this son begins to head home, something strange happens. His father notices him. It’s almost like he has been waiting for him. And he runs to him! It’s important to know that Middle Eastern men don’t run. It’s shameful to run. It’s humiliating. But this father doesn’t care. His compassion for his son overrides any possible embarrassment.

As the father gets closer to his son, this son is most likely getting ready to brace himself for a backhand from his dad. But instead of slap to the face is a kiss. And instead of a shove to the ground is a strong embrace of love.

The son keeps trying to tell his father the plan he has for becoming his servant and working off the money he wasted, but the father doesn’t hear him as he is shouting orders to get his son cleaned up. “Let’s get him some new clothes. Let’s get him a new ring for his finger. And let’s have a party!!!”

This is a scandalous move by this father. It’s unheard of, especially in a middle eastern culture. The son should have been exiled or killed, not welcomed. Why is he allowed back in the community and his father’s house? Why is he given new clothes? Why is he thrown a party? It’s because of the GRACE OF THE FATHER!!!

This story is familiar to many of us. It’s told by Jesus in Luke 15. It’s a story of God’s heart toward those who have decided to abandon Him. It’s a story about all of us!

We need to grasp the heart of this story anew. We need to continue to dive into the grace of God for us. He runs after us. He has compassion. He clothes us with righteousness. And He does this not because we deserve it, but because of His grace. And such grace changes everything.

Consider the words of Dane Ortlund:

It’s time to enjoy grace anew–not the decaffeinated grace that pats us on the hand, ignores our deepest rebellions and doesn’t change us, but the high-octane grace that takes our conscience by the scruff of the neck and breathes new life into us with a pardon so scandalous that we cannot help but be changed.

It’s time to blow aside the hazy cloud of condemnation that hangs over us throughout the day with the strong wind of gospel grace. You “are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). Jesus is real; grace is defiant; life is short; risk is good. For many of us the time has come to abandon once and for all our play-it-safe, toe-dabbling Christianity and dive in. 

God, help us to dive into your life-changing grace today!!!