The Father who runs

You may be a long way from where you started. Maybe you left a faith, a family, or a version of yourself you cannot get back to. Maybe you have been rehearsing what you would say if you ever went home, and you keep deciding the speech is not good enough yet.

Here is the answer, up front. In the story Jesus told about a son who ran off and came back, the father does not wait at the door with folded arms. He runs. He gets to his son before the son gets to the end of his speech, and the welcome is already happening while the boy is still confessing. That is the picture Jesus chose for His Father. Your repentance matters, but it is not the thing that unlocks the door. The door was never locked from His side.

He asked for his inheritance while his father was alive

Jesus told this story to a mixed crowd. Tax collectors and known sinners had crowded in to hear Him, and the religious men were muttering that He welcomed such people and ate with them (Luke 15:1–2). So the story is not a neutral illustration. It is Jesus explaining, to people who disapproved, why He does what He does.

A man had two sons. The younger one asked for his share of the estate. In that world, that was close to saying he wished his father were dead, because you do not divide the inheritance while the man is still breathing. The father gave it to him anyway. Then the son turned it all into cash, went to a far country, and spent it on a life he thought he wanted.

Notice that the father does not chase him down the road on the way out. He lets him go. There is a kind of love that will not hold you against your will, and this is it.

The pig pen is where the thinking starts

The money ran out, and then a famine came, and the two together left him with nothing. He took the only work he could find, feeding pigs, which for a Jewish son was about as low as a job could go. He was so hungry that the pigs’ food looked good to him, and no one gave him anything.

Jesus does not rush past this part, and neither should you. Many people find that the turn toward home does not come in a moment of insight. It comes in a place that smells bad, when the last of the plans has failed and there is no one left to call. If that is where you are tonight, you are not too far gone to be in this story. You are in the exact scene where it turns.

Finally he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have plenty of food, but here I am, starving to death! I will get up and go back to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’

Luke 15:17–19

Look at the speech. It is honest. He has sinned, and he says so. But listen to the last line, the one he added on his own: make me like one of your hired servants. He has already decided what kind of welcome he can expect. He is not coming home as a son. He is coming home to negotiate a job.

You may have a speech like that. You have worked out the terms. You will come back to God, but quietly, in the back row, expecting the servants’ quarters. It is a very human plan. It is also the plan the father is about to interrupt.

The father ran before the speech was finished

Then the son got up and started walking. Here is the part of the story that has undone people for two thousand years.

So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still in the distance, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. The son declared, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let us feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again! He was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate.

Luke 15:20–24

While he was still a long way off, his father saw him. That means the father was looking, and had been looking. In that culture, a man of standing did not run. Running meant hitching up your robe and showing your legs, and it meant everyone in the village watching. He ran anyway. He got to the boy first, threw his arms around him, and kissed him, before a single word of apology had been said.

Then the son starts the speech. Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. And then the father talks over him. The line about being a hired servant, the one the boy had practiced all the way home, never gets said. The father is already calling to the servants.

That is the point of the whole story. The welcome outruns the speech. You will not get to the end of your confession before you are held. This does not make the confession worthless; the son really did sin, and he really did say so. But the confession is not the price of admission. The father’s compassion is already running down the road while the son is still working out his terms.

The robe, the ring, the sandals

Look at what the father orders. The best robe: that is honor, the garment a guest of standing would wear. A ring: that is authority, the family’s seal, the right to act in the father’s name. Sandals: servants went barefoot, sons wore shoes. Every one of those gifts is an answer to the speech the son never finished. You wanted to be a hired servant. Here are the shoes of a son.

Then the calf, and the feast, and the reason given twice: this son of mine was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found. Not this son who has learned his lesson. Not this son who has paid me back. Dead, and alive. That is how the Father of Jesus describes a person coming home. There is more on the standing this gives you in Adopted: your standing with God.

The brother who would not come in

The story does not end at the feast, and the last part is for a different kind of reader. The older son came in from the field, heard the music, and refused to go in. He had stayed. He had worked. And now the boy who wasted everything gets the calf.

‘Son, you are always with me,’ the father said, ‘and all that is mine is yours. But it was fitting to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

Luke 15:31–32

Notice that the father goes out to this son too. He runs to the one who left, and he pleads with the one who stayed. Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. If you have been the responsible one, the one who kept the rules while others ran, and you feel nothing from God but a long list of duties, this half of the story is yours. The father is not less tender with you. He is standing outside in the dark, asking you to come in and sit down.

Jesus leaves the story open. We are never told whether the older brother went in. That is on purpose. He was telling it to men who were standing outside, muttering.

What to do with this tonight

If you are the younger son, stop polishing the speech. Say the true part, that you have sinned, and let Him interrupt you.

If you are the older son, tell Him the resentment out loud. He came out to hear it.

Either way, read Luke 15 through, all three stories, out loud if you can. Then say something like this:

This week, go to a church where Jesus is preached, sit near the back if you must, and stay for the whole thing. The Father usually does His welcoming through ordinary people at ordinary tables. And if you have someone you should say the true part to, a parent or a friend you walked out on, do that too, without the part about being a hired servant.

He was looking down the road before you turned around. He still is.