the prodigal's brother

In Luke 15, Jesus story-tells a few similar parables about lost things that are found again. There’s a sheep, a coin (worth about 10 days’ pay, according to commentary), and then the prodigal son, who technically didn’t get “lost” in the same sense that the sheep and coin did, but that all depends on perspective.

I think you know the story. So I was reading it the other day, about how the son comes home in repentance to apologize to his father, and how the father literally runs to meet his son when he sees him still pretty far off—this beautiful welcome home of compassion and joy and restoration from the father.

And as I was thinking, “there is not even a trace of anger from the father,” I read on and found the anger. Not from the father, but from the older brother.

He refuses to even go inside, because there is a celebration going on welcoming his little brother home. And when his father comes out to persuade him to come inside, the older son musters up all his pride and lays out the resume of his works and self-righteousness before his father.

Essentially, his response is this: “I have served you. I’ve never disobeyed. You never killed the fattened calf to celebrate me, did you? I am better than my brother, yet you celebrate him.”

He couldn’t see past any of it. He turned the spotlight on himself and said, “Look what I have done for you. I deserve better than my brother.” He felt his father owed him something, or that his brother should at least not receive such love and acceptance after what he had done. Yet he couldn’t see his own sin clearly. The comparison game warps our ability to see reason. It’s funny—I used to read this parable and agree with the older brother. “He’s right,” I thought. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

Where the younger brother came home saying “I am not worthy to even be called your son,” the older brother’s claim was, “I am worthy of more.”

Pride tends to make us look only at ourselves and what we deserve. If the older brother had been a humble man, caring about more than just himself, his little brother’s homecoming would not have stirred such anger in him. It would have stirred the same compassion and joy that we saw in the father.

We always seem to be willing to overlook our own sin while being unwilling to forgive the sins of others. We often seem to think their crimes and shortcomings and sinful choices are worse than ours.

What if we just saw sin as sin?

Our sin, their sin—ugly. Wrong. Fatal, aside from grace.

What blows my mind completely is how we actually can get to the point where we think God owes us something.

It’s counterintuitive but true: we end up believing that God is indebted to us.

God, who has never owed us anything. God, who gave His life to rescue the helpless and unholy. He gave what was holy and beautiful for what was depraved and sinful. God has never given us anything because we deserve it; He gives because He is kind, generous, and full of love.

Yet we think we can look him in the eye and shout, “I have never disobeyed you!”

In my own heart, I know better.

Maybe I should, but I don’t believe the older son. He never disobeyed his father? Never? What child has never disobeyed his parents? No, what I think he meant is that he never disobeyed his father *like his little brother had.* He felt his grievances against the father were smaller, not even worth mentioning. He minimized his sin and underestimated his father’s capacity to forgive—

Because in one instant, his father had welcomed home an outwardly rebellious son who had run away and come home again, and he wrapped him in mercy and love.

And in the next instant, the father wrapped a proud, self-righteous, sin-minimizing son in mercy and love. The father told this blind older son, “You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).

I don’t think it really matters which side of the pendulum you sway toward: inward or outward sin, big or small. I think what matters is that we have this Father with a heart full of astonishing compassion that we just could never even begin to deserve.

And I think the younger son experienced the heart of the Father and recognized it for what it was, because repentance brings us into that house of celebration. I don’t know if the older son ever understood it where he stood outside, unwilling and stubborn in his judgment of his brother and his elevated view of himself.

But maybe we can learn from him.