The "Other" Son in the Parable
August 2015
“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘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!’
“‘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.’”
- Luke 15:25-32
Reflect
So often the focus in the Parable of the Prodigal Son is on the younger son. But if we carefully consider the reactions of the older brother, and what this reveals about his heart toward the father, we might find that we actually connect more with this sibling.
The younger brother asked for his inheritance and in so doing wished his father dead, and then came back after wasting his money, hoping to be treated as a servant. Though the older brother never left, he treated his father with a similar degree of contempt.
He viewed the love of his father through the eyes of a slave, and continually sought to earn love and rewards.
It is out of this slavery mentality that the older brother finds himself angry and isolated. He won’t even claim his brother as a relative, but instead calls him the son of his father. The older brother then seeks to hold himself up as more worthy of favor from his father, based on his obedience as compared to his brother’s defiant living. He misunderstands the heart of his father.
The pivotal statement is this parable is the response of the father – Everything I have is yours.
The older brother only needed to ask, and he would have received generously from his father. But he was blinded by his misperception of his father, so he missed innumerable opportunities for blessing. Not only this, the older brother was unable to celebrate the return of his brother. He misunderstood the generosity of his father toward the younger son as favoritism, rather than understanding his father was generous and loving with all.
Rewind
If we do not guard our hearts, we can view our heavenly Father through the same lens as the older brother in this parable. It is far too easy to forget that we do not need to earn the love and generosity of God toward us.
We can lose sight of the powerful promise in Ephesians 2 – that we were saved on the basis of God’s grace, not anything we have done, and that He rescued us from this dark world in order to perform good works that He has already chosen for us.
Even more, we can become jealous, isolated, and angry when we see the favor of God rest upon somebody else. This is based on a wrong idea, one that says God only has a select amount of goodness available.
But He is no Santa Claus in the sky, whose red bag of gifts might run dry if His elf magic dissipates.
No, we serve the almighty God who came up with the idea of the universe in the first place, and who knows the number of hairs on our head…something we don’t even know.
React
The beautiful part of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is that Jesus never tells us what the older brother did. We are left wondering if he joined the party or not. We never know if he repents for his anger toward his father, and steps fully into the love and generosity available to him.
Like the older brother, we have this same choice every day – to accept the generosity of God as a foundation for our lives, or not. If we have already stepped down the path of slavery over generosity, there is no quick and easy way back. But there are steps we can take.
You can learn to walk daily in the powerful truth that God is good, every day, all the time, no matter what.
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘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!’
“‘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.’”
- Luke 15:25-32
Reflect
So often the focus in the Parable of the Prodigal Son is on the younger son. But if we carefully consider the reactions of the older brother, and what this reveals about his heart toward the father, we might find that we actually connect more with this sibling.
The younger brother asked for his inheritance and in so doing wished his father dead, and then came back after wasting his money, hoping to be treated as a servant. Though the older brother never left, he treated his father with a similar degree of contempt.
He viewed the love of his father through the eyes of a slave, and continually sought to earn love and rewards.
It is out of this slavery mentality that the older brother finds himself angry and isolated. He won’t even claim his brother as a relative, but instead calls him the son of his father. The older brother then seeks to hold himself up as more worthy of favor from his father, based on his obedience as compared to his brother’s defiant living. He misunderstands the heart of his father.
The pivotal statement is this parable is the response of the father – Everything I have is yours.
The older brother only needed to ask, and he would have received generously from his father. But he was blinded by his misperception of his father, so he missed innumerable opportunities for blessing. Not only this, the older brother was unable to celebrate the return of his brother. He misunderstood the generosity of his father toward the younger son as favoritism, rather than understanding his father was generous and loving with all.
Rewind
If we do not guard our hearts, we can view our heavenly Father through the same lens as the older brother in this parable. It is far too easy to forget that we do not need to earn the love and generosity of God toward us.
We can lose sight of the powerful promise in Ephesians 2 – that we were saved on the basis of God’s grace, not anything we have done, and that He rescued us from this dark world in order to perform good works that He has already chosen for us.
Even more, we can become jealous, isolated, and angry when we see the favor of God rest upon somebody else. This is based on a wrong idea, one that says God only has a select amount of goodness available.
But He is no Santa Claus in the sky, whose red bag of gifts might run dry if His elf magic dissipates.
No, we serve the almighty God who came up with the idea of the universe in the first place, and who knows the number of hairs on our head…something we don’t even know.
React
The beautiful part of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is that Jesus never tells us what the older brother did. We are left wondering if he joined the party or not. We never know if he repents for his anger toward his father, and steps fully into the love and generosity available to him.
Like the older brother, we have this same choice every day – to accept the generosity of God as a foundation for our lives, or not. If we have already stepped down the path of slavery over generosity, there is no quick and easy way back. But there are steps we can take.
- Repent. Simply ask God to forgive you for questioning His generosity, for choosing to believe He has limits, for acting like a servant.
- Ask for spiritual eyes. In the day to day of life, it’s easy to miss the goodness of God, even when it’s right in front of you. Ask God to open your eyes to see the evidences of His grace surrounding you.
- Rejoice in the success of others. You might have to fake it a little on this for a while, because it is hard to learn how to be genuinely excited for someone else’s success. But keep practicing, and eventually it will be heartfelt.
You can learn to walk daily in the powerful truth that God is good, every day, all the time, no matter what.