This summer I preached on Jesus’ parable of the two lost sons for the first time (Luke 15:11-32). Studying this famous story has been rich and rewarding. It has prompted many thoughts, some of which I will share over the next couple of posts.

The parable is about a father’s relationship with his two sons. The story begins with the younger son deciding he no longer wants to live under his father’s roof. He is discontent and wants to go his own way. He approaches his father and asks for a share of the inheritance. Being the younger son, he is legally entitled to 1/3 of his father’s possessions.

By asking for his portion while his father is still alive, the younger son has committed a most offensive act. He basically tells his father that he prefers to live as if he is already dead! The younger son holds out one hand wanting his father’s stuff while flipping him the bird with his other hand. In so doing, he heaps shame and disgrace on his father’s name and reputation.

Many in Jesus’ audience then expected to hear a story about how the father unleashed his wrath and drove his son from the house with physical force. They assumed the father would take action and save face in their honor/shame oriented culture. No one expected Jesus to say what he says next. Instead of pummeling his son with fists of fury, the father actually grants his son’s request!

When I think about God’s wrath I imagine fists of fury. I think Bruce Lee or Jet Lee destroying people. In His wrath, God pummels sinners. I think this is the most common picture that comes into people’s minds when they think about God’s wrath. As a result, many people tend to assume that if nothing cataclysmic is happening in their lives then what they may or may not be doing must not warrant God’s wrath. If it did, then God would cause the ground to shake or lightning to strike or something else dramatic.

Although I do believe such things are signals of God having subjected the world to futility as a result of human sin (see, Romans 8:20) and that God is sovereign over all things, I am likewise convinced that we need to learn how to recognize the more subtle and digressive expressions of God’s wrath.

I believe this is the picture presented in Romans 1. In verse 18, Paul writes that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” God’s wrath is a present day, real-time experience for all people on the planet. At this time, however, it is not ordinarily taking the form of fists of fury. Instead, it seems to take the form of a subtle nudge. In verses 24-28, Paul writes three times that “God gave them up.” In His wrath, God hands us over to the lust of our hearts, dishonorable passions, and a debased mind. In wrath, God responds to people the same the father responds to his younger son’s request. He lets them go their own way.

Here’s the warning. If we insist on ignoring our consciences by living our lives as if God doesn’t exist or by believing that what we do with our lives does not matter, in many cases, God will let us. If we want life without God, we can have it. C. S. Lewis said, “There are only two kinds of people—those who say ‘Thy will be done’ to God or those to whom God in the end says, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be hell.” The journey towards hell, the final and fixed fists of fury form of God’s wrath, begins as we reject God as God and choose to go our own way.

The younger son rejects his father and chooses to go his own way. And the father lets him! He even gives him the resources he would soon squander in the far country on reckless living. There, he spends all his money on prostitutes and the pursuit of other twisted pleasures.

Usually, when people reject God and seek to go their own way, they do so in the name of freedom. They say, “I want to go my own way do my own thing. I don’t want people telling me what to do, especially a God I can’t see. I want to be free.” In wrath, God hands them over, knowing that what they enter into is not a life of freedom but is actually a life of slavery.

This is what the younger son soon discovers. After squandering all that he had on reckless living, he had to sell himself as a slave to survive. He finds that the far country is not a land of freedom but of slavery (v. 15)! In choosing to go his own way, he goes from being the son of a father to the slave of a stranger!

Here we discover certain aspects of the relationship between God’s wrath and human freedom. In his wrath, God hands people over to their sinful desires. As we pursue those desires under the guise of freedom we actually become slaves to those desires. Our lives become mastered by lust, arrogance, selfish-ambition, unrighteous anger, etc…

There is a reason why one of the most frequently used biblical metaphors for salvation is redemption! God in Christ entered the world to liberate the captives! For human beings are only as free as we are faithful to our natures! When God stamped each of us in his image, he wired us for relationship with Himself. That’s what it means in part to be created by God and for God. Therefore, we find our true freedom, our true humanity, and our true identities only when living in grace-dependent relationship with God. Actual human freedom is found only in God, not in the far country.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ liberates us from being slaves in the far country that we might live as sons and daughters of God. “When the fullnes of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman,  born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so taht we might receive adoption as sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

walking,

Andrew