Is it the Prodigal Son or the Prodigal God??

Tim Keller understands the Gospel.  He wants as many people to understand the Gospel as well.  In fact, he always communicates the Gospel in every sermon.  The Prodigal God is like Gospel on steroids.  We typically think the gospel should be shared with those outside the church, they are the lost ones.  However, Keller turns all that on edge encouraging the Gospel to be preached to those in the pews.  Most would conclude that the Prodigal Son parable is about the prodigal and further they would conclude that prodigal means wayward one.  However, according to Keller, the term prodigal doesn’t mean wayward it means extravagant spend thrift.  A loving Father who spends all He has to bring His sons back home.  That will preach.

The question remains, “How do we confront, communicate, encourage the elder brothers in our churches?”  This seems to be hugely a peer to peer problem with a peer to peer solution.  But frankly without the searching holiness of the Holy Spirit, I am sure that Elder Brothers would stay in their waywardness.  Mutual challenges of thoughtful accountability and powerful prayer will combat the elder brother in us all.  It is so painfully personal.  Allowing someone to check out your soul’s motives is quite unsafe in most church settings.

Keller writes:

It is typical for people who have turned their backs on religion to believe that Christianity is no different. They have been in churches brimming with elder-brother types. They say, `Christianity is just another religion’ But Jesus say, no, that is not true. Everybody knows that the Christian gospel calls us away from the licentiousness of younger brotherness, but few realize that it also differs from moralistic elder brotherness.

further…

The elder brother’s problem is his self-righteousness, the way he uses his moral record to put God and others in his debt to control them and get them to do what he wants. His spiritual problem is the radical insecurity that comes from basing his self-image on achievements and performance, so he must endlessly prop up his sense of righteousness by putting others down and finding fault. As one of my teachers in seminary put it, the main barrier between Pharisees and God is `not their sins, but their damnable good works.’

Keller reminds us that what we really need is a true elder brother who will go and retrieve wayward, reproachable brothers:

We need one who does not just go to the next country to find us but who will come all the way from heaven to earth. We need one who is willing to pay not just a finite amount of money, but, at an infinite cost, bring us into God’s family, for our debt is much greater. Either as younger brothers or elder brothers we have rebelled against the father. We deserve alienation, isolation, and rejection. The point of the parable is that forgiveness always involves a price-someone has to pay…Our true elder brother took and paid our debt, on the cross, in our place….There Jesus was stripped naked of his robe and dignity, so that we could be clothed with a dignity and standing we don’t deserve. On the cross Jesus was treated as an outcast so that we could be brought into God’s family freely by grace. There Jesus drank the cup of eternal justice so that we might have the cup of the father’s joy. There was no other way for the heavenly father to bring us in, except at the expense of our true elder brother.

In the chapter entitled “The Feast of the Father” Keller reminds us that salvation is experiential, material, individual and communal. The gospel is to transform our individual lives from the inside-out and then transform our communities.