And He said, “A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he decided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living….So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
—Luke 15:11-13, 20

The story of the prodigal son has got to be one of my favorite parables in the Bible. Especially when you dive into the social and cultural context. You can learn things like the symbolic significance of the father’s gifts to the prodigal son or how much of a disgrace it would have been considered for the father to run. When you dig in, the story blossoms into a magnificently vivid portrait of God’s fervent and passionate love for us.

God’s Unconditional Love

The love demonstrated by the father is everything we as humans crave. It’s deep, unconditional, forgiving, steadfast, even when faced with the ugliest the son had to offer. And it’s personal.

The three gifts the father has his servants dress his son in represent honor, authority, and sonship. Through these gifts, the father is also restoring him to his rightful relationship with the father.

For those of us who believe in Jesus as our Savior, that’s a thrilling truth. But over the past few months, I’ve been noticing more and more how this relationship with God is the one thing that the world seems to want to chuck out the window.

Turning Away from God

If we look at today’s focal passage, that’s exactly what the younger son does. He doesn’t just ask for his inheritance. He is basically telling his father that he’s dead to him. That he doesn’t want anything to do with him. And then he moves to a faraway country, creating physical distance to complement the relational distance he caused.

I see this same pattern happening everywhere in our world today. As a race, we humans seem to want all the inheritance without any of the intimacy we were designed for. I see it in the way Muslims worship a God who’s too great to be much concerned with the people who worship him. I see it in the way that pantheists are eager to consider everything God as long as that everything isn’t a person they can have a relationship with.

I see it in the way Richard Dawkins said he was a cultural Christian because no other religion is as good for people as Christianity is, even though he still won’t believe in the God who designed the rules meant to help people prosper. I see it in the way people claim Jesus’s teachings are excellent morally, but He was just a man.

The Older Brother’s Trap

And unfortunately, there’s another side to the coin that’s showing itself in church all the time. So many people are playing the role of the older brother. They’re faithful to show up on Sundays. But only to secure their ticket to Heaven or to faith their way into the life they want. And if things don’t pan out the way they want, they walk away.

Regardless of the situation, God becomes a faceless, mindless means. Not the end. And the level of loss that accompanies that transition is nothing short of tragic.

Remembering God’s Personhood

I think the church can also fall into this trap of forgetting the personhood of God. When life is busy and all manner of things are going wrong, it can be hard to remember that one day we’ll look into the eyes of the God we can’t yet see. One day we’ll be wrapped in the arms of the God we can’t yet touch, and we’ll laugh at the jokes of a God whose voice we can’t yet hear with our earthly ears.

As I read the story of the prodigal son yesterday, it brought to a head all I’d been noticing about the depersonalization of God in our culture. So much is shifting and changing. Some of it exciting. Some of it terrifying. But I think one of the things the world needs the most right now is to see the church talking about and demonstrating God’s personhood by publicly living out and enjoying our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Living in Light of Eternity

Let’s talk about what God is teaching us! Let’s talk about how He’s comforting us and ministering to us in difficult times! Let’s talk about Him as if we’re looking forward to seeing Him one day! Because we will, and we have every reason to look forward to it.

I think this is what living in light of eternity looks like. Not giving up on life to wait for the end or selling everything we own because Jesus might come back next week, but keeping the finish line at the forefront of our minds so much during our day-to-day that it just spills out.

When someone asks why we made that decision that seems a little strange, we tell them the truth. We did it because we want to make our Heavenly Father proud. When someone asks why we’re smiling even though literally nothing went our way today, we tell them it’s because we asked our Father to come comfort us, and He didn’t let us down.

We, as the church, have the most beautiful opportunity to show the world that there’s an actual Someone who fulfills every spirit-deep longing they have. A relationship with our Father is so much better than any material blessing He could give. Let’s show the world just how good He is!