How Deep the Father’s Love

Heavenly Father, we bow in your presence. May your Word be our rule, may your Spirit be our teacher, and may your greater glory be our supreme concern, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Of all the stories that Jesus told—and you know from reading the Bible that he told wonderful stories, many of them—of all of them, this must be the most obvious to consider on Father’s Day. It’s a story that is not unfamiliar to many of us. It’s a story about relationships, a triangle of domestic tension between a father and his two sons.

The relationship of both sons with their father is, we discover in the story, broken. In the case of the younger son, the breakdown is more obvious. He has left his father’s home—he’s apparently sick and tired of it, wants to be free of the restraints that are represented there—and he has taken his journey a way off “into a far country,”[1] as the story goes. The older boy, he stays home, but any closeness with his father actually proves only to be geographical. This individual is frozen, and he’s excluded from a relationship with his father on account of his attitude.

Now, the point that Jesus is making in the telling of this story is fairly straightforward: our relationship with God is like the relationship of these two sons with their father—namely, by nature, by birth, irrespective of our interest in religion, no matter how observant we may be in the attendance of worship, by our nature, we are separated from God.

Some of us, like the younger son, are separated from God quite openly and defiantly. We may have come to worship today, on Father’s Day, dragged, coerced, whatever it might be, and quite honestly, we’re already dying for the end of the event, looking forward to lunch and longing to be once again out from this building and into the freedom that we enjoy. We’ve turned our backs on God. We don’t really care for him. We don’t listen to his Word, and we have no concern about who knows regarding this. We’re quite open and defiant.

Others of us are like the second son: we are secretly estranged from God. We maintain on a regular basis a kind of polite nodding acquaintance with him, and that nodding acquaintance may well include attending events such as this. And we feel somehow or another that although there is no close relationship, there is no sense of dependence, that nevertheless, it’s important for us, at least geographically, as it were, to maintain some kind of link.

Now, in this story, Jesus is doing two things. He may be doing more, but he’s definitely doing this: he’s extending a welcome to all who would admit their sinful condition, and he is issuing a warning to those whose rebellion against God is disguised by a smug self-righteousness. You got that? He is issuing a welcome to all who are prepared to admit their sinful condition, and he is issuing a warning to all who would seek to disguise their rebellion by religious formalism, externalism, a smug self-righteousness.

Now, I want our focus to be on the body of the twentieth verse. If your Bible is open, you can look at it. The verse begins: “So he got up and went to his father.” But it’s this next sentence that really is the focus of our attention. We’re narrowing down, as it were, the angle of the camera lens, and we want to look at this scene, not disregarding the rest of the story but, indeed, viewing the rest of the story through this particular picture. Look at what it says: Jesus says, “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

Now, that’s the picture. And what we want to do is this: first of all, we want to look at that picture with careful observation; then we want to ask of the picture, “Is there a simple explanation as to what is conveyed in this picture?”; and then we want to say, “What then of the personal application in my life to the observation I’ve just made and to the explanation I’ve just been given?”

Careful Observation

So, first of all, then, careful observation. It’s the kind of thing that we have to do all the time at school. If you remember, especially in the English class, the teacher said, “Now, what I want you to do is to read this poem, sit for a while and think about it, and then I’m going to ask you just to give me your observations.” And everyone was frightened to go first, because they thought that their observation was so meager and so poor. And then when we heard some of the twaddle that was coming out, we wished we’d actually gone first. But we had to notice that this is a simile, this is a metaphor, notice how it begins in the singular, continues in the plural, and all those kind of things. And I think in the world of fine arts they do similarly. They set up a painting or a picture, and they say, “Now, what I want you to do is to look very carefully at this, and then give me your observations.” So that’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to look at this picture and make careful observations. I’ll be glad to hear yours later—the things that I’ve missed; I’m sure I have—but this is the best that I can do in the time that I had.

First of all, notice that the person who comes into view in the picture in verse 20, first of all, is the son. Is the son. He is “still a long way off.” This boy who had left town, probably a fairly handsome boy, self-assured, money in his pocket, and a spring in his step, is now, we’re told in the story, on his way back home. Look at him; you’ll find him shoeless, ragged, emaciated, humiliated. And we’re told explicitly that the father “saw him.”

What seems to be implicit in the story is the fact that the reason the father saw him was because the father had never stopped waiting for him, had never stopped watching for him. I don’t think that we read anything into the text that is not implicitly there by observing, first of all, that what we have here is a waiting father. A waiting father. We may be more familiar with a picture of a waiting husband than we are of a waiting father, but it is a picture of a waiting father here. His last view of his son had probably been of his shoulders in the distance, the hair on the back of his neck, perhaps tied up in a ponytail. We’re all familiar with that kind of departure: someone walks away from us, down the hallway of an airport terminal, on the platform of a railway station, out into the fields, never to return. And this boy had walked away from his father; we’re told that he had “set off for a distant country.”

Now, surely there can’t have been a day when his father didn’t wonder about him, didn’t wake up and say, “I wonder concerning his whereabouts? I wonder where my boy is?” To ask the question, “I wonder if he’s making friends? I wonder if he’s making good friends? And I wonder how his health is? I wonder if he’s eating? I wonder if he’s drinking? I wonder if he’s drinking what he shouldn’t be drinking?” Long days stretching into weeks, the weeks becoming months, and with every passing day the prospect of the boy’s return growing less and less likely. Indeed, this kind of waiting father would probably have been told by many of his friends, “Why don’t you just give it up? It’s hopeless. He’s gone. He’s gone for good.”

But the waiting would have been marked by watching. Watching. Did he go each day to the first bend in the roadway—to the place where the road bends off when someone walks away, and as soon as they turn the corner, they’re gone? So if you’re hoping for them to come back, you go to that corner, because at least you’ll have the chance to see them before they make the bend in the road. Did he go there? Did he go to the crossroads at which they parted company? Where finally the boy said, “This is it. I’m out of here.”

If he did so, his actions would presumably have become the focus of townspeople, not least of all for new people to the community. They would have said, perhaps in the marketplace, “You know, I see a man every day, right around the same time. I don’t know what he’s doing, but he appears simply to be looking for something. And I’m wondering,” he asks one of the traders in the town, “do you know who this person is? He stands every day in the same place, shielding his eyes against the sun, looking out onto the horizon. What’s he looking for?”

“Oh,” said the grocer, “he’s looking for his boy. He’s looking for his son.” And someone else waiting to get their shopping says to the stranger, “Fat chance! From what I hear that boy’s gone. When he left Sleepy Hollow, he kissed it goodbye. He’s not coming back. But he’s always out there, always watching.”

And look: he’s running. Running! When you do this observation in English, you know you’re always supposed to look for the doing words. You’re always supposed to look for the verbs. What was he doing? “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him … filled with compassion … he ran to his son.” Look at him go! A very undignified thing to do. “Oh,” you say, “well, it’s not undignified today.” Well, actually it is relatively undignified to see an older man running. If you haven’t seen yourself running, you don’t know how undignified you look. You look like a grasshopper on stilts. It’s pathetic. Those days are gone when you were fleet of foot and when you were like a gazelle moving through the community. Now you look as though someone is operating you from a remote control somewhere.

But in the East, it was particularly undignified, because their long, flowing robes impeded progress. And therefore, it was necessary for them to gather up their robes and to tuck them into their belts, thus exposing their legs and their feet and their sandals. And off they would go, running down the road. And there had to be something of extreme urgency or significance before an elder in an Eastern community would be seen running. You just didn’t do it. You walked. But he ran, and every father understands why. Every father understands that given the opportunity, given the glimpse of his son, that off he goes down the street, making a beeline for this bedraggled figure.

And his running gives way to loving. Loving! He’s “filled with compassion.” His heart overflows. His arms reach out. He doesn’t shake hands. He doesn’t say, “Oh, I’ve been wondering if you would come back.” No, his arms are all over him. “Come here,” he says. He’s grabbing him to himself. If he had all the tentacles of an octopus, he would have used all of them to draw him to himself and to smother him with kisses. And he “kissed him.” And the Greek is not just “And he did” [pecks], but the Greek is “He just kissed the dickens out of him.” He was all over the smelly, bedraggled rascal as he met him on the highway.

And actually, the story gets better, because down there in verse 24, you have the father not only waiting, watching, loving, running, kissing, but you have him dancing. And I see him like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, one of my favorite characters, presiding over this merry family reunion and entering wholeheartedly into the proceedings, dancing in the evening shadows.

Well, there is probably more there, but we must stop. Careful observation.

Simple Explanation

Secondly, simple explanation. What’s going on? Why tell the story? What’s the significance of it? Does it matter?

Well, I’ve read this story I don’t know how many times. I know this story off by heart. I memorized it first in the King James Version when I was eleven years old at primary school in Scotland, in a secular school, because my teacher told me to. And this week, when I read it and reread it, I found myself asking two questions of it that I’m not sure I’d asked before. And the first was this: What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong with the picture? May seem a strange question to ask, because after all, everything seems so right about the picture, doesn’t it? Seems to be such a lovely picture.

But actually, there’s really something wrong with it. And it’s this: the boy doesn’t get what he deserves. He doesn’t get what he deserves. He doesn’t deserve this, does he? Think about it. He took the car, he took the clothes, he took the money, he took everything, he headed out, wrecked the car, destroyed the clothes, spent the money, acted like a complete fool, and came walking back up the street. And his father has a party! What’s up with the father? The boy had forfeited every claim upon his father’s goodness. He’d forfeited every claim on his father’s goodness. If no one else understood that, he understood it, as we’ll see in just a moment.

So how are we to understand this? Well, let me tell you: the parable is about God—the love of God, the concern of God in seeking and saving the lost. This is the story that Jesus is telling. He is telling the people who are around him that God actually loves saving people, that God forgives sins, that God delights to forgive sins. And the sons, both of them, depict our condition: separated from God either by willful rebellion or by passive indifference. We are the ones who are separated. We are the ones with the broken relationship. And the father depicts God.

Now, you have to think about that for just a moment to realize how amazing it really was: Jesus speaking into the listening audience that is largely Jewish, who have pictures in their mind of God speaking from Sinai and the mountains flashing with lightning and the thunder rolling and the amazing otherness of God that is conveyed to them. And Jesus says, “The picture that I’m giving you here of the Father is this: this is a waiting God, a watching God, a loving God, a kissing God, a dancing God.”

You cannot understand God as a loving Father absent his revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The second question I asked was, “What’s missing from the picture?” What’s missing from the picture? Or better still: Who’s missing from the picture? If you think about this, you’ll get it: Jesus is missing from the picture. Well, obviously, Jesus is telling the story. But actually, he is essential to the story. Because the one who tells the story is the key to the way the story ends.

Think about this for just a moment. Some people tell this story along these lines—and it will probably be told in a number of places like this today all across the country: “God is a great, loving Father, and we, his sons, have wandered off and made a hash of things. But he doesn’t really care. In fact, he cares so little about it that he’s decided to have a party, and you’re welcome. Therefore, don’t worry about it. God winks at sin. God doesn’t care. Mess up all you like, come home, and it’s fine.”

Now, what is it prevents us from making that application of this story? Because on face value, it appears that that is exactly what’s being said, doesn’t it? Well, because all of the stories of the Bible have to be set within the framework of everything that we know about the Bible. And when Jesus, in telling this story, said to the listeners, “And he saw him and was moved with compassion for him,” in the mind of Christ himself, in that expression of compassion, you need to understand is the very fact that he is standing there telling the story. For it is on account of the Father’s love and compassion—John 3, you remember: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.”[2] So that Jesus speaks this story of the Father’s love in the awareness of the fact that we cannot understand the compassion of God unless we see it in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And let me tell you why: God is good and therefore forgives. God is just and therefore punishes sin. Obvious question: How, then, can God simultaneously display justice in punishment and mercy in pardoning? If in this story God the Father is not simply winking at sin, simply not letting the boy off, how in the world, then, is justice to be served?

Well, the answer is in the cross, you see. That’s why you cannot understand God as a loving Father absent his revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ, that you cannot understand the compassion of God until you say to yourself, “Here I am, lost and alone in the company of multitudes, and he is sending his Son for me.” You can’t grapple with it until you’re prepared to say,

How deep the Father’s love for us,

How vast beyond all measure,

That he should give his only Son

To make a wretch his treasure.[3]

So you see, there’s the explanation of what’s going on. God’s love is expressed in this story, but the story doesn’t contain all that is necessary to understand his love. We need to step back from it and view the panorama of the gospel, and we realize that his compassion is conveyed at the cross. For there in the cross, the Lord Jesus, who was sinless and perfect, took sin upon himself, became sin, so that we, who have forfeited every right to our Father’s love, every right to a party, every notion of welcome, every warm embrace may be embraced and welcomed and feted and rejoiced in because of what another has done.

Personal Application

That brings me finally to personal application. Personal application.

See, what the son does here is he confesses, doesn’t he? He confesses. Have you ever confessed to God? Fathers, have you ever really faced up to whether you have a relationship with God the Father or not? Have you? This is not a question about your interest in church or your concern for the well-being of your family or the combination of freedom and religious orthodoxy and so on. No, no, no, no. It’s something far more significant than that. Have you ever, like this boy, come to your senses? Have you ever done what this boy did, and that is took a long, hard look at things?

Most of us are unprepared to take a long, hard look at things—especially take a long, hard look at ourselves. Because if we are prepared to take a long, hard look at ourselves, we may actually come to the same conclusion this boy came to, and that’s very demeaning. And so most of us are unprepared to do so. For we may have to admit that deep down inside, we’re falling apart. We don’t know where we’re going, and we actually can’t make sense of the journey of our lives at all. Oh, we fill in the blanks in a variety of ways, but if we take a long, hard look at ourselves, we realize that while it may not be a pigsty in which we find ourselves, things are not the way that we might expect them to be. And in that moment of self-realization there’s an opportunity for change. Some of you have been coming to that point routinely, and you keep saying to yourself, “Yes, I’m going to deal with that one of these days. I have faced up to that, and I will tackle it.” Would you presume upon the patience of God? Don’t you realize that his kindness would bring you to repentance?[4]

But you know, if you come to that moment, and you face up to things, and you’re unprepared to do what is necessary in terms of confession, I’ll tell you what you probably do: that is, you put on a mask. You put on a mask. If you could, you would mask the reality from yourself and from God, but you can’t. You can’t hide your own heart from God, you can’t hide it from yourself, but it doesn’t prevent you from hiding it from other people. And so, taking a long hard look at circumstances, out we go, back into the community again, putting on the mask.

Oh, there are all kinds of masks. The mask of the muscular athletic type and the exercise club with the bag and the weights and the gloves and the chalk and the… And people look at him and say, “He’s got it together, doesn’t he?” And even the way he dries himself—you know, he’s in charge. Mask on and gone. Inside: crumbling, broken, destroyed, unaware of why he even exists.

Or the mask of the cool academic—the Case Western, University Hospital, Cleveland Clinic mask: “Don’t bother me with your trivial questions. I know the answer to everything.”

Or the “life and soul of the party” mask: “Hey, hey, hey! Hey! Father’s Day! Hey-hey! Look at what I got! Here, let’s get the thing going, you know.” Inside: different story.

Or the “I don’t need anybody” mask: “I am a rock. I’m an island. Rock don’t feel no pain. An island never cries.[5] I’m fine. Father’s Day? Sure. But…”

Face the fact: you don’t know who you are. You don’t even know who you want to be, and you don’t know who you’re supposed to be. And guess what? Your mask is slipping. I’ve been watching you, and God knows, and you know. Don’t you think it would be more sensible to take a long, hard look at yourself and admit what the boy admitted? Number one: that he was lost. That he was lost. That his real need wasn’t for something called food; his real need was a relationship with someone called father. That the insatiable longings that had taken him off into the far country could not be satisfied there. That his very physical frame was indicative of his spiritual emptiness. He was lost, and he was guilty. And we’re lost and guilty. That’s what the Bible says. That’s why Jesus is telling the story. And like the son, our folly is rooted in our stubborn desire to go it alone, to live without God, to flout his rules. And like the son, we’ve sinned against heaven and in God’s sight. And like the boy, we need not only the Father’s friendship, but we need the Father’s forgiveness.

The welcome that God extends to those who come to him in repentance and in faith has nothing to do with our deserving. It is entirely a matter of grace.

And isn’t it remarkable that the boy, having come to himself and prepared his speech, he knows he’s forfeited every right to a place in the house? He knows the best he can hope for is to live somewhere, perhaps, in the yard, perhaps to be one of the hired helpers of the day. And back he goes, and what does he meet? His confession is met with compassion. Compassion! There’s nothing that will make a man or a woman realize so clearly the sinfulness of our sin and our utter unworthiness as a personal dawning realization of the love with which God as our Father welcomes us in our rebellion and in our lostness. It is his love for us. The hymn writer says, “It was his love for me that nailed him to the tree to die in agony for all my sin[s].”[6] And it was this compassion of God that suddenly broke the person’s heart. You got a broken heart?

The Prodigal went back home not primarily because he was tormented by a guilty conscience but, I think, because he was driven by the hope of mercy. And what mercy! What love! What grace! Look at how it finishes: confession, compassion, celebration. Celebration. What a deal! But notice who missed it: “The older son was in the field,” and “when he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.” What kept him out? What kept him away from the celebration? The same thing that keeps some of us away from the celebration: our foolish pride. The elder son, who has remained within the spatial orb of the father—geographically still there, fulfilling the role of a slave while living as a supposed son—comes, and he says, “What is this?” “Oh,” says the servant, “This is… Get in here! This is terrific! It’s the celebration because your brother is back.” And it says, “And [he] refused to go in.” And why did he refuse to go in? “Because,” he said to himself, “my brother doesn’t deserve this.” And, of course, the answer was “You’re absolutely right. But do you think that you do?” And see, he had to realize, in his smug self-righteousness, that he was as lost and as guilty as his brother. And that’s always hard for the self-righteous to admit.

You see, the love which God displays, the welcome that he extends to those who come to him in repentance and in faith, has nothing to do with our deserving. It is entirely a matter of grace. The love which he displays—the waiting, watching, loving, kissing, dancing love—has nothing to do with our deserving. It has all to do with his grace. We have all forfeited the right to entry into the home.

“Well,” you say, “well, that’s interesting. I never really figured it in that way at all. I always thought it was just a story, like, you know, you tick God off, but God’s kind of benevolent, and he lets you off.” No. I couldn’t tell you it any worse. No, it’s not like that at all. No, there was hell to pay for your sin. That’s why Jesus died on the cross. And unless you and I come to the cross and admit that we’re lost and that we’re guilty and believe that on the cross he was bearing your sin, as if there was never another sinner in the world—you, dad, your sin—unless we come and admit that and believe that and consider the fact that our old way of life is lost and futile and that only a new way of life with God will deal with the remainder of our earthly pilgrimage and the hope of heaven, then we will face the judgment of God and be lost for all of eternity.

So come to him. Come to him in your sinfulness and in your emptiness. Receive his forgiveness and his fullness. He accepts people in the tattered rags of rebellion. He accepts people in the starchy clothing of religious formalism.

“Well,” you say, “what would I say to him if I went to him?” Well, you would say this to him: “Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever was prepared to believe, but through you, I believe I’m more loved and accepted than I ever dared I could hope.[7] I thank you for paying my debt, for bearing my punishment, for offering me forgiveness, and I turn from my sin, and I receive you as my Savior. You see, I’ve been at Parkside now so many times, lost and alone in the company of multitudes, with life in my body yet death in my heart.”

Let’s pray together:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believe[s] in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”[8] Bring us to our senses, gracious, loving Father, we pray. Confront us with your compassion. Grant to us repentance and faith. And on this Father’s Day morning of 2003, may we learn for the first time what it means to say, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.”[9] Thank you for the immensity of your love for us. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] Luke 15:13 (KJV).

[2] John 3:16 (KJV).

[3] Stuart Townend, “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” (1995).

[4] See Romans 2:4.

[5] Paul Simon, “I Am a Rock” (1966).

[6] Norman J. Clayton, “For All My Sin” (1943).

[7] Attributed to Jack Miller. See, for example, Katherine Leary Alsdorf, foreword to Every Good Endeavor, by Tim Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf (New York: Penguin, 2012), xix.

[8] John 3:16 (KJV).

[9] Matthew 6:9 (paraphrased).