Prodigal God
Yesterday, I finished the book, Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller. I had been challenged and enjoyed the book from the very beginning as he explains that the Parable of the Prodigal Son is wrongly named. It should instead be the Parable of the Sons. He suggests that we have been taught to focus on the younger, more rebellious son, even though the older son also had issues to deal with too. The focus is not just on a God who forgives the wayward son, but the self-righteous son as well. Too often our churches are full of "older brothers" and miss out on the true meaning of the parable. It is not about "them" but about us and our need for Christ. I am an older brother as I have confessed before.
The book continues to explain the parable in insightful and challenging ways. But Keller brings it home, in my opinion, in the last chapter. As I read, I was a "highlighting freak". I kept reading and saying, "wow! that is true, that is good, yes". Below are a few quotes to whet your appetite for more. I hope after reading them you will pick up the book and read it. As you can tell, I highly recommend it.
"Rather than only believing that he is loving, we can come to sense the reality, the beauty, and the power of his love."
"Younger brothers are too selfish and elder brothers are too self-righteous to care for the poor."
"That's what we must do with the gospel of the grace of God. We must personally appropriate it, making it more and more central to everything we see, think, and feel. This how we grow spiritually in wisdom, love, joy, and peace. "
"We habitually and instinctively look to other things besides God and his grace as our justification, hope, significance, and security."
"You cannot change such things through mere will-power, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out. We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it a part of ourselves. This is how we grow."
"What makes you faithful or generous is not just a redoubled effort to follow moral rules. Rather, all change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out of the changes that understanding creates in your heart. Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting."
"God's grace is free, yes, but it is also costly, infinitely so."
"If we say "I believe in Jesus" but it doesn't affect the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven't truly understood or believed in Jesus at all."
"You can't live the Christian life without a band of Christian friends, without a family of believers in which you find a place."
"Jesus tells us that both the sensual way of the younger brother and the ethical way of the elder brother are spiritual dead ends. He also shows us there is another way: through him. And to enter that way and to live a life based on his salvation will bring us finally to the ultimate party and feast at the end of history. We can have a foretaste of that future salvation now in all the ways outlined in this chapter: in prayer, in service to others, in the changes in our inner nature through the gospel, and through the healed relationships that Christ can give us now. But they are only a foretaste of what is to come."
I end by saying, Amen!
The book continues to explain the parable in insightful and challenging ways. But Keller brings it home, in my opinion, in the last chapter. As I read, I was a "highlighting freak". I kept reading and saying, "wow! that is true, that is good, yes". Below are a few quotes to whet your appetite for more. I hope after reading them you will pick up the book and read it. As you can tell, I highly recommend it.
"Rather than only believing that he is loving, we can come to sense the reality, the beauty, and the power of his love."
"Younger brothers are too selfish and elder brothers are too self-righteous to care for the poor."
"That's what we must do with the gospel of the grace of God. We must personally appropriate it, making it more and more central to everything we see, think, and feel. This how we grow spiritually in wisdom, love, joy, and peace. "
"We habitually and instinctively look to other things besides God and his grace as our justification, hope, significance, and security."
"You cannot change such things through mere will-power, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out. We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it a part of ourselves. This is how we grow."
"What makes you faithful or generous is not just a redoubled effort to follow moral rules. Rather, all change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out of the changes that understanding creates in your heart. Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting."
"God's grace is free, yes, but it is also costly, infinitely so."
"If we say "I believe in Jesus" but it doesn't affect the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven't truly understood or believed in Jesus at all."
"You can't live the Christian life without a band of Christian friends, without a family of believers in which you find a place."
"Jesus tells us that both the sensual way of the younger brother and the ethical way of the elder brother are spiritual dead ends. He also shows us there is another way: through him. And to enter that way and to live a life based on his salvation will bring us finally to the ultimate party and feast at the end of history. We can have a foretaste of that future salvation now in all the ways outlined in this chapter: in prayer, in service to others, in the changes in our inner nature through the gospel, and through the healed relationships that Christ can give us now. But they are only a foretaste of what is to come."
I end by saying, Amen!
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