Nothing in heaven or earth can be truer, surer, plainer than this. The
view that Jesus gives is the true view of the Father, as he turns his
face to-day toward the children of men.
Here is a youth who has discovered suddenly that a disease has fatally
stricken him, deep in the springs of life. After struggling some days
against conviction, and clinging to false hopes, he has at length
acknowledged that sentence of death has been passed. When the first
tumult subsides, a species of calm succeeds,--the calm of earnest
occupation with one over-riding and absorbing theme. The world, with its
hopes and fears, is conclusively cut off: his business with time is
closed. He has bidden farewell to the crowd that he has left behind, and
has entered the solemn vestibule which at the other end opens on
eternity. With all the energy of his being, he applies himself now to
the question, Am I lost or saved?
He looks alternately backward on his own life, and upward to God's
throne; both prospects trouble him. Backward he sees only sin; forward,
only judgment. Himself seems the stubble, and the Judge a consuming
fire. As these two approach, and their meeting seems near, he fears with
an exceeding great fear, and cries with an exceeding bitter cry. He
greatly wonders, meanwhile, that he never saw things in this light
before. Now, in man's extremity, is God's opportunity to show him the
Father. While the eyes of the body are closed in weariness, the mental
vision remains active; and a picture appears, as if it were hung in
light upon the wall. To the soul's eye Christ appears, and appears in
the act of revealing the Father. The Father whom Christ reveals runs
forth to meet his prodigal son, falls on his neck, weeps, and kisses
him. There is no upbraiding, no bargaining for terms. The returning son
is forgiven, accepted, clothed, honoured, loved. He has all, and
abounds. This is doubtless a true picture, the dying youth reflects, for
it is Christ that displays it; but, alas, it brings no hope to me. I
have stifled convictions, and lived for my own pleasure; and though I
often heard of mercy, I never sought it, until I found that death was on
my track. How can I expect that God should receive me, when I make him a
do-no-better, for I never thought of seeking him until all my chosen
idols had forsaken me, and I was left destitute?
Brother, look; what good thing was in the lost son, that served to
recommend him to his father? He would not remain at home; he could not
enjoy his abundance as long as the father, whose face he loathed, abode
under the same roof. He went away, that he might enjoy the pleasures of
sin. He did not return while he had enough; he did not return when he
began to be in want; he endured the extreme of misery and shame rather
than return; he came back to his father only when all other resources
failed;--and yet his father received him with great gladness. Sinner,
look on this love,--look on it till you live in its light. It is not him
that never departed, or came back while he yet had plenty, or came back
soon, or came back with an improved heart,--it is, "_Him that cometh_ I
will in no wise cast out."
Those who from this parable conclude that God receives sinners into
favour without a propitiation, and those who endeavour to escape from
that conclusion by affirming that the father in the parable represents
Christ, err equally, although on opposite sides.[84]
[84] Stier's observations on this point are excellent:--"The
well-meaning efforts which are made to explain the absence of
reference to the mediating _propitiation_ of the Son of God in this
instant exhibition of the _Father's mercy_, are altogether needless;
they rest fundamentally on false dogmatic views of this
propitiation, as if there were not existing in the Father's being
the same love which is expressed in the Son,--as if the Father
needed abstractly to be propitiated in order to entertain this love!
We are not to seek _Christ himself_ as mediator in the person of
this father; nor (though Melancthon has strangely ventured to affirm
it), afterwards in the fatted calf, as sacrificially slain. _His_
place here is rather to be sought in his thus authoritatively
testifying of the Father's mercy. As Nitzsch excellently says:--'If
he seems to conceal himself here, he is all the more manifest there,
where the Shepherd seeks the lost sheep. For _the_ Son--who is
neither an elder nor a _younger_, the _eternal_ Son of the Father,
one with him, his eye and his heart towards the lost--is come into
this world, although invisible and unnamed in the parable, to reveal
the Father where he had been ever invisible, and where no man knew
him: and he is to the children of the law and the curse, not only a
living herald of the propitiable--we shall rather say of the already
propitiated--Father, but the (that is _our_) propitiation itself,
and the way whereby every one of us may come back to God.' The
mediation of Christ is no more denied by this silence than the
seduction of Satan was denied in the sinner's apostasy at the
beginning of the parable. We may also say with Von Gerlach that the
'coming out of the father to meet his son, here figuratively
exhibits the sending of the Son.'"--_Stier in loc_.
The notion that a mediator is not needed, because a mediator is not here
specifically represented, proceeds upon the assumption, obviously and
inexcusably erroneous, that all truth must be taught in every parable.
While occasionally visiting the printing works of the publishers as
these sheets are passing through the press, I have observed the process
of printing coloured landscapes by lithograph. One stone by one
impression deposits the outline of the land; another stone, by another
impression, fills in the sea; and a third stone, on a different machine,
subsequently adds the sky to the picture. No observer is so foolish as
to complain, while he sees the process in its earlier stages, that there
is no sea or no sky in the landscape. It is thus with the parables in
general, and with this group in particular. By the two first, certain
portions and aspects of the scene are represented; and by the last one,
when it is impressed on the same field, the remaining features are
completed.
* * * * *
Hitherto we have been occupied exclusively with the younger of the two
sons; but the notice given in the first sentence of the parable
prepares us for meeting with the elder in some significant capacity ere
it close; and here, accordingly, he comes up to sustain his part.
At the moment of the prodigal's return, his elder brother was in the
field, whether for his father's profit or his own pleasure we are not
informed. When he came home in the evening, and before he had entered
the house, he heard the sound of the festival within. Surprised and
displeased that a feast on so large a scale should have been instituted
without his privity and participation, he assumed and maintained an
attitude of haughty reserve. Instead of going in at once and seeing all
with his own eyes as a son, he went to a servant, and in the spirit of
an alien, inquired the reason of the mirth. Having learned the leading
facts, instead of imitating his father's generosity, he abandoned
himself to selfish jealousy, and went away in a pet. The father, on
every side true to his character, came out and pleaded with him to enter
and share the common joy. Hereupon the true character of the
_soi-disant_ model son is revealed; he peevishly casts it in his
father's face, as a reproach, that he had never provided such a feast
for his immaculate and superlatively dutiful child.
The elder son, in his statement of the case, introduces an elaborately
constructed double contrast between his brother's experience and his
own, which is peculiarly interesting in relation to the mercy of God and
the methods of the Gospel. To the jaundiced eye of this sour-tempered
pharisaic youth, it seemed that his father gave much to him that
deserved least, and little to him that deserved most: to the profligate
son, the fatted calf; to the eminently dutiful child, not even a kid.
Here the hard, self-satisfied formalist, like Pilate and Caiaphas,
preaches the Christ whom he did not know. The envious contrast portrayed
by the elder son is a dark shadow which takes its shape from the Light
of life. It is a law of the Gospel that nothing is given to the man in
reward for the righteousness which he brings forward as his boast; but
all is given to the man who has flung away his own righteousness with
loathing as filthy rags, and come, "wretched, and miserable, and poor,
and blind, and naked," to cast himself on the mercy of God. The greatest
gift is bestowed on the most worthless; for "God commendeth his love
toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us"
(Rom. v. 8).
At this point the line of our parable touches that of the lost sheep,
and thenceforth runs coincident with it to the close: it points to the
same features of human character, and teaches the same principles of
divine truth. In the first place, it repeats the answer already given in
the two preceding parables to the question embodied in the complaint of
the Pharisees,--"This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." The
father announces with great clearness and fulness, the grounds on which
he rejoiced more that day over the prodigal restored than over the elder
son, who had never left home. It is a rule in human experience,
universally understood and appreciated, that though a son never lost is
as precious as one who has been lost and found, parents experience a
more vivid joy in the act of receiving the exile back than in the
continuous possession of a son who has been always in their sight.[85]
[85] This law may be illustrated by an analogous fact in the
material department of creation. Lay a ball, such as a boy's marble,
on an extended sheet of thin paper, and the paper, though fixed at
the edges and unsupported in the midst, will bear easily the weight:
take now another ball of the same shape and weight, and let it drop
upon the sheet of paper from a height, it will go sheer through. The
two balls are of the same weight and figure; but the motion gave to
one a momentum tenfold greater than that of the other at rest. It is
in a similar way that the return of a lost son goes through a loving
father's heart, and makes all its affections thrill; while the
continued possession of another son, equally valuable and equally
valued, produces no such commotion either in the heart of the father
or his home.
In the meantime, it is very sweet to learn from the lips of Jesus that
this law, which may be clearly traced on earth, penetrates to heaven,
and there prepares for repenting sinners, not a bare escape from wrath,
but an abundant entrance into the joy of their Lord.
But while the parable thus demonstrates that even though the claim of
the Pharisees were granted their objection falls to the ground, it most
certainly does not grant that claim. So far from conceding that they
needed no repentance, the Lord makes it evident that they kept company
with the publicans in sin, and only differed in this, that they did not
repent and forsake it. The elder brother, towards the close of the
parable, presents a life-likeness of the Pharisees; in him they might
have seen their own shadow on the wall.
The self-righteousness, the pride, the peevishness, the jealousy of the
elder brother in the close of the parable represent, in its most
distinctive features, the character of the Jewish people and their
leaders, in the beginning of the Gospel. One of their leading reasons
for refusing to own Jesus as the Messiah was his manifested willingness
to extend the blessings of redemption to the needy of every condition
and every name. When the Lord reminded them that Elijah was sent past
many suffering widows in Israel to relieve a stranger at Sarepta, and
that Elisha left many lepers uncured among his own countrymen when he
healed the Syrian soldier, they were so exasperated by the suggestion
that God's favour had already flowed out to the Gentiles, and might flow
in the same direction again, that they "rose up and thrust him out of
the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was
built, that they might cast him down headlong" (Luke iv. 29). The same
spirit burst forth when they were touched on the same tender point in
the ministry of the apostles. Paul was permitted from the stairs of the
fortress attached to the temple at Jerusalem to address an excited
multitude on the faith as it is in Jesus. Loving the Hebrew tongue in
which he spoke better than the Greek, which they had expected him to
employ, they listened with interest and in silence to the story of his
conversion through the appearing of the risen Jesus; but when in the
progress of the narrative he found it necessary to inform them that the
Lord his Saviour gave him a commission to preach the Gospel beyond the
boundaries of Israel, saying, "Depart, for I will send thee far hence
unto the Gentiles, they gave him audience unto this word, and then
lifted up their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth,
for it is not fit that he should live" (Acts xxii. 21, 22). In this
inveterate prejudice of the Pharisaic Jews against the admission of
persons or communities other than themselves into the privileges of
Messiah's kingdom, we see the reason why the Lord gave his parable the
turn which it takes in the extraordinary conduct of the elder brother.
Counting that the kingdom belonged exclusively to themselves, the Jewish
hierarchs violently resented every suggestion that pointed to the
reception of strangers. It was to them that this series of parables was
addressed; and to them, in immediate relation to their stupid and
impudent cry, "He receiveth sinners!"
But we have not exhausted this portion of the lesson when we have
pointed out that those whom the elder brother represents fret proudly
and peevishly against the admission of their neighbours into the
kingdom: by that very fact they unconsciously but surely demonstrate
that themselves have not entered yet. The spirit that in regard to self
is satisfied, before God unhumbled, and towards men unloving, has no
part with Christ: this is the proud whom God knoweth afar off, not the
meek whom he delights to honour.
Ah, woe to the man who serves God as that son served his father, with a
mercenary mind and an unbroken heart,--who thinks his obedience
praiseworthy, and would be surprised if it should go without reward. The
elder son was lost as well as the younger; but as far as the parable
reveals his history, he was not like him found again: he, like his
brother, went astray; but unlike him, refused to come back. The father
was grieved as much by the sullen, dry, hard, cold, dead formality of
his elder son, as by the prodigal wastefulness of the younger, without
getting the sorrow balanced by a subsequent joy. Whited sepulchre! what
will thy residence in the house, and thy constant and punctilious
profession avail thee while thou art planting daggers in thy father's
heart, and nursing vile hypocrisy in thy own? It is the empty open
vessel that gets itself filled when it is plunged into a well of living
water; the vessel that is full and shut, although it is overflowed by
rivers of privileges, does not receive and retain a drop. Before God and
under the Gospel, the turning-point of each man's destiny is not the
number or the aggravation of his sins, but the discovery of his own
guilt, and the consequent cry out of the depths for mercy. That which
really in the last resort hinders a man's salvation and secures his
doom is not his sin, but his refusal to know and own that he is a
sinner. All the excesses of the prodigal will not shut him out of
heaven, for he came repenting to the father; but all the virtues of the
elder brother will not let him into heaven, for he cherished pride in
his heart, and taunted his father for overlooking his worth. The ground
on which the Laodiceans were condemned was not the sinfulness of their
state, but their stolid satisfaction with the state they were in.
"Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need
of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable, and
poor, and blind, and naked" (Rev. iii. 17). What although they were not
rich;--if they had known their poverty, all the treasures of the Godhead
were at their disposal: what although they were wretched;--all the
blessings that are at God's right hand were theirs for the asking. What
although this son was prodigal;--there is a place for him in God's
favour,--a place for him in the mansions of the Father's house for ever
when he comes back repenting, confiding; but what although he never
strayed--never missed a diet of worship or a deed of alms, the elder
brother by holding to his own righteousness, rejects the righteousness
which is of God by faith, and shuts himself out of the kingdom. Him who
thought he was poor and miserable, and wretched, and blind, and naked,
the father runs to meet with kisses of love and tears of joy: but him
who thought himself rich and increased with goods, and in need of
nothing, the father puts away, with the most piercing expressions of
loathing which the whole Scriptures contain, "I will spue thee out of my
mouth."
XXV.
THE PRUDENT STEWARD.
"And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man,
which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had
wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it
that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for
thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within
himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the
stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what
to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive
me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's debtors
unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?
And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take
thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to
another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures
of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done
wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser
than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves
friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they
may receive you into everlasting habitations."--LUKE xvi. 1-9.
On the face of this parable a difficulty presents itself, all the more
formidable in that it lies not in the critical, but in the moral
department. In almost all the other examples, the acts attributed to
human agents are either morally blameless in themselves, or are
manifestly exhibited in order to be condemned: but here, an element of
injustice is inseparably mixed up with the prudence which is commended
in the conduct of the steward. The difficulty lies in this, that the
specimen of worldly prudence presented in order to suggest and stimulate
spiritual prudence in securing the interests of the soul, is dyed
through and through with the loathsome vice of dishonesty. It is not
easy, at least for us, to gather the lesson which this man's prudence
contained, out of the dishonesty in which in was steeped.
When we read the parable we may detect a feeling of surprise creeping
over our minds, that the Lord, who had the whole world and its history
before him whence to select his examples, should have chosen a specimen
of worldly wisdom, damaged by an admixture of downright falsehood, in
order to stimulate thereby the spiritual zeal of his own disciples. The
three following observations will, in my judgment, explain and
completely remove the difficulty:--(1.) The Holy One, precisely because
he is perfectly holy, can come closer to the unholy than we who are
infected with sin and susceptible of injury from contact with impurity.
Jesus talked with the Samaritan at the well, and permitted the sinner to
wash his feet with tears in Simon's house. His own disciples and the
Pharisees wondered by turns why he came so close to the unclean; but if
they had been free from sin as he was, they could have handled it freely
when in their ordinary ministry it crossed their path. Inflammable
matter must be kept far from fire; whereas matter that is incombustible
may, when a necessary cause occurs, safely pass through the midst of the
flame. (2.) A shorter parable in another place presents and explains the
same difficulty: "Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
Serpents are proposed to the disciples as examples to be imitated; but
it is the wisdom only and not the hurtfulness of the serpent that their
Master enjoins them to imitate. Foresight and dishonesty are not more
closely or inseparably united in the character of the cunning steward
than wisdom and hurtfulness in the nature of the serpent. In both alike
the Master meant that one quality which is commendable should be
selected for imitation, and the other quality which is vile should be
cast away with loathing. (3.) The key-note of the parable is expressed
in verse 8: "The children of this world are wiser in their generation
than the children of light." The line of interpretation must be drawn
through this point, and all the scattered features of the picture
brought up or brought down to meet it. Thus the tinge of dishonesty that
runs through the prudence of the steward, so far from rendering his case
unsuitable for the purpose of the Lord, imparted to it additional
appropriateness and point. The methods, as well as the ends of the
worldly, were different from those of the spiritual. This example shows
that, from the ungodly man's own view-point, and according to his own
maxims, he prosecutes his object with energy and skill. Let the
Christian, with his clearer, purer light, prosecute his high aim by holy
means with an energy and zeal similar to those which the ungodly exhibit
in the pursuit of their gains or pleasures. It was the design of the
Lord not simply to give his disciples generally an example of wisdom,
but to give them specifically an example of the wisdom of the world--the
wisdom that neither fears God nor regards man. An example of prudence
taken from a good man's history, and exercised under submission to the
law of God, would not have suited the Master's purpose so well as the
one that has been chosen.
It is important to notice at the outset, that in this instance the Lord
addresses his instructions specifically to his own disciples. The three
parables which are recorded in the preceding chapter were spoken to the
Pharisees; immediately after these, and in continuation of the history,
the evangelist intimates that "he said also unto his disciples, There
was a certain rich man," &c. Besides those lessons which he gave to the
multitude, teaching how the distant may come near, he gave this lesson
to those who had already come near, in order to incite them to diligence
in the course which they had chosen: this Teacher rightly divides the
word of truth, giving to each his portion in due season. In this lesson
the diligence of worldly men is employed to rebuke the slothfulness of
Christians. Those who make perishing things their portion are
thoughtful, inventive, energetic, decisive in prosecuting their object;
how thoughtless and slow are the heirs of the kingdom in the work of
their high calling!
"A certain rich man had a steward." We learn here, incidentally, how
evenly balanced are the various conditions of life in a community, and
how little of substantial advantage wealth can confer on its possessor.
As your property increases, your personal control over it diminishes;
the more you possess, the more you must entrust to others. Those who do
their own work are not troubled with disobedient servants; those who
look after their own affairs, are not troubled with unfaithful
overseers.[86]