110918 Prodigal God 5: How It Should Have Ended

Maybe I was too hard on older brothers.  Elder brotherliness offers a lot of positives that we shouldn't overlook.  For one thing, older brothers, like the one in the Prodigal story we've been looking at from Luke 15, are disciplined.  When older brothers are in charge, there's no real chance of those under their care becoming soft.  Older brothers run a tight ship, and know that accommodating certain behavior could sink everything they've worked for.  That kind of discipline keeps everybody in line.  Older brothers are efficient, faithful workers, and expect the same of others.  You can count on them to get the job done.  That's a good quality.  Elder brother's don't get treated like doormats.  They are tough cookies.  They don't get ripped off.  If they are in charge of your stuff, you can rest knowing no foxes are going to get into the hen house.  And when things do go wrong, or people go wrong, you can count on swift justice being served.  People are held accountable, which raises the bar of performance.  This is a sought-after quality in leadership circles, and certainly commands respect.

On the other hand, especially since we're talking about God and the faith in the Prodigal story, elder brothers are deadly to the Great Commission - the lat command, so to speak, of Jesus.  He told his disciples to do make disciples of all people everywhere, teaching them to obey everything Jesus had commanded.  Obedience is a top priority for older brothers, so how could they struggle with - let alone be a detriment to - the Great Commission?  When asked what was the most important laws of God to follow, Jesus gave not one, but two which, if followed, satisfied all the rest.  Just two rules to master in order to Ace all the rest.  The rules?  First, love God with everything you've got.  Second, love others as you love yourself.  That's it.  And that's the problem.  Older brothers like the one in the Prodigal story struggle with love.  Love isn't a law, it is a way.  

When we let our elder brotherliness grow in us, we don't really want our younger brothers back, because they seem more bother than brother.  We don't love them much.  If they somehow come back, we want justice before they get to eat our food.  We want some groveling.  We want to impose penalty.  We want them to wear a scarlet letter so that nobody will forget what they did.  If they want to eat and sleep in our house, it's no too much to ask.

When we let our elder brotherliness get the best of us, we create environments that are hostile to younger brothers.  They feel great to us, because they support everything we believe in.  We are comfortable.  But what is comfortable for us is excruciating for our younger siblings.  Worse, creating environments where we are insulated from younger brothers perpetuates our blindness toward our self righteousness.  We think we're great, but the world we are supposed to be reaching calls us hypocritical.  We even want to blame the media, because it can't be our own fault that people see us this way - we're wonderful - just ask us.

The fact is, the Great Commission relies completely on the Great Commandments.  Lack of love leads to failure.  Guaranteed.

Keller notes in his book, The Prodigal God, that a character is missing in Jesus' story: a True Elder Brother.  According to Keller, it would have been the elder brother's role to seek out his wayward sibling and bring him back.  This would have cost him time, money, and energy.  Why would he does this?  Love.  A True Elder Brother would respect the fact that his younger sibling was stuck in a story, and would be more interested in helping him through it that reminding him of it.  Why wouldn't he make him recount the painful details of his waywardness?  Because he loves him.  A True Elder Brother is lavish with grace.  Normal older brothers see this as being soft on sin.  But the True Elder Brother recognizes (from personal experience, no doubt), that grace provides a higher form of justice than the pursuit of justice alone.  Where justice alone is satisfied with restitution, grace goes far beyond it by pursuing redemption and restoration.

As for all the other stuff the run-of-the-mill older brother does which seems good, when compared to a loving True Elder Brother, there is no comparison.  The work is done better, with greater passion.  People aren't forced to reach a standard, they are won to a cause and want to contribute.  When love is absent, it is painfully obvious.  

The religious leaders were older brothers.  Jesus was a True Elder Brother.  What he claimed to believe matched his lifestyle and ministry.  He loved people unconditionally, and people were seeing their lives get turned around - folks who had been written off by older brothers of religiosity.  Jesus embodied love in everything he did, all the way to the end, when he even died for his cause, even calling for forgiveness for those responsible for his death.

Jesus loved because he knew how much he was loved by God.  God's love grounded and overwhelmed him at the same time.

Which are you more like - the older brother or the True Elder Brother?  Where is your struggle?  What keeps you from loving more fully?  What help you experience more love from the Father?

Great Quotes from Timothy Keller's Prodigcal God:

The younger son's level of remorse did not generate greater compassion from the father.

Just the opposite.   

The father's lavish affection made the son's expression of remorse far easier.

The elder brother did not get a harsh condemnation but a loving plea to turn from his anger and self-righteousness. Jesus is pleading in love with his deadliest enemies.

He is not a Pharisee about Pharisees; he is not self-righteous about self-righteousness. Nor should we be. He not only loves the wild-living, free-spirited people, but also the hardened religious people.

Our sense of lostness and desire to escape are indications of God's work within us.

To truly become Christians we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right...

We must learn how to repent of the sin under all our sins and under all our righteousness

- the sin of seeking to be our own Savior and Lord.

It is only when you see the desire to be your own Savior and Lord - lying beneath both your sins and your moral goodness - that you are on the verge of understanding the gospel and becoming a Christian indeed. When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not just being good, you are on the brink. If you follow through, it will change everything: how you relate to God, self, others, the world, your work, your sins, your virtue.  It's called the new birth because it's so radical.