And he rose up and went to his own father. But while he was yet a long way off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses.
The parable has already shown a son who wasted everything and came to himself in a foreign country. Verse 20 is where the son's journey home meets the father's run.
Everything turns on the word "arose." Plans and regrets are not the same as motion.
"I will arise and go to my father." Many times he may have said, "I ought to go to my father," or, "I must go to my father." But he never reached his father until he actually got up. It took the energy of faith to arise.
He came without cleaning himself up first, and he came still not knowing what he would find.
There was certainly repentance in the prodigal. He says, "Make me as one of your hired servants." But there was no such thought in God's heart at all, though it is what the prodigal's experiences bring him to. But his father meets him in all his rags. The proofs of his reckless living are on him. Until he met his father, he did not know his father's heart.
The distance is not accidental. The same expression described where he had gone to spend his living.
"While he was still a long way off" — the word is the same as the far country — "his father saw him." How keen are the eyes of love! "And felt compassion" — How tender is the heart of love! "and ran" — How swift are the feet of love! "and embraced him and kissed him." Love cannot be held back. He covered him with kisses, for that is the word.
Recognition at that range says something about the one watching.
The father's heart had kept his image. That is why he could recognise him in the distance, coming home so different from the way he had set out. He seems to have been watching for him too. When he saw him, he forgot everything except that this was his son returned... This is a picture of God Himself!
The word for compassion has a striking history in the Gospels.
The word translated compassion only occurs in Matthew, Mark and Luke. There are twelve references. It refers eight times to the Lord (Matt. 9:36; Matt. 14:14; Matt. 15:32; Matt. 20:34; Mark 1:41; Mark 6:34; Mark 8:2; Luke 7:13), once in a request made to Him (Mark 9:22), and twice in parables that speak of Him (Matt. 18:27; Luke 10:33). The only other reference is in Luke 15:20, where it refers to the Father.
Of the two figures in the verse, only one runs.
But his father saw him coming from a great distance and ran to meet him. He embraced him and covered him with kisses before the son had said a word. This is the only indication in Scripture of God running.
The manner of the welcome carries as much weight as the fact of it.
He does not send out a servant to tell the son who went astray to turn aside into one of the outbuildings. He does not send him off to the kitchen, or even shut him up in his own room. No; he himself runs. He lays aside, you might say, his fatherly dignity to show his fatherly love. He is not satisfied with simply taking the wanderer back. He must prove that his whole heart is in the reception.
The father says nothing about the past, and it was the father who first moved the son to come.
It is not the son who runs. Even though the son was still a long way off, the father saw him. It was the father who ran, embraced him and kissed him. The son would not have dared to do that, still less would he have expected his father to do so. But grace always surprises the thoughts of men... Not a word about his wicked ways! And yet the father was the one who had worked in secret. He produced in the son the conviction of his own evil and the longing to be in his father's presence.
Even a place among the servants was more than he could claim.
The prodigal had no more right to be received as a servant than as a son. He had forfeited all claim on the ground of righteousness. He had only one plea to offer: his pressing need. He could only be met in grace. Had he been met in righteousness, he would have been condemned for ever. But grace reigns; there is no mention of his sins. The question of sin was settled between God and Christ on the cross... Grace steps in first; the Father ran to meet him, embraced him and kissed him. Reconciliation is expressed and accomplished the moment they meet. He receives the kiss of peace at once; grace is free.
- Arise — The turning point is not the wish but the movement; many say "I ought to go" and never go.
- Seen — Love's eyes reach the whole distance of the far country. The father knows his son before the son can explain himself.
- Compassion — A word the Gospels use of the Lord again and again. Only here does it describe the Father.
- Ran — The one place Scripture shows God running, and He runs by laying His dignity aside.
- Kissed — Reconciliation is complete the moment they meet, before the son has said a word. Not a word about his sins: the cross settled that question.
And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee; I am no longer worthy to be called thy son.
The son rehearsed a speech in the far country. He delivers it inside his father's embrace — and one line goes missing. What he says names his sin. What he leaves out shows how far grace had already run ahead of him.
The son names two parties he has wronged. Why bring heaven into it? One writer keeps heaven and the Father distinct rather than merging them:
Heaven is Jehovah's throne, and earth is His footstool. So we can easily see how that highest region of divine glory is linked with every thought of purity, love, and worship. But heaven is not the same as God Himself. On the contrary, the prodigal names heaven as the unstained seat of His honour, in contrast with this wholly defiled earth of man's will and sin and lusts. Then he marks out someone distinct: "you," "Father."
That address makes the outcome astonishing:
Who would have thought that our salvation would come from heaven? That would be the last place we would expect it from, because it was against heaven that we had sinned. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you," cried the penitent prodigal, and that is true of us all. Our sins were a slur on God's majesty, a challenge to His supremacy, and a proof that we hated Him. We might have expected judgment from heaven — wrath, fire, and burning sulfur — but not love and salvation.
The son's words are short. Notice what he leaves out:
Now it was time for the prodigal to speak. His own need and his father's love made his words direct and short… Here was sincerity and true repentance. He made no excuses; he did not cast the blame on others; he did not even plead for mercy. In that sacred, solemn hour he forgot everyone else. Only his father and himself were left — his sin and his father's love. This is how the sinner comes to God, and love greater than his sin welcomes him.
In verse 19 the son planned to ask for a hired servant's place. Here that line never comes — and the reason is the embrace he is standing in:
He was not yet in the full liberty of grace, so he says to himself, "make me as one of your hired servants." He is brought to a sense of his guilt. And what was that guilt? Feeding with the pigs? No, that was the fruit of it. His guilt was in leaving his father's house, turning away from God… But the father does not give him time for that. We hear nothing more about hired servants… He could not have been a servant with the father's arms round his neck.
The change is not that he thinks better of himself. It is that he has stopped setting the terms:
The prodigal comes back to his father, and there is not a word about "Make me as one of your hired servants." What made the difference? His idea of his position now flowed from his father's thoughts, not his own. Why? The father was on his neck, kissing him. It was not a question of what would be, but the settled awareness of what already was.
The father's love did not make the son's sin feel smaller. One writer weighs even the words the son did say, including "no longer worthy to be called your son," and finds them still claiming too much:
It was the father who made the son feel all that was in himself far more deeply, now that the prodigal had come to him. Our Lord leaves the evil unmentioned here. That does not mean the father was indifferent to it… "I have sinned against heaven and before you" was right without question. But it would have been better still if he had said nothing at all about anything he could be worthy or unworthy of. The sad truth was that he was worthy of nothing but chains or death.
Saying "I have sinned" is not by itself proof of repentance. Scripture records both kinds of speaker:
Many men in Scripture take the place of saying, "I have sinned." It is very remarkable that not all of them get cleansing. David, Nehemiah, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Micah, the prodigal son, and the thief on the cross all took the place of sinners. They all received cleansing or blessing. But look at Pharaoh, Balaam, Achan, Saul, Shimei, and Judas. These all confess they have sinned, yet they perish… There was no hatred of the sin. There was no desire to turn from it and give it up. There was no true repentance.
- Address. Sin is first against heaven, God's throne — and then against the Father the son is speaking to.
- Answer. From that same offended heaven came not fire and wrath but love and salvation.
- Arms. The son confesses inside the embrace, not in exchange for it. The father's welcome comes before the speech.
- Absence. The plan to ask for a servant's place dies unsaid. A son cannot bargain for wages while his father is kissing him.
- Authenticity. The prodigal said "I have sinned" and received blessing. Pharaoh and Judas said the same and perished. The difference is a real turning from the sin.
But the father said to his bondmen, Bring out the best robe and clothe him in [it], and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet;
The son had rehearsed a speech asking for a place among the hired workers, and he never gets to finish it. Before he can ask for the lowest place in the house, the father starts giving orders. Every item ordered is the mark of a son.
The son's sense of his own unworthiness was accurate, but it did not set the terms of his welcome. Shame stops the words "make me a hired servant" in his throat:
Now, in a different spirit from the one that first prompted it, he can pour out his confession. "Make me a hired servant," he cannot say, for shame. And his rightful admission of unworthiness is cut short by the father's insistent joy. The father orders the best robe brought out and put on him, with a ring for his hand and sandals for his feet. He could never have claimed this, even if he had never wandered. It is his now, because the father delights to have him back.
Welcome is one act of the father's love; clothing him is another:
God shows His love towards us as wretched sinners, but then clothes us with Christ. His love welcomes us while we are still in our rags, but here the same love acts in another way. He brings us into the house as He would have us be there, with His mind expressed about the value of a son. The father's mind was that a son of his was worth it all, and that it was worthy of him to give it. How little worthy it would have been of a father acting in grace to keep him as a servant in the house!
The robe raises a question: when was it made ready?
It has been well said that the best robe put on the prodigal was ready in the Father's house before he ever got there. He did not add a single stitch to it. It wrapped him in its folds and gave him entry, fit for the Father's house.
The first clothes God ever made cost a life. One writer hears the gospel in that:
God makes coats of skin and clothes them. Life had to be given up to provide those skins. So from Eden we may hear the gospel preached: "Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him." The best, the most costly robe, comes through the Lord Jesus Christ giving up His life.
The ring and the sandals are not decoration. The rags come off, and both gifts settle where the son now stands:
He is clothed in "the best robe." Like Joshua the priest in Zechariah 3, off come the filthy garments and on go festival robes. The ring would suggest status and relationship, but lasting for ever: "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world." The shoes (or sandals) show the full privileges and rights of sonship: "And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God."
The writer quoted earlier says what each gift does:
The ring joins the working hand to God for ever, and the feet are given shoes for the whole road ahead, whatever it may be.
Would the son now look out of place among the household servants?
When the prodigal walked into the father's house at his father's side, nothing in that house was more splendid than he was. He was dressed in the best the house could produce. What servant in the house could say he was not fit to be there? But who can tell all that the Father has done, and will yet do, for everyone who believes?
The father gives the robe, but servants fetch it and put it on. One preacher saw his own work in that:
"Bring quickly the best robe," He says to the servants — and that is my part of the work. That is the evangelist's work: to tell you of Christ, and to try to show you how attractive He is. It is to tell you that you have nothing to do, and that Christ has done it all for you. Christ Himself is the best robe. There is the best robe for the worst sinner.
The servants had to know where the robe was kept. That is a challenge to anyone who sets out to help others (George Davison).
- Cut short. The father's joy, not the son's plan to be a hired servant, decides how he comes home.
- Ready. The best robe was in the house before the son came home, and he added not one stitch to it.
- Costly. Like the skins God made in Eden, the covering required a life given up — Christ Himself is the robe.
- Sonship. Ring and shoes hand him relationship and the full rights of a son, not a hired man's wage.
- Carried out. The father supplies the robe and sends servants to bring it. The evangelist shows Christ, the best robe for the worst sinner.
and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry
The father has already interrupted his son's confession with a robe, a ring and sandals. Now he gives one more order — kill the calf, set the table, and sit down to eat with him.
The calf in the story was not picked at random. Only a well-off household kept one.
Rich people kept a calf ready for any special meal. Abraham presented such a calf, tender and good, to the angels, Genesis 18:7. It is also described as "the fatted calf" in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Luke 15:23.
The best thing in the house had been waiting for this day.
The fatted calf — the thing reserved. The greater the depth to which God goes down in mercy, the greater the height to which His grace will rise. If God has cleared the ground, He occupies it.
Commentators differ here. Most read the killing of the calf as a picture of the death of Christ, on whom the restored son is now fed.
They killed the fatted calf to satisfy his hunger, and so that others too might eat in fellowship with him. The calf pictures Christ, the perfect sacrifice on whom we are privileged to feed, the solid food that gives sustenance and strength. The whole house rejoiced that the son was restored. But the food of that rejoicing is a picture of Christ and Him crucified, for this is the basis of all blessing to mankind.
Turpin, in the passage quoted above, takes it differently — for him the son had already been received and clothed before the calf was mentioned, so the calf is "the sphere of delight in which God places the saved one," not the sacrifice itself. Others tie the calf specifically to the peace offering, the sacrifice that God and the worshipper shared.
The fatted calf would perhaps suggest a peace offering, which, as we know, is the fellowship offering. For the remarkable thing is that we can actually enjoy fellowship with the Father and with the Son, and so enter this circle of holy joy that the words "Let us eat, and be merry" would suggest.
The father does not send a plate out to his son. He joins the meal. That small word "us" decides who is at the table.
Who are the "us" here invited to "eat and celebrate"? It is the Father and the returned prodigal son. God says, "I have found My delight in Him, and now you come and find your delight in Him too." So at His own invitation I feed on what the Father feeds on.
Every word in this verse is the father's. He orders the feast and calls the house to share his gladness.
No doubt it is joy to the sinner to be received, but it is the joy of God to receive him. "It was fitting to celebrate and be glad" — and not merely fitting that the child should be glad to be back in the house. The father is the happy one. The return of the prodigal is joy to heaven, whatever men, whatever Pharisees may think about it.
The meal is not a preview of heaven kept on hold. It is the son's present share in his father's gladness.
It sets out the joy of God reproducing itself in all who are there. It is not a sketch of what we shall taste when we go to heaven. It is the spirit of heaven made real now on earth, in the worship of those who are brought to God. It is not at all a question of what we were, except to heighten what grace gives and makes us. Everything turns on the excellent efficacy of Christ and the Father's own joy.
The story tells us when the rejoicing started. It never tells us when it stopped.
Feasting had to take place, so the fatted calf was to be killed; and throughout the house gladness was to reign. "They began to be merry." But there was no end to it. We learn what caused it, and when it began, but never when it ceased.
- Reserved — the household fattened one calf and kept it back for a great day; God's best was ready before the son turned home.
- Killed — most read the slain calf as Christ, the sacrifice the restored sinner now feeds on. Others read it as the sphere of delight God brings him into.
- Shared — "let us eat" puts the father at the same table, feeding on what the son feeds on.
- His joy first — the son's gladness is real, but the father is the happy one; the reasons for the feast are all spoken by him.
- Never ended — the rejoicing starts here on earth, in worship, and Scripture never tells us when it stops.