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.