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DAY 2: Our Father Is Loving

Love is an essential attribute of who God is. 

Jesus told a story that painted a picture of what the Father’s love is like. In the passage, known as the Story of the Prodigal Son, we see a love-sick father running to embrace his sinful, shame-filled son (Luke 15:11-32).

A Jewish father had two sons. The younger son asked his father for his share of the estate. In a shame and honor culture like the first-century Jewish world, his request was like spitting in his daddy’s face. The younger son basically said, “Dad, you’re worth more to me dead than alive.”

However, the father gives the younger son his one-third of the estate, but his son sells his share. To add greater shame to his father, he then goes to the land of the Gentiles and lives foolishly, squandering everything. He finds himself penniless, so he takes a job at a pig farm. He is so hungry he wants to eat the pig’s food. Not only is his money gone but so is his self-respect. This is what sin does—it dehumanizes us.

It is often in the brokenness that results from our own sinful choices, that we wake up to the whisper of our Abba saying, “Come home, precious child. I have never stopped loving you.” The son remembers that his father’s servants have enough food to eat. It is then that he comes to his senses and prepares to go home.

While the son was a long way off, his daddy saw him, and his heart overflowed with compassion. The father took off on a full sprint to his son. When he reached him, he threw himself on his son, hugging and kissing him. The father runs to his son because, according to Jewish custom, if a son disgraced his father, village elders would stop the son before he reached home. They would then smash a pot at the son’s feet, symbolizing his banishment from that community. The father hurried so he could outrun the village elders to his baby boy. The father sprinted with love in his heart. The village elders ran with condemnation in their hands. When the father hugs and kisses his son, he is saying, “If you smash the pot of banishment on him, you must smash it on me too.”

Now it was the father who was making himself undignified—not because of his lavish sin, like his son, but because of his lavish love.

Our Abba sent Jesus running to the cross.

The pot of sin, shame, guilt, and condemnation was smashed on Jesus, instead of on us.

After the father embraces his son, he immediately tells his servants to get the best robe, a ring, sandals, and a fattened calf. “It is time to celebrate my son coming back home. My son was dead, but now he is alive. He was lost, but now he is found.“

The robe covers the son’s filth. Abba covers our filth by clothing us in the robe of Christ's righteousness (Gal 3:26-27).

The ring restores the son’s authority as an heir. Abba restores us as co-heirs with Jesus.

The shoes meant the son was no longer a slave. Abba gives us the gospel of peace on our feet, so we are no longer slaves to sin and death. We are Abba’s kids. 

We were dead. But in Abba’s mercy and great love, he made us alive in Christ.

We were lost. But by Abba’s grace, he found us and welcomed us home.

When the father requests a fattened lamb, he is throwing a party, celebrating the return of his son. God sings and dances over us. Jesus is the lamb that was given so our Abba could welcome us home.