Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Premise

Luke opens the fif­teenth chapter of the Gos­pel with two groups of people who clustered around Jesus with the inten­tion of listen­ing to him. Unlike the crowd of Luke 14:25, the Pub­lic­ans (Greek: telōnai) and Sin­ners (Greek: hama­rtōloi) of Luke 15:1 have a spe­cif­ic motive for gath­er­ing around Jesus – to keep listen­ing to his admir­able, untra­di­tion­al, and non-dog­mat­ic teach­ings. In Luke 15:2, we notice that such a move was in fact, not appre­ci­ated by two self-acclaimed right­eous Jew­ish groups: the Phar­isees (Greek: phar­isaioi) and the Scribes (Greek: gram­mateis). But who were or who are these groups: the Pub­lic­ans; Sin­ners; the Phar­isees; and the Scribes?

Luke 15:11–32 – An example of true repentance

Gen­er­ally, people cap­tioned Luke 15:11–32 dif­fer­ently. While some cap­tion it the par­able of the prod­ig­al son or the par­able of the way­ward son, oth­ers title it the par­able of the fath­er and the lost son; the par­able of the mer­ci­ful fath­er; or simply as the lost son. Although these cap­tions are not very wrong, but they do not reflect the primary inten­tion of the par­able for the fol­low­ing reas­ons. First, they demon­strate a lack of know­ledge of Luke’s teach­ing and theo­logy. Luke does not want to prove that the son was lost, but that he came back. To achieve this, he deployed the story of extra­vag­ance and loss. Secondly, it is true that the term prod­ig­al refers to a per­son who spends money reck­lessly and waste­fully, but the aim of the par­able is not to show that the son squandered his father’s money and prop­erty, but to indic­ate what happened after he wasted his resource. Finally.…

Conclusion – Lesson of the parable

With the par­able of the repent­ant son, Jesus wants us to be care­ful in our actions and in our decisions. More import­antly, the youth should be more cau­tious about their con­cep­tion and use of free­dom. Most of them have dis­tor­ted ideas of free­dom. Free­dom does not mean doing whatever one likes without being con­trolled. In simple lan­guage, free­dom means matur­ity and respons­ib­il­ity. It means know­ing what to do, how to do it when to do it, where to do it and why it should be done. In order words, free­dom means wis­dom and intel­li­gence. The young­er son of the par­able was lucky to come to his senses and made an effort to amend his way. It is sense­less to get involved in cer­tain obscure situ­ations because you may not be lucky enough to come to your senses on time. It is true that the Lord is my shep­herd, but I must remain on the right path for the Lord to shep­herd me. God is not the shep­herd of fool­ish­ness and stupidity.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 24^th Sunday is found in The Word of Life, vol. III, pages 510–523. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
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