He Was Yet a Great Way Off

The boy writes a speech, and I want to start there, because almost everybody reading this has one.

He is in a far country, the money is gone, there is a famine, and he is feeding pigs and would happily have eaten what they were eating. And then Luke 15:17 says he came to himself, and what he does next is not to run home. It is to compose.

I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.Luke 15:18-19, King James Version

Three lines, and they are carefully built.

Line one: an admission. I have sinned against heaven, and before thee.

Line two: a self-assessment. I am no more worthy to be called thy son.

Line three: a proposal. Make me as one of thy hired servants.

That third line is the important one, and it is the one people skim. A hired servant was not a slave and not family. He was day labor, paid by the shift, with no place at the table and no standing in the house. The boy is not asking to come home. He is asking for a job with the household, which would let him work off what he owed and never have to be looked at as a son again.

He has thought this through. It is a good speech. It is honest, it does not make excuses, and it offers a way to be useful without being a burden.

He never gets to finish it.

Count the lines he actually said

Here is the return.

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.Luke 15:20, King James Version

When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him.

Before the boy is close enough to be recognized by anybody else in that household, he is recognized. Which tells us something the parable never states directly: the father had been looking. Nobody spots a figure at that distance unless they have been watching that road for a long time.

And then the verb that would have startled everybody hearing this told. And ran. An older man of standing in that culture did not run. Running meant gathering up your robe, and it meant undignity, and it meant everyone watching. The father takes the humiliation of the arrival onto himself before the boy can be humiliated by the village.

You are not going to have to finish the speech. Luke 15:20 has the father moving while the son is still a great way off, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that distance from being closed by anything the boy managed to say.

Now count what the son actually gets out.

And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.Luke 15:21, King James Version

Line one. Line two. And then the next verse begins But the father said to his servants, and the orders start: the best robe, a ring, shoes, the fatted calf.

Line three never happens.

Make me as one of thy hired servants is not in verse twenty one. He had it prepared, he had almost certainly said it out loud to himself on the road, and the father cuts across it and starts issuing instructions about clothes.

You have a proposal in your mouth that is never going to be accepted, and it is the demotion clause. Luke 15:21 stops one line short of Luke 15:19, and the same Spirit who preserved that gap is the reason nobody has to argue their way down to servant.

I want to say plainly what the third line is in a life like yours, because it is rarely about employment.

It is: I will come back to church but I will not sing. It is: I will be in the family but I will not expect anything. It is: I will pray again but I am not going to ask for things. It is any arrangement where a person accepts God and simultaneously arranges their own demotion so that nobody has to do it for them.

And it is not humility. It is insurance. If you demote yourself first, nobody can do it to you.

You were not asked for a proposal, and the father in this story never once negotiates. The written word gives him orders to servants rather than an answer to the boy, and it is His Spirit who makes that silence about the third line audible.

Then the three items, and each one is deliberate. The best robe is the father's own, which is how a person is publicly reinstated. The ring is authority, the seal a household used to transact. The shoes are the difference between a son and a servant, because servants in that house went barefoot.

Robe, ring, shoes. Standing, authority, family. Handed out before the boy has washed, and before anybody has heard an explanation of where the money went.

You have been reinstated in the clothes rather than in the conversation, and not one of the three items waited on an account of the money. Luke 15:22 lists all three before any discussion happens, and the same Spirit who kept them in that order is the reason a person does not have to explain the far country first.