Jesus tells a triad of stories, recorded in Luke chapter 15, that reveal the depth of God’s love for people… all people… even people who are hard to love or may not seem like they deserve love. Each of these parables, that Jesus tells, are aimed at exposing the heart of the religious elite of His day. It is these religious elite who seem to have the most contempt for Jesus. It is the disenfranchised who seem to be attracted to what Jesus is teaching.
The third parable in this triad is the famous story of the ‘prodigal son’ who travels the roads of rebellion and waste, until he finds himself at the dead end of the road. However, there is another son who seems to have traveled all the right roads expected of him. However, that may not actually be true at the end of the story. Maybe we will find that the Father is the one who actually breaks all the ‘rules’ while ‘doing all the right things’.
In order to understand the parable of the ‘prodigal,’ we first need to understand the first two parables of this Luke 15 triad. By understanding what Jesus is getting at with these three parables, we will probably find some amazing things about what it looks like to love from the heart of Jesus.