Luke 15:13

And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.

This story has been called the Gospel within the Gospel, since it brings out the fundamental thought of the message of grace so beautifully, the acceptance of the sinners without any merit or worthiness on their part. Two sons a certain man had, both of them in a good home, with all the comforts and advantages which the word implies. But the younger one felt the fretful stir of youth. The boundaries of the home place were altogether too narrow for him, and the restrictions placed upon him by the paternal jurisdiction seemed altogether too galling. The first step of his desire for freedom, as he may have termed it to himself, was the demand that his father give him the goods to which he would fall heir after his father's death. It has been custom in the Orient from times immemorial for sons to demand and receive their portion of the inheritance during their father's lifetime; and in many countries the parent could not legally refuse to comply with the request. So the father, realizing that the heart of the boy was set upon his goods and not upon his person, as filial love would demand, divided his entire living, all that he had, to his two sons, the older probably receiving the home place, and the younger, money. So the younger boy now had the means to carry out any desires that he may have been secretly cherishing. And he determined within a few days to slip off the irksome fetters of parental authority and supervision. He heeded the voice of the oldest delusion in the world, namely, that things in the distance, which wear the halo of desirableness, too often prove mirages which lure people to destruction. He was determined to have his fling; he gathered together all his property, being in haste to escape into wild liberty or license. Home is usually a dear place, and homesickness takes hold of a great many children that are obliged to leave its sacred boundaries, but here selfishness and willfulness had taken possession of his heart. Far away he went, the farther the better, and then he dissipated and flung away all that he had in a dissolute life. The journey led recklessly to final degradation. That is a picture of a person that has grown up in the house of God, in the midst of the Christian congregation, but does not realize the greatness of the blessings which attend him there. He turns his back to the Church," goes out into the world, and runs with the children of the world into the same excess of riot, in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, Revelation lings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries, 1 Peter 4:4.