Luke 15:29

do I serve thee Rather, I am thy slave. He does not say -Father:" and evidently regards the yoke not as perfect freedom but as distasteful bondage. The slave is ever dissatisfied; and this son worked in the spirit of a -hired-servant."

neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment This is the very spirit of the Pharisee and the Rabbi, Luke 18:11-12. "All these things have I kept from my youth up." Such self-satisfaction can only spring from an ignorance of the breadth and spirituality of God's commandments. The respectable Jews, sunk in the complacency of formalism and letter-worshipping orthodoxy, had lost all conception that they were, at the best, but unprofitable servants. Like this elder son they "went about to establish their own righteousness" (Romans 9:14); and though they kept many formal commandments they -transgressed" the love of God (Luke 11:42). Observe that while the younger son confesses with no excuse, the elder son boasts with no confession. This at once proves his hollowness, for the confessions of the holiest are ever the most bitter. The antithesesin the verse are striking, -You never gaveme a kid,much less sacrificeda fatted calf;not even for my friends,much less for harlots."

thou never gavest me a kid The reward of a life near his father's presence, and in the safety of the old home, was nothing to him. He is like the rescued Israelites still yearning for the flesh-pots of Egypt.