Luke 15:11-13

.

Jesus discontinues the interrogative form used in the two previous cases: we have no more an argument; we have a narrative, a real parable. The three persons composing the family represent God and His people. In accordance with Luke 15:1-2, the elder son, the representative of the race, the prop of the gens, and as such more deeply attached than the younger to the land of his household hearth, personifies the Israelites who were Levitically irreproachable, and especially the Pharisees. The younger, in whose case the family bond is weaker, and whom this very circumstance renders more open to the temptation of breaking with it, represents those who have abandoned Jewish legalism, publicans and people of immoral lives. His demand for his goods is most probably to be explained by the fact that the elder received as his inheritance a double share of the patrimonial lands, the younger members a single share (see at Luke 12:13). The latter then desired that his father, anticipating the division, should give him the equivalent of his portion in money, an arrangement in virtue of which the entire domain, on the father's death, would come to the elder. Two things impel him to act thus: the air of the paternal home oppresses him, he feels the constraint of his father's presence; then the world without attracts him, he hopes to enjoy himself. But to realize his wishes, he needs two things freedom and money. Here is the image of a heart swayed by licentious appetites; God is the obstacle in its way, and freedom to do anything appears to it as the condition of happiness. Money ought not to be taken as a figure applied to the talents and graces which the sinner has received; it simply represents here the power of satisfying one's tastes.

In the father's consenting to the guilty wish of his son, a very solemn thought is expressed, that of the sinner's abandonment to the desires of his own heart, the παραδιδόναι ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις (Romans 1:24; Romans 1:26; Romans 1:28), the ceasing on the part of the Divine Spirit to strive against the inclinations of a spoiled heart, which can only be cured by the bitter experiences of sin. God gives such a man over to his folly. The use which the sinner makes of his sadly-acquired liberty is described in Luke 15:13. All those images of sin blended in many respects, so far as the sinners present were concerned, with actual facts. The far country to which the son flies is the emblem of the state of a soul which has so strayed, that the thought of God no longer even occurs to it. The complete dissipation of his goods represents the carrying out of man's liberty to its furthest limits. Μακράν is not an adjective, but an adverb (Luke 15:20; Luke 7:6, etc.).