On Being the Elder Brother

Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’ But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’” Luke 15:25-32

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Since I was a little girl I loved the parable of the prodigal son as given by Jesus in Luke 15:11-32. I thought it was just precious the father loved his son so much that even though he had been a disappointment—running away from home, squandering money on prostitutes, acting generally as a good-for-naught—he was accepted back with open arms. 

What a beautiful picture of the heart God has for the prodigal. But the prodigal was not a person like me, I thought. While I knew I sinned often and in a variety of ways, I also knew I did not sin in the same manner as the prodigal son. As a result, to be honest, because it was quieter I thought of my sin as less, well, sinful. 

And then, in my thirties God began a wonderful work in my life and it dawned on me that while I wasn't (in the traditional way of thinking) the prodigal son, I was  very much like someone else. Unlike the young man in the parable, who displayed his sin out in the open for all to see and judge, my sins were more private. My sins were what theologian A. W. Tozer called the "self sins"—self-righteousness, selfpity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration and self-love. My sins were the sins of the older brother.

A. W. Tozer says in The Knowledge of the Holy,  

“An inward principle of self lies at the source of human conduct, turning everything men do into evil. To save us completely Christ must reverse the bent of our nature; He must plant a new principle within us so that our subsequent conduct will spring out of a desire to promote the honor of God and the good of our fellow men. The old self-sins must die, and the only instrument by which they can be slain is the cross.”

I had experienced the living death the self-sins offered and I wanted no more of it. So to the cross I went—not once but over and over and over. And I am still going to the cross when the self-sins would try to draw me away from Christ. 

ImageStockx.change by Billy Alexander 

How very thankful I am for a loving heavenly Father who runs with arms outstretched to take back both types of wandering children— the "out there" rebel with his big, bold sin and his self-deluded elder brother who finally understands that he too needs to run to the much-needed grace and open arms of his Father.

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