Sons, not Slaves

Sons, not Slaves

Luke 15:11-32 T Trinity 3

INI

The parable of the Prodigal son is one of the most iconic stories in all the Scriptures. It’s a heart-warming story between a loving Father and a deadbeat turned grateful son.

Typically, when this text is preached, the focus is on one of the two sons. There’s the prodigal son who wasted his Father’s possessions, but then returned home when He remembered how good His Father’s house was. But then there’s the ungrateful older brother – the one who refused to celebrate the finding of his lost brother, because HE was never celebrated for HIS faithfulness.

Much could be taught about these two sons…. But what can we learn about God from the father in the parable? Ultimately, we learn that our heavenly Father wants us in His house – though, not as slaves, but as sons and daughters.

First, we learn that the Father’s house was well ordered and put together – which teaches us about the orderliness of the kingdom of God.

In the parable, life with the Father is good. It doesn’t seem like a dysfunctional house. The Father is kind. Not unreasonable. In the beginning, the family dynamics seem healthy. The sons don’t suffer any lack. The servants are well taken care of.

Yet, even though the Father has a well-ordered house, the younger son wants to take his future inheritance and waste it. Why? So that he could live freely according to his own rules, and not restricted by the rules of His father. He saw his Father’s rules as too restrictive – as a form of slavery – not allowing him to be who he really wanted to be. But in chasing freedom, he sprinted straight into slavery.

His downfall shows us why God’s boundaries matter. That’s the truth about God’s Law – it isn’t meant to crush us, but it’s meant to keep us from destroying ourselves. It’s His revealed will, given by His love, to keep his children from going astray from Him and His house. Now, for Christian’s, God’s Law isn’t a burden. As 1 John puts it “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.” His commands are guardrails given by a loving Father.

But to an unbeliever? The Law is burdensome. It constricts. I hear it often likened to slavery. That’s why many unbelievers struggle to understand why Christians would willingly live according to God’s commands, especially in areas like marriage or pro-life convictions. Like the prodigal, they desire to follow the will of their flesh – because that’s the only ordering they know. They don’t understand the will of God, because they don’t know the love of the Father.

Unbelievers often can’t see God’s love behind His restrictions. It’s like a toddler who wants to play hopscotch on Highway 333. When the parent says no, the child throws a fit—unable to see the danger. But a good parent sets boundaries, not to be cruel, but to protect. The child sees the restriction as unfair, even oppressive, while the parent knows it’s an act of love. In the same way, God’s commandments may appear to some as slavery, but they are truly the loving guardrails of a Father who desires life for His children.

Christians see God’s motivation behind His Law – that it’s something motivated by God’s love for us– as a rule that rightly orders our entire lives. It reveals the path of a God-pleasing life as opposed to the path of death and destruction – just as Stanza 1 of our hymn of the day puts it:

The Law of God is good and wise

And sets His will before our eyes,

Shows us the way of righteousness,

And dooms to death when we transgress.

Secondly, this leads us to another thing we learn about our heavenly Father from the parable: the Father wants sons, not slaves. He wants us to recognize that His law flows from His love. It’s meant to guide us, not enslave us.

         That’s something that the Prodigal Son failed to see. He thought living according to the Father’s will was restrictive to his desires. That it was slavery, not sonship. He’d rather take his cut of the inheritance and live out the fulfillment of his desires – because by doing so, he thought he’d have life and freedom.

         But of course, he only found slavery. He found out that His father didn’t restrict him at all. He was protecting him – keeping him safe. He finally realized that when he was feeding the pigs and desired to eat their food.

Now, at first glance, you might think the most loving thing the father could’ve done was to stop his son from leaving. Shouldn’t he have stepped in to prevent such a destructive choice?

We often ask similar questions when loved ones walk away from the Church. Why would God allow someone who was baptized, confirmed, and raised in the faith to fall away? Why doesn’t our heavenly Father intervene and stop them? Wouldn’t that be the loving thing to do?

         It would seem like it. But love that is forced isn’t love—it’s control. And God doesn’t desire slaves who stay because they must. He desires children who stay because they know they’re loved.

         This same question about freedom and love often leads people to wonder about the Garden of Eden—why did God create Adam and Eve with the ability to sin? Wouldn’t it have been better if there were no tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden? Then, they couldn’t have sinned, death couldn’t have entered the world, and there’d be no suffering.

That’s usually how the reasoning goes. But that’s not what God wants. That’s not how He created humans to be. He didn’t create us as programmed robots, but as creatures made to receive and return love. That’s why He calls us by grace, and not by force.

Truth is, God doesn’t want slaves. He wants sons. He wants a family. He wants mutual love. You’ve been called into that love, that family, through the waters of Holy Baptism. You’ve been placed into a spiritual home, with a heavenly Father, surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ just like you.

In the parable, the father didn’t force the prodigal son to remain in his house. Instead, he allowed his son to follow his sinful, rebellious desires. To the son, life in his father’s house felt like slavery—like he was being controlled or pressed down by authority for no good reason. But the truth is, God desires us to love His well-ordered household—not to submit to it out of fear, but out of love.

Just as the son eventually saw that his father’s rule was not slavery but love, so we learn to see God’s order not as control but as care. That’s the kind of joyful submission Paul speaks of in Ephesians 5—where the Church, like a bride, gladly trusts and follows Christ, her bridegroom.

Eventually, the prodigal son realizes his fault, and that the Father loved him all along. This teaches us about the third thing we learn about God in the parable: the Father loves it when His children return to Him. In fact, He throws a celebration with the whole heavenly host.

         When the prodigal son realized the error of his ways, he rehearsed his confession as he made his way back home. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was overjoyed. He ran to him, embraced him, kissed him, and listened to his confession. Without hesitation, the father restored him—putting jewels back on him, ordering the fattened calf to be slaughtered, and beginning a joyful celebration of his return. This is how God receives us when we repent. Our return brings Him deep joy; there’s nothing that pleases Him more. The parable shows that no matter how far we’ve fallen or how badly we’ve squandered His good and costly gifts, our heavenly Father is not waiting to lecture us—He’s waiting to embrace us. He’s grieved when we run from Him, but He’s overwhelmed with joy when we come home.

         This is good news. Because your heavenly Father is not watching you with crossed arms, waiting to punish. He’s watching the road, waiting for sinners to return home. Whether you or someone you know have wandered far, grown cold in faith, or doubted the Father’s goodness, He still wants all in His house—not as a second-rate hired hand, but as His beloved child. And the proof? Look no further than Christ. Jesus is the true Son who never strayed, who bore the burden of our rebellion on the cross, so that we might be called sons and daughters again. In Him, you are welcomed home. In Him, you are forgiven. And in Him, the feast has already begun. Come, then, to the table—and rejoice with your Father who delights in making dead sinners alive again.

INI

Pastor Joshua Ralston