ARE YOU “IN” OR ARE YOU “OUT” ?
Luke 15:25-32 But
the older son was angry and said to the father, Behold, so many years I serve
you, and I have never transgressed a command of you. And you never gave a goat
to me, so that I might be merry with my friends. But when this son of yours
came, the one devouring your living with harlots, you killed the fattened calf
for him. The father said to him, Child, you are always with me, and all of my
things are yours. But to be merry and to rejoice was right, for this brother of
yours was dead, and lived again; and being lost, he was found.
There are two ways to be your own
Savior and Lord. One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own
course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good.
Jesus shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to
using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are
just going about it in different ways.
The Gospel is distinct from these
two approaches: In its view, everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and everyone
is called to recognize this and change. By contrast, elder brothers divide the
world in two: “The good people (like us) are in and the bad people, who are the
real problem with the world, are out.” Younger brothers, even if they don’t
believe in God at all, do the same thing, saying: “No, the open-minded and
tolerant people are in and the bigoted, narrow-minded people, who are the real
problem with the world, are out.”
But Jesus says: “The humble are in
and the proud are out” (Luke 18:14). The people who confess they aren’t
particularly good or open-minded are moving toward God, because the
prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it. The people who
think they are just fine, thank you, are moving away from God. “The Lord…cares
for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud” (Psalm 138:6 – New
Living Translation).
The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller, pgs.44-46