Speaking of the parable in Luke 15 of the two sons, Tim Keller writes:
Throughout the centuries, when this text is taught, the almost exclusive focus has been on how the father receives his penitent younger son… We sentimentalize this parable if we do that. The targets of this story are not “wayward sinners” but religious people who do everything the bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with moral outsiders as with moral insiders. He wants to show their blindness, narrowness, and self-righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.
No, the original listeners were nor melted to tears by this story, but thunderstruck, offended, and infuriated…Through this parable Jesus challenges what nearly everyone has ever thought about God, sin, and salvation. The story reveals the destructive self-centeredness of the younger brother, but it also condemns the elder brother’s moralistic life in the strongest terms. Jesus is saying that both the religious and the irreligious are spiritually lost, both life-paths are dead ends, and that the every thought the human race has had about how to connect to God has been wrong. (Tim Keller, The Prodigal God,9-11)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment