12.05 The reconciliation
V. THE RECONCILIATION
“While he was yet afar off his father saw him and was moved with compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.”
He was yet afar off, but he was moving towards home. The father, beholding that movement, accepts it on trust: it is the token that his son will finish the rest of the road. Therefore, even there, still afar off, he meets him, welcomes, forgives, and restores. At the sound of this twentieth verse our spirit must surely bend in adoring reverence. In it, in words which go straight to the human heart, the Almighty and Eternal Father proclaims His sovereign mercy. In heart and will and character we sinful men are afar off; our penitence, for all its reality, is imperfect; our submission is incomplete. Yet if there be in us this movement of return from self to God, from the far country to the home, God accepts it.
He takes us not for what we are, but for what we are coming to be. Because of that “faith” that homeward look of the returning spirit we are “justified,” reckoned as already returned, and accepted as sons in the generosity of forgiving love. “God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Do these words bring in thoughts and associations strange to the simplicity of the story? Is there any trace in it of that mysterious and perplexing doctrine of the Atonement? The question arises very naturally in our minds. But notice that the centre of the story is the experience of the prodigal, not of his father. The thoughts and the sorrows of the father’s heart in these long days of his son’s absence are veiled. But surely human sympathy can enable us in some degree to understand that background of the father’s pain which lay behind his generous forgiveness. Ever since the day when his son had said, “Divide the portion of thy substance,” the burden of rejected love must have lain heavy upon the father’s soul. The news of the young man’s riotous living had reached the home. In proportion to his own goodness the father’s anger must have mingled with his love and sorrow. There must have been in the secret place of his mind and heart some hard-won reconciliation between his hatred of the sin and his love of the son. Doubtless in after years some knowledge of it would reach the son in his new and deeper fellowship with his father. Thus in the inner meaning of the parable the fact which is emphasized is the infinite hope for the penitent, the assurance of his forgiveness, not the cost at which in the Mind of the Holy Father it is obtained.
How can we either ignore or measure the cost of forgiveness in that region of Infinite Holiness withdrawn from our sight? Some means must have been found there by which the hatred of absolute Goodness for the sin can be reconciled with the yearning of infinite Love for the sinner. We can only know what He Himself has revealed.
Hints there are given to us in the words and deeds of Him who came forth from that hidden heart of God, hints of the cost of divine sacrifice by which man has been redeemed from sin and his forgiveness has been bought. In such wise as human thought could grasp it, the Spirit of the Father has revealed to His Church His household of returned sons the mystery of the cross. Reverently, if sometimes overconfidently, the Church has tried to express the mystery in words in a doctrine of the Atonement. Yet the great Fact transcends all attempts to explain it. Before that Fact we can only bow the head in reverent penitent adoration. It is enough to know that the Cross of Him who was Son of God and Son of Man is alike the awful revelation of what our sin means to the Love of God and the welcome assurance of the fullness of His pardon.
“And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned.” You will notice that it is after, not before, the embrace, that the confession comes. It is the goodness of God that leadeth to repentance. The answering love of the restored son can only express itself in his confession. In all the joy of his home-coming, in all the after-years of loyal service, the memory of that moment would remain; that heart of penitence would never become hardene^. True, he no longer uses the words of which he had thought in the far country “make me as one of thy hired servants.” For he knows that he has been already welcomed as a son. But it is this very fullness of the son’s heart, assured already of the Father’s forgiving love, that speaks in the confession. Thus, to the Christian, the confession of his sins is no doubtful, fearful, morbid effort to extract forgiveness from an offended Taskmaster. It is the spontaneous expression of his sonship.
“For ye received not the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father.” It is that spirit of sonship which adds, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight.”
“But the father said to his servants, Bring forth quickly the best robe and put it on him.” This was the father’s answer to the son’s confession: the absolution was the gift of the symbols of complete sonship. We know with what marvellous fullness this part of the parable has been fulfilled for us. The life of sonship is the Life of the Perfect Son given to us. It is with that Life by his absolution that the penitent sinner is clothed. The “ring” which is given, what is it but the earnest of his inheritance, the “sealing’’ of the Spirit? He is now a son in restored right, and that Spirit of the Eternal Son will gradually and in ever-deepening reality fulfil the true sonship within him. The embrace of the Father while the son was yet a great way off this is what S. Paul calls “justification.” The bestowal of the gifts of sonship this is what he calls “sanctification.” Never suppose that these great words, in which S. Paul summarized his own exultant experience, and which he bequeathed to Christian thought, are only the formulae of barren doctrines. They are latent here in the very heart of that parable, which is the simplest unfolding of the Gospel of God’s Love.
“And they began to be merry.” For “there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” We have read again this old story of the Father’s forgiving Love. Does it leave us untouched a sound of words, beautiful indeed, but signifying nothing in our own actual lives? Or does it leave us with some echo in our hearts of that “music and dancing,” some hymn of praise rising from our experience as men who have known the far country and have now come home again?
TAGS: [Parables]