Read the Bible in 2011 ◊ Week 26: Saturday

Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
Luke 15:1

Saturday’s Bible reading is Luke 15–16. One thing that’s always amazing as I read the Bible is the juxtaposition of Scripture to circumstances of my life and to events of the day, and also, in these readings, the way the different parts of Scripture fit together. After reading in Ezekiel of God’s judgment and His call to repentance, the reading for today includes Luke 15, and in this chapter Jesus tells the parable of The Prodigal Son, a son who rebelled and sinned grievously, but who repented and returned to his father.

The Prodigal Son is probably the best known and the best loved of all of the parables told by Jesus. It’s one of three parables Jesus tells in response to the Pharisees’ grumbling that He receives and eats with sinners. The point in all three parables in the joy over a sinner who repents; in this parable we see the joy of a father over the return of his repentant son.

This story depicts the kind of father we would all like to have. Some of us may have been blessed with a father similar to the one in the story, but I would guess a majority of us have a deep longing for a father who loves and forgives us as this son’s father did. With this parable Jesus tells us that all those who repent and return to God have this kind of Father in Him.

In Romans 8, Paul wrote that those who have believed in Christ are now children of God. Calling God, Father, is easily done by some Christians, for others it is a struggle because it brings painful memories of their earthly father. There is confusion in our understanding of God and our emotions connected to those men who have failed us overlay truth of who God is. Sometimes we don’t comprehend the difference the Gospel makes in our lives. This isn’t new to our generation. In the 1600s, John Owen wrote a wonderful book, Communion With God, in which he provides truth after truth from the Bible to give us clarity and assurance. His pastor’s heart is evident within the pages. I have found such help from his work that I want to share with you some things he wrote. (There are a couple of footnotes to help with understanding his word usage. Owen’s emphasis is in italics and uppercase words, mine is in bold).

. . . I come now to declare what it is wherein peculiarly¹ and eminently the saints have communion² with the Father; and this is LOVE,—free, undeserved, and eternal love. This the Father peculiarly fixes upon the saints; this they are immediately to eye in him, to receive of him, and to make such returns thereof as he is delighted withal. This is the great discovery of the gospel: for whereas the Father, as the fountain of the Deity, is not known any other way but as full of wrath, anger, and indignation against sin, nor can the sons of men have any other thoughts of him (Rom. i. 18; Isa. xxxiii. 13, 14; Hab. i. 13; Ps. v. 4–6; Eph. ii. 3),—here he is now revealed peculiarly as love, as full of it unto us; the manifestation whereof is the peculiar work of the gospel, Tit. iii. 4.

“This is the great discovery of the gospel”: God the Father loves His children. Owen writes that love is distinctive to our communion with God the Father:

When I assign any thing as peculiar wherein we distinctly hold communion with any person [of the Trinity] , I do not exclude the other persons from communion with the soul in the very same thing. Only this, I say, principally, immediately, and by the way of eminency, we have, in such a thing, or in such a way, communion with some one person [of the Trinity]; and therein with the others secondarily. . .

These are only a few of the verses Owen uses to make his case:

1 John iv. 8, “God is love.” . . . So the apostle sets it forth in the following verses: “This is love,” verse 9; — “This is that which I would have you take notice of in him, that he makes out love unto you, in ‘sending his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.’ ” So also, verse 10, “He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. . . .

2 Cor. xiii. 14, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, THE LOVE OF GOD, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.” Ascribing sundry things unto the distinct persons, it is love that he peculiarly assigns to the Father. . . .

John xvi. 26, 27, saith our Saviour, “I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you.” . . .

Rom. v. 5, “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.” God, whose love this is, is plainly distinguished from the Holy Ghost, who sheds abroad that love of his; and, verse 8, he is also distinguished from the Son, for it is from that love of his that the Son is sent. . . .

Owen later writes:

When by and through Christ we have an access unto the Father, we then behold his glory also, and see his love that he peculiarly bears unto us, and act faith thereon. We are then, I say, to eye it, to believe it, to receive it, as in him; the issues and fruits thereof being made out unto us through Christ alone.

There may be times we know great affliction in this world or times we undergo God’s discipline, but do not doubt the Father’s love. God the Father welcomes Prodigals home¹.

But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.
Luke 15:32

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Isaiah 42 Photograph: ChristianPhotos.net – Free High Resolution Photos for Christian Publications
The Return of the Prodigal Son: James Tissot, Public Domain.
¹Peculiar: The common meaning today is odd, but it also means:
“characteristic of one only; distinctive or special”.
Princeton University “Peculiar.” WordNet. Princeton University. 2010. <http://wordnet.princeton.edu&gt;
²Communion: Defined by William Goold, editor of the 1851 edition of Owen, as:
“The term “Communion,” as used by Owen, is used in a wider sense than is consistent with that which is now generally attached to it in religious phraseology. It denotes not merely the interchange of feeling between God in his gracious character and a soul in a gracious state, but the gracious relationship upon which this holy interchange is based. On the part of Christ, for example, all his work and its results are described, from the atonement till it takes effect in the actual justification of the sinner.”
John Owen, The Works of John Owen, William H. Goold, ed., Vol. 2, Communion with God,
Chapter III. 19, 18, 20–23. Reprinted by The Banner of Truth Trust.
¹John MacArthur has a wonderful sermon on The Prodigal Son, “The Loving Father.”
I have collected my posts that tell how I became a Christian on the My Witness page.

Original content: Copyright ©2011 Iwana Carpenter