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 PrintableVersion The Prodigal GodLavish graceTHE PRODIGAL GOD The word ‘prodigal’ originally meant ‘recklessly extravagant’.This book is Tim Keller’s exposition of Luke 15.11-31, Jesus’s parable we know as ‘The Prodigal Son’. Keller’s point is that, understood properly, it is really about ‘The Prodigal God’ who is unbelievably lavish in his love and grace. The first main thrust of the book is that, in the current culture wars between conservatives and liberals in Western society, the evangelical church is normally seen as on the conservative side, with a religion very little different from the attitudes of the elder brother. Actually the elder brother has no real love for his father and is just as lost as the younger son. Many churches are filled with such people who are angry and superior and have never really tasted God’s grace. Here Keller is dependent on Kenneth Bailey’s excellent work in Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes. The second thrust, which answers the gibe of liberal theologians that the father’s forgiveness cost nothing, is that there is a true elder brother who is absent from the parable. In the other parables in Luke 15, the shepherd and the woman go looking for what they have lost. Yet it is startling to realise that no one went looking for the lost son. Who ought to have gone looking? A good, loving Elder Brother would have taken on this role and have been happy to bear the cost of letting his sibling back into the family and into the inheritance. This is the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a fine expostion of the heart of the Christian faith which is much needed at the present time if our churches are to regain gospel credibility. John Benton© Evangelicals Now - February 2009 |
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