Righteous

I would strongly recommend the book, 'Prodigal God' by Timothy Keller. The book talks about the Parable in Luke 15. This is not the story of the father and his younger son, no, it is about the father and his TWO sons.

If you are familiar with this parable, you know that the younger son gets tired of living the way he always has, he sees the world around him and he wants to go and 'live it up' so he asks his father for his share of the inheritance. To ask for the inheritance while the father is still alive is a huge sign of disrespect for the father. But the father sells land and livestock to give the younger son his share of the inheritance.

The son goes off and spends all of his money on 'worldly things'--probably gambling, prostitutes, trying to buy himself a bit of happiness. He realizes that he cannot and now he is worse off than he was before. He is working for a farmer and feeding pigs. He decides to go home and apologize to his father and work as an employee. He begins that long walk home. Finally as he is nearing the house, his father sees him in the distance and runs to him.

The father puts his fancy clothes on the son and throws him a party with the best food he has. This is where the older son comes into the picture: everyone is celebrating inside the house for the lost son has returned.

The older son is angry that the father has shown such great love for the younger son and has not given him what he has given the younger son. The father comes to invite him into the festivities and the older son refuses, citing the father's ignorance to give the older son what he had bestowed on the younger son and then he adds, I have never disobeyed your command!

You see, both of the sons are distanced from the father. One because of his sins and immoral life. One because of his 'righteous' spirit; he has done everything right, but has missed the heart of it all. God didn't require him to DO everything perfect, but to trust in Him and to have a humble heart before Him.

You see, it is so easy to be the older brother. Many of us were raised in the church, maybe even in Christian families and we know what Christ requires of us and we do it thinking that that is what pleases him and not only that, whenever we see people not doing that, we judge them--ok, I may be the only one who does that-- thinking that we cannot believe that they are so sinful. Yet our hearts are in the same place, if not worse. God didn't come to call the healthy, but the sick. And often we think we are healthy. We are good; we're doing everything right, God must be happy with us.

May our hearts be sensitive to Christ and may we be on the lookout for our hearts becoming 'older brother hearts'.