Saving the Self-Righteous Son
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Then Jesus told them this parable:
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“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
Luke 15:1-3,25-32
Many, if not most, people naturally relate with the prodigal son in that famous parable. The son who demanded his inheritance before his father even died, who wasted it in wild living, who had nothing when famine struck, who hit rock bottom feeding the pigs. You likely do, too. We marvel at the father’s grace as he welcomes his son home without question or condition.
Because we often put ourselves in the prodigal son’s place, we often direct much of our outreach efforts toward those lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7) and lost coins (Luke 15:8-10). Indeed, Jesus came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). We turn our attention to the people who already sense how lost they are. People who think church isn’t for them because they aren’t worthy of God’s grace. We get to the convey the message: God’s grace isn’t for the worthy; it’s for sinners.
We often ignore, however, the other son in the parable. Well, maybe ignore isn’t the right word. We recognize him. He’s that person who makes those prodigal sons and daughters feel uncomfortable. They’re the people who make the lost not want to come to church. We may even find a little bit of the older son in our own hearts when new people who don’t quite fit the mold enter our doors.
What we often don’t recognize is the older son is just as lost. He’s not lost like the younger son. The younger son is lost in despair. The older son is lost in self-righteousness. “All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders,” (Luke 15:29) he says.
Does Jesus want to save the self-righteous? He says elsewhere, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31,32). Perhaps Jesus only came to save those who know they are lost and to condemn those self-righteous religious bullies.
This is, in fact, what many would like Jesus to do, including us at times. Save the lost. Condemn the self-righteous. But Jesus also wants to save the self-righteous. He wants to save them, too, because even though they are righteous in their own eyes, they are lost in God’s eyes because they trust in their own righteousness and not in Christ’s.
The father in the parable invites his older son to come into the party. But we don’t know if he did. The invitation is there. Will he abandon his self-righteousness and come to the feast?
Jesus told this parable and the other two in Luke 15 to the self-righteous Pharisees. On the one hand, he affirms that the lost are welcome in his kingdom. On the other, he also invites the self-righteous to recognize their own lostness and enter the feast as well.
This call is sincere. We even see the self-righteous answer the call. The apostle Paul was a self-righteous Pharisee before he became a missionary for Jesus (Philippians 3:4-6). Jesus came to Paul in a vision and totally destroyed his self-righteous delusions (Acts 26:9-18). Jesus came to save Paul, even Paul as self-righteous as he was (1 Timothy 1:12-15).
Jesus called the self-righteous while he was here on earth. He died for the self-righteous. So, why do we struggle to seek the self-righteous?
It’s hard. We see how the self-righteous opposed Jesus even as he called them. The lost don’t need to be convinced of their need for salvation. They need the Holy Spirit to convince them they can be saved. The self-righteous person, however, first needs to be convicted of their lostness before they can be brought to the knowledge of their Savior.
Even from a perhaps less than sanctified perspective, the power dynamic is different. When reaching the lost, we set ourselves up in a position of knowledge and power. We reach a hand down to lift them up. But the self-righteous stand high above us on pedestals of their own making. Even though they are still slaves to sin, they believe themselves lords over the lost.
It’s hard to reach the self-righteous. They wear an armor the lost don’t wear. But the armor of their self-glory and self-righteousness is not impenetrable for the Holy Spirit. He empowers our words of both law to convict the sinner and gospel to save the sinner so that they might hear the father’s invitation and enter the feast.
As you consider how you share the good news of Jesus, remember the self-righteous. Jesus came to save them, too, just as he came to save the lost. Just as he came to save you—once lost, now found, at times self-righteous, at others despairing, always needing a Savior.