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‘He came to himself.’
Luk_15:17
(a) Sin is vicious in principle.
(b) Sin is ruinous in operation.
(c) Sin is ever multiplying its destructive issues.
II. Let us watch the sinner in his repentance.—There are four elements of repentance here requiring analysis.
(a) Reflection. ‘And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare!’ Sin creates a sort of moral insanity. While spurred by appetite and in the race after indulgence, the mind is actuated by a species of frenzy. ‘I perish with hunger!’ There is the memory of a better past in that exclamation. This same recalling of bright hours bows the spirit into the dust.
(b) Resolution. ‘I will arise and go to my father.’ He no sooner discerns his hapless state than he determines to leave it. You are to imagine him prostrate, brooding in indecision or despair. But he will lie no longer in inaction. He protests, ‘I will arise,’ and he rises.
(c) Recognition of guilt. His resolution, while unenfeebled by hesitation, was not formed in insensibility to his evil. He sees most distinctly the relation of sin towards God and towards himself.
(d) Return to God. His was no empty vow.
II. Let us behold the sinner in his restoration.
(a) Notice God’s recognition of the earliest beginnings of penitence. ‘When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him.’ He had not seen his father, but ‘his father saw him.’ Unconsciously to the son, the love of the father has been drawing him all the way. If he had lost the image of his father from his memory he would never have attempted to return.
(b) Observe God’s welcome to the repenting.
(c) Now turn to behold how God lavishes His affection on the accepted penitent. The father is not going to treat his son as a ‘hired servant.’ God’s forgiveness must must be Godlike. God’s love is always greater in experience than in our most sanguine wishes and brightest hopes.
(d) Listen to God’s exhortation to His universe to share His joy. ‘Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry.’ A feast betokens gladness among all nations. The occasion is great, and great is to be the exultation. ‘Let us eat and rejoice.’
The father does not ask his household to be glad and he himself remain only a spectator of the universal delight. It is ‘Let us eat and rejoice.’
It is God’s own joy that He would have His creatures share and proclaim.
—
Archbishop Alexander.