The Prodigal SonsSample

Day 2 Devotional:

Our Sinfulness

Luke 15:12-13 tells us that the younger of the two sons demanded from his father his share of the father’s estate, and that after he got it, this younger son then set off for a distant country where he squandered his wealth in wild living.

Luke 15:28-29 tells us that when the older son returned home to find that the younger son had eventually returned home and the father had thrown a party for him, he was so furious that he refused to participate in the party.

He rejected his father’s invitation to participate in the homecoming party, and he insults the father by refusing to even address him as father. He says to his father disrespectfully, “Look here, you . . .”

So, as you can see, both sons are estranged from their father. One is estranged from the father by his self-centred rebellion, and one is estranged from the father by his self-centred arrogance. Christ shows us that both sons have missed the mark of a good relationship of obedience and respect for their father.

What Christ has done here, in essence, is to take us back to the very beginning of the Bible story in Gen. 3:1-13 that narrates how God’s original plan and purpose for us and for all His creation were disrupted when our first parents, with all of us inside them, chose to obey the voice of Satan instead of the voice of God.

By their disobedience, our first parents, with all of us inside them, missed the mark of God’s original intentions for us to be His people, living in His world under His rule, and enjoying His blessing of peace and well-being.

The origin of sin, therefore, was this original disobedience of our first parents in the Garden. Paul described this in Rom. 5:19 by writing: By one man’s disobedience, the many became sinners. Isaiah describes it this way in Isaiah 53:6: We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way. Like the two sons in this story.

We all, in the first Adam, became sin-ful, meaning that our basic human nature became a distorted one that naturally misses the mark of God’s standards, God’s love, God’s goodness, God’s purposes, God’s holiness and God’s righteousness.

So, we can summarise our first S by saying that, like these two sons in this story who had missed the mark of their father’s good plans and purposes for them, we all come into this world, lost in our sin, and estranged from God.