Have you ever been lost? It is a scary place to be – once you realize it. Sometimes we don’t at first. We’re children making our way through a crowd, only to look up and no longer see our parents. We are driving on unfamiliar roads, and just as we start to doubt where we are, we find ourselves without reception to get directions. Fear sets in: what will we do? Will we get to where we belong? Is there anyone who can help?
The experience of being lost is so powerful – and familiar – that might be why Jesus’ “Parable of the Prodigal Son” in Luke 15:11-32 is so well-known and highly regarded. Even people with little biblical literacy know the basic story. The younger son from a respectable family leaves home and squanders his inheritance in a far country. Disaster strikes, the money runs out, and so do his fair-weather friends. Left feeding pigs – and jealous of how well they’re eating – he comes to himself, resolves to come home, and is stunned by the lavish and loving welcome his father gives him.
Do you remember how the father described his wayward son at the end of that story? “He was lost, and is found” (Lk. 15:32 ESV). Now, it’s not that the boy got to the far country and misplaced his map during a particularly wild party. The Greek word we translate as “lost” wasn’t just a matter of geography.
To be lost is to be ruined by using your life differently than its intended purpose.
The son of a respectable Jewish farmer wasn’t meant for the life of a prodigal – an old-timey English word that means to spend recklessly and wastefully. But the longer he did it, the more it ruined him. Going broke, he took a job a good Jewish boy would never do – caring for a Gentile’s pigs (a double no-no). While we aren’t first century Jewish farmers, we can still relate. It mirrors our struggles with alcohol or drugs. The far country looks an awful lot like our freshman year of college or our time in the service. We see in this story those times we did things our way – and got lost.
That’s what sin is. Being lost is not just some theological concept, a metaphysical state changed by keeping some minimum religious rules. It’s the reality that God created us to be like Him – and we don’t live that way, a failure that ruins, isolates, and ultimately destroys us.
But it doesn’t have to. Like the younger son in Jesus’ story, recognizing our ruin can lead us to come to ourselves – to change our painful state by resolving to go home. God is our Father who loves us. He has always taken care of us, even when we’ve disrespected and disregarded Him. If we will just start that journey, we will find He has been watching for us, ready to run to us, embrace us, and welcome us home.
Explore more in our serious lesson series on Sin.