Experiencing God's Love

When the prodigal son returns home, his father throws a feast in celebration, but not everyone is happy.

The prodigal’s brother stands outside the party, outside the dancing, outside the joy. He is invited in. More than that, his father begs him to join in the celebration. Yet he refuses, listing off everything he has done for his father that he hasn’t been adequately rewarded for.

I imagine he thought, why does he give more love to my brother who has done wrong than to me who has done right?

The brother is not alone in this question. The feelings he holds toward his father are not unlike the feelings of many Christians today.

God’s unconditional love for the prodigal feels at odds with the life of good works he seems to call the rest of his people to live. 

It creates bitterness and even jealousy over the son who is welcome to live however he pleases and is welcomed back without consequence. Our human sense of justice cries out for some kind of reproof before the father fully welcomes him back home. How could the father not only excuse his wayward son but celebrate him?

This is a question asked by a heart who sees God’s love as finite, a limited supply, a well that runs dry. 

We think this way because we live in a world of measurement: test scores, income, followers, likes.

Which leaves us with an inner world of comparison: smarter or dumber, prettier or uglier, richer or poorer, smoother or more awkward.

There are those with more, and there are those with less. We are better off having more. We are worse off having less. It is a thought pattern so ingrained in our culture, it’s difficult to step into the economy of God’s kingdom.

Growing up in this competitive world, it’s hard to believe there could be a love that does not compare. In truth, real love does not know how to compare.

Henri Nouwen’s reflection on the parable of the laborers in the vineyard and the prodigal’s brother helped me greatly.

In the parable, a landowner hires workers in the morning to do a full day of work. Later in the evening, he hires more workers to work as well. At the end of the day, the landowner not only has the foreman pay the evening workers first, he has him pay them the same amount as the morning hires who worked all day.

Nouwen wondered, why did the landowner pay the workers who did the least work first? Why create “unnecessary bitterness and jealousy?”

It hadn’t previously occurred to me that the landowner might have wanted the workers of the early hours to rejoice in his generosity to the latecomers... God looks at his people as children of a family who are happy that those who have done only a little bit are as much loved as those who accomplish much.

God is so naive as to think that there would be great rejoicing when all those who spent time in his vineyard, whether a short time or a long time, were given the same attention. Indeed, he was so naive as to expect that they would all be so happy to be in his presence that comparing themselves with each other wouldn’t even occur to them. That is why he says with the bewilderment of a misunderstood lover: “Why should you be envious because I am generous?” He could have said: “You have been with me the whole day, and I gave you all you asked for! Why are you so bitter?” It is the same bewilderment that comes from the heart of the father when he says to his jealous son: “My son, you are with me always, and all I have is yours.” 

-Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

The tragedy of indignation is it keeps many Christians from experiencing the outrageously generous love of God.

As long as we believe love lies in merit, we are doomed to the cold attitude of the prodigal’s brother. 

No matter how good we are, how well we follow God’s rules, how many good works we perform, we will never convince him to love us more than he already does. We will never convince him to love us more than our prodigal brother.

This is at first disappointing, but as God transforms our hearts to receive his generosity, it becomes quite joy-giving and relieving.

God is a father who does not stack his children up against each other to squeeze all the performance he can out of them.

He does not think of such a thing because he rejoices in all of his sons and daughters. Any comparison always lies in our hearts, not his. 

God wants both of his children, all of his children, home with him. Both the prodigal and his brother struggled to come home but for different reasons.

Sometimes the people who have been following God the longest are most in need of gospel good news: His is a love that we did not earn, we do not earn, and we will not earn because we can never earn so great a love.

When we let the warmth of his non-comparing love melt away the layer of ice around our hearts, it will not feel like a betrayal of everything we’ve ever done to join the party. It will feel like homecoming.