30/03/2021
LOST AT HOME
Luke 15:29 (NIV), 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.
In the prodigal son episode, the youngest son has always been vilified for running away from home after securing his inheritance from the father. While he got lost in a foreign land his own brother was equally lost at home.
Though the eldest son never left home, he was no better than his brother for he had to contend with a disfunctional relationship with the father, a significant part of his life. He never got it right for he slaved for his father, always keeping commands in the hope that somehow the father would bless him.
Listen to his words, "all these years i have been slaving for you" this constitutes one of the saddest verses in the Bible. How can you be slaving for your own father? Sadly this describes the relationship that characterizes God and many of his sons today. Many are lost at home, smugged up in self righteousness trying to catch God's attention, It never works that way. One can slave all their lifes in church, one can slave doing all the very good things and end in disappointment, one can slave in ministry their entire life. This is what the writer of Hebrews warns us against, Hebrews 6:1
[1]Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
Dead works are those good things that are done with the motive of earning from God, be it salvation, forgiveness, favour, blessing and such like. Dead works shift attention from Christ and His accomplished work on the cross to self and what you can accomplish 'for God'. The elder son got bogged down with dead works trying to earn what was his all the while.
Are you lost at home? The gist of this post is not that we stop doing good but that we change the motivation behind our good deeds. Let the motivation be love! 1 Corinthians 13:3
[3]And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not LOVE, it profiteth me nothing. The greatest sacrifices, like offering my body to be burned, without love is NOTHING 😜.
