offended and hurt him. 'We have sinned against heaven and against you,' to use the boy's words.
It's important we understand this. Some people think of God as some kind of cosmic traffic warden who's got a set of impersonal laws that he's duty bound to enforce, but with which he doesn't really feel personally involved. Jesus' story reveals that it is not like that at all. The moral law is the law of God's own heart and nature. When we sin, when we fail to love people as he says we should, when we fail to speak the truth as he tells us we should, when we fail to honour our parents as he says we should, and particularly when we fail to love him and honour him as he says we should, we are not simply parking on a heavenly double yellow line. Rather, we are parking on the traffic warden's foot! We are offending him personally. He feels angry and hurt about it.
If we have any doubt about this, then we must look at the cross. That stark symbol of agonized death is there to show us how much the sin of the world offends, angers and hurts God. It demonstrates how much it cost him personally to keep the door of reconciliation open to us. The boy had to realize not just that he was lost, but that he was guilty; not simply that he needed his father's fellowship, but that he needed his father's forgiveness. Once he discovered that, Jesus tells us, only a few short steps separated him from joy. But I think they must have been the hardest steps he ever took in his entire life.
‘I will set out and go back to my father’ (Luke 15:18).
A minister of a church once met a boy who had run away from home, and counselled him. He pointed to this very parable of the wasteful son, and advised: 'Now, you go back to your father and see if he doesn't kill the fatted calf to welcome you.'
Some weeks later he met the boy again on the street.
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