Many people feel remorse over their life, kicking themselves and telling themselves what fools they have been. But that feeling will not take you to the Father. Remorse is simply wounded pride, a wallowing in self-pity. Repentance begins only when you get up and come to the Father. It was that willingness to humble himself and to enter the house that the elder brother lacked. It was his pride that kept him outside, just as it was their pride that would keep the Pharisees and teachers of the law Jesus encountered outside the kingdom of heaven. It was their pride that would consent to his death and nail him to the cross.
Some of us think of judgment as God sorting out the human race into those who are going to heaven and those who are going to hell. The ones he likes he sends to heaven, and those he doesn't he sends to hell. But that is not the picture Jesus gives in this story. He portrays rather a God who overflows with grace and generosity, opening his arms to all: elder brother, younger brother; saint or sinner. He makes no distinctions. If we stay out of heaven it is because we refuse to go in. It is because we are too proud to accept his grace. This elder brother felt he deserved a reward. 'All these years I've been slaving for you.' Jesus is emphatic: we cannot have heaven as a reward, only as a gift—a gift we are humble enough to receive, knowing we don't deserve it.
Maybe, like the younger brother, you've had a big row with God, and are in the distant country, or in the pigsty. Now that you have thought about it, you know that a lot of what Jesus is saying about the lost son is true of you. Is it pride that prevents you from coming back home?
Perhaps you are like the elder brother. You have grown up in a Christian home, maybe. You have a religious background. You are very morally minded. But as John Wesley said of the years before he became a Christian, 'I had then the religion of a servant, not of a son.' Is it pride in you that wants to earn your ticket to heaven, and
