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In Luke 15, Jesus tells us the parable of the Prodigal Son (prodigal means wasteful) and his Forgiving Father in order to teach self-righteous Pharisees of all times that the grace of God stops short of no man, that God does not desire the death of a sinner but rather he turn from his ways and live, that God desires all to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth.
When the wasteful son took his inheritance and ran, he wasted more than material goods; he wasted his father’s love for him. When the younger son asks for his inheritance early he basically was saying to his father, “I wish you were dead. I want no part of life with you anymore. I’d rather go off and spend my time and money with people I don’t even know.” When Jesus told this story, the people who heard it would have expected the father to blow up at the son in anger and deny his request. But the father did not; he graciously granted his son’s wishes.
The son quickly liquidated his share of the inheritance and headed to a foreign land with lots of cash in hand. He squandered it all, living recklessly. After the money was gone, the son was so desperate he became a servant for a foreigner just to survive, doing something that a good Hebrew would have found unthinkable: feeding pigs (the Old Testament deems pigs unclean, and Israelites couldn’t eat or touch them). He found himself broke and starving in another land, but finally came to his senses. He realized that his father’s hired servants were much better off than he was, so he planned to return, groveling, and make a deal with his father: he would give up the title of “son” in exchange for a position of servant in his father’s house. It wouldn’t be ideal, but that way at least he wouldn’t be starving and broke.
