The Rewards of Obedience: The Prodigal Son from Another Perspective

The prodigal son is one of Jesus’ best known parables in the Bible (Luke 15:11-32). A son takes his share of his inheritance and then goes to a far off land only to squander it on revelry. He realizes his mistake after losing all of his money only to become a beggar in a time of famine. He returns home to tell his father to no longer call him his son, but the father warmly embraces him and throws a big celebration for him because “he was lost and is now found” (Luke 15:32b).

This parable is commonly told as a moral for forgiveness and repentance. I agree with this assessment especially since the parable of the lost son comes at the end of the parables of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10) and the lost sheep in Luke (Luke 15:1-7). However, I believe that this parable has another nugget of wisdom to be gleaned from it. I think the parable of the prodigal son is also a moral on the rewards of obedience.
In the parable, the father’s oldest son was working the field only to hear the music and dancing back home. He returns home to see what the people are celebrating only to discover the party is for his younger disobedient brother. The older brother becomes very angry at the fact that his younger brother disobeyed his father, but his father threw the disobedient son a huge party while the older one never had one.

Throughout the commotion, the father urges his son to join the party, but he refuses. The older son told 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. But when this son of yours who squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him (Luke 15:29-30).” The father’s response in verse 31 is very revealing: “’My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours (Luke 15:31).”

In my opinion, this much overlooked verse reveals the vast benefits of remaining obedient. Since scholars extrapolate this parable to also mean God’s larger forgiveness for us when we repent, I believe this very same parable can be extrapolated to show God’s rewards for us when we are always with Him. This rings especially true in a time when many “new age” Christians view the Bible as an al a carte line where they can pick and choose what they want to believe. Therefore, they become worldly Christians, but always contend that they are saved due to God’s grace and forgiveness.

This may be true, but these very same people are also missing out on the great rewards that God has offered them. Just as the prodigal son blew his great reward on prostitutes and nonsense, some Christians blow God’s rewards in favor of conforming to certain elements of the world. Therefore, I urge you to follow the example of the older son and “stay with” your Father so that you will inherit everything He has for you.