The Gospel of Compelling Grace (4)

When you commit a sin to your heart’s content and face the consequences, you say, ‘Ah! I will just die!” but death never comes as you want. All that brought a carnal feast to the lustful and hopeless prodigal son who exchanged his father’s love for unclean lust, ridiculed him and departed.

He went to a pig farm to get some food. To the Jews, pigs are unclean animals, but since he had no livelihood, he had to get food from Samaritans or Gentiles that herd pigs. Of all things, there was a famine. Let alone food, he wanted to eat even the nut berries (husks) that pigs eat, but he couldn’t even eat them. The Bible says of him who could not even die and reached a point of misery, “and he began to be in need.” (Luke 15:14b)

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.” (Luke 15:17 ~19)

This means ‘I really deserve to die, I have no room for forgiveness or improvement, I’m such a scumbag! I’m done! I am a sinner who has sinned against heaven and against my father!’ When he was hitting the bottom with nowhere else to go, when he was poor in spirit, in the last days when he wanted to die but could not die, his father suddenly came to his mind.

‘I already know what I have done cannot be forgiven, but I will go and ask him a favor one last time. I should go and say, ‘I’d be grateful if you thought that my son was gone, and take me as one of your servants who work for you and be fed.’ But he couldn’t readily go. There were too many obstacles to return because he had come too far.

‘What do I say when I meet my father? Do I say I’m wrong? Should I say that I was crazy for a moment? But, I’ve come too far. What should I say to be of any value to my father?’ No matter how much he thought about it, there was no basis for him. The words he chose were, ‘Just make me like one of your poor laborers.’

Finally, he came out of the place. He left the frenzy that he loved so much enough to have a fit, left the seat of lust for the body and the crooked self, and he returned to his father.

His fate was that to be born in sin by nature, to eat and drink from sin, to be dragged into sin, and yet he could not free himself from sin by his own strength until he died.

But, who can turn from here and turn against sinful nature and return to the Father?

A person who has nothing left, a person received the death sentence of the soul.

Missionary Young-Ui KIM

(Itinerant Missionary Representative of LOG Mission)

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