In the gospel, everything that a rational person could want is yours: eternal life, adoption in the family, guaranteed life in the new heavens and the new earth, and the knowledge that you are the joy and delight of God.
Gospel believers want to resemble God and just have more of him. Elder brothers–and here’s the source of spiritual deadness–believe they’re getting leverage over God. They’re self-righteous toward anyone else (because they think they’re better than others), and they’re insecure in themselves (because they know they’re not good enough).
At one level we believe the gospel, but functionally, the default mode is to go back to being elder brothers. What are the marks of that?
1. Getting incredibly angry when your life doesn’t go well. Disappointment and sadness, fine, but when things don’t go well for elder brothers, they get furious with life and God, which shows they believe God owes them.
2. How you respond to criticism? When elder brothers get criticized, they either melt down or melt down the critics; they viciously counter-attack or get demolished.
3. Elder brothers pray–but by and large, petitions. When things are going bad, you do a lot of praying; when things aren’t, you almost stop. They don’t enjoy God. There’s not much contemplation, adoration, intimacy with God.
4. It’s impossible for elder brothers not to be constantly loathing people. You’ve got to look down on others who seem lazy, if your self-image is based on (a) having the right doctrine or (b) working hard.
5. Elder brothers can’t forgive. If you stay angry and bitter, it’s because you feel superior to them. “I would never do anything like that.” You have to have a fair amount of pride to have bitterness.
What do you do? The prescription
Get to a new level of repentance.
Repentance is not just feeling sorry–though that’s part of it. Pharisees repented, but when they were done, they were still Pharisees. They just felt proud at how they repented. It’s NOT repentance for doing the wrong things, it’s repentance for doing the right things for the wrong reason: to get control over others, and so on.
As a theologian has said, “The main thing separating you from God is not your sins, it’s your damnable good works.” The moral of the Prodigal Son is not only to repent and return to God (though that’s good and part of it); the moral of the parable is what it costs to bring the young man home–and you.
What did it cost the father to bring back the Prodigal Son? Nothing–because he just welcomed him back and put a robe and ring on him? Not true: this is a man who had 2 sons, so he had only 2 heirs, and he had divided his estate between them, and the younger son’s part of the estate was gone. So every ring, robe, and calf was part of the elder brother’s estate. So to welcome home the younger brother was going to cost the elder brother–it was at his expense. The elder brother was supposed to hold the family together, but the young man didn’t have a true elder brother, he had a Pharisee.
He didn’t have a true elder brother, but you do. We need an elder brother who would come from heaven to earth, who would save us not at the cost of his money but at the cost of his life. We have that: we can be clothed in the Father’s robe because he was stripped naked on the cross. We can drink the cup of festal joy, because he drank the dregs of suffering on the cross.
When you are moved to depths, when you see what it cost the elder brother for you to come back, it destroys your elder-brotherness.
Don’t you see this is practical? Spiritual renewal is not “do these 5 things,” it’s got to happen in the heart.
