The Prodigal God

I began reviewing this before my week off for the birth of Malachi. I have just finished the book and want to commend it to you, Keller has done an excellent job in examining this well know parable and bringing it to life again and pressing home its implications and calling both younger and older brothers to repentance.

I am not going to review it chapter by chapter, however I just want to highlight one particular chapter which I found insightful, helpful and provoked me to examine Luke 15 again. In Chapter 5 'The True Elder Brother' Keller begins by pointing out the similarities and differences between the three parables Luke groups together in chapter 15. The key difference, deliberate he contends, is that in the story of the lost sons there is no seeker of the lost. The older brother should have been the one who went off and searched for his younger brother at cost to himself but he doesn't. The Pharisaical older brother makes us long for the true older brother who will seeker the lost son and pay the price necessary to restore him to relationship with his Father. Jesus is that true older brother, who stands making that offer to the very ones who will in a short while reject him and nail him to a cross to die.

It is a brilliant chapter and worth the price of the book alone. The other highlight for me was chapter 7 looking a biblical theology of exile and feast and seeing the parable as a snapshot of the story of the whole Bible and therefore of the whole of history.

Read this book and give it away to friends who have been damaged by older brother types in the church, to those who haven't grasped grace, to those who don't know Jesus as their Saviour. But most of all read it yourself and find the older brother in you exposed and repent before a gracious and lavishly loving Father.

The prodigal God

I have just started reading Tim Keller's 'The Prodigal God.' The first couple of chapters have proved though provoking and the rest promises to be equally so.

Keller begins by establishing what Prodigal means, it is not wayward or lost as we tend to think of it, but it means "reckless spendthrift", to spend until you have nothing left. He makes the point that the younger son is prodigal but so is the Father in the way he loves and welcomes back the younger son.

In Chapter 1 Keller points out that Jesus ministry seemed to attract the Prodigals, those like the woman at the well, or the woman caught in adultery, the tax collector and so. Whilst the religious elder brother types are offended and reject his teaching.

Keller then raises an issue I found particularly thought provoking. Contemporary outsiders don't seem to be attracted to church, rather we attract the moralistic people. If our preaching and people don't have the same effect on people that Jesus did, then we must not declaring the same message Jesus did. He goes on to say: "If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think."