A must-read: What’s So Amazing About Grace?

Phillip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Zondervan, 1997) is a brilliant, brutally honest, and totally absorbing account of what grace means. Sometimes Christians seem to have forgotten about the seemingly simple concept of grace – core to the teachings of Jesus – when you consider the legalistic way many of them live (see Chapter 16) and what preachers speak from the pulpits each Sunday. This book attempts to bridge that chasm. Before reading it, as a long-time Christian, I was sceptical that I had much to learn about grace; I was wrong. I personally found the book to be life transforming, completely altering the way I look at my relationships with God and with others around me. 

Grace is undeserved

Jesus’ parable of the prodigal (wasteful) son in Luke 15 has proven to be one of the most well-known and loved of all his parables. It tells the story of an ungrateful son who does the unthinkable – asks for his inheritance before his father has even keeled over – and tells of an amazing (there’s that word again) father who actually grants the offensive request. 

The son cashes in on his inheritance and leaves home for Rio de Janeiro – well, some far-off land, anyway. While there, he goes hog wild with his cash, probably squandering his fortune buying cheap touristy trinkets and a T-shirt to send to his dad that says: My prodigal son went to Rio and all he got me was this lousy T-shirt. But after his brief fun in the sun, the prodigal finds both his wallet and his stomach empty. He looks for work but is unable to find it, leaving him as desperate as a homeless man in a deserted soup kitchen. He goes on for awhile, but eventually realizes that his only option is to return home. 

A father in any day and age would deal with the prodigal son severely after such an escapade and would have a lifetime of “I told you so’s” to share with him. In the Middle Eastern culture of Jesus’ day, the treatment would have been even more harsh, because the prodigal’s actions were a slap in the face of two key beliefs of that culture – family ties and respect for family authority – both which were valued more than life itself. 

Everyone in the village likely expected the prodigal to be forced to work off his debt like a slave and never be fully accepted as a son again. The villagers would certainly never let the prodigal live it down. They’d endlessly humiliate, harass, and taunt any person who’s done such an unspeakable deed.  

But the father in Jesus’ story responds in an unexpected way. When he sees his son walking back, the father is sick to his stomach with compassion for his son as he realizes the suffering that his child has gone through and will go through by the villagers’ taunts. The father knows that the only way to prevent his son’s future shame is to take a drastic action himself, taking the focus off of his son and onto himself. Therefore, he sprints out to meet the ungrateful son, much like a track star running a 100-meter dash. Since senior citizens jog for exercise in this day and age, you and I don’t think much of his mad dash in public, but to the people of Jesus’ day, this sprint would have been a total embarrassment. No older person would ever jog, let alone run; it’s a matter of dignity. What’s more, in order to run, he’d have to expose his undergarments when he lifted his robe. 

But the father’s surprising behaviour doesn’t stop there. When he gets to his son, he puts his arms around him, hugging and repeatedly kissing him. He then calls his servants to kill a fattened calf and put his finest robe on his son, a ring on his finger, and sandals on his feet. Not only does this amazing response show the prodigal the boundless love that the father has, but his action also signifies to everyone that his son is to be welcomed back as a son, not as a servant. 

A must-read: The Cross and the Prodigal

In this parable we have a father who leaves the comfort and security of his home and exposes himself in a humiliating fashion in the village street. The coming down and going out to his boy hints at (Jesus’ coming to earth). The humiliating spectacle in the village street hints at the meaning of the cross.

-Ken Bailey, The Cross and the Prodigal (Concordia Publishing House, 1973) 

Ken Bailey’s The Cross and the Prodigal is perhaps an obscure “must-read” selection because it’s hard to find, yet I recommend it because Bailey’s look at the prodigal son parable in Luke 15 has been instrumental to my faith. The relatively short 132-page book has deeply impacted my perspective on Christ’s sacrifice, the extent of God’s love, and the nature of sin. 

The purpose of this book is to examine the parable of the prodigal son from the perspective of a Middle Easterner. Postmodern Americans and Europeans are removed from biblical culture in two ways – through 2,000 years of history and the differences between the Eastern and Western cultures. The result is to overlook some of the subtleties of the text and miss some of the underlying assumptions. Only when you look at the parable through Middle Eastern, 2,000-yearold eyes can you understand the father’s true sacrificial love and both sons’ equal sin, not just that of the prodigal.

 

Unfortunately, The Cross and the Prodigal isn’t widely available and takes a bit of searching to find.