The Prodigal Father

Prodigal: (adjective), recklessly extravagant. Giving profusely; very generous. Lavish.

Holy Week is here. Our King upon a colt will soon be upon the cross.

Across the Christian world, churches will set their altars and tables with wine and bread to remember the spilled blood and broken body. Pulpits will preach sin and salvation. The Passion of the Christ movie will play on AppleTv. The children will probably eat chocolate.

And hymns will sing of an empty tomb and a new life, hallelujah!

How can it be? It’s by Amazing Grace, that In Christ Alone, we have a Blessed Assurance, for Alleluia, He is Risen!

Stuart Townend really tapped into something special when he wrote his hymn, How Deep the Father’s Love. Yes, it’s a love vast beyond all measure. He expresses the lavish, extravagant prodigal love of the Father, who gave what? His only Son. And why? To make a wretch His treasure.

Preach!

But in the final verse of his famous hymn, he asks a question:

Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer;

But this I know with all my heart:

His wounds have paid my ransom.

He wrote this hymn in 1995, and like him, back then I couldn’t answer it, either. I wonder if now, nearly 30 years on, he would spin a different line? Can he finally sing of why the Father would have us share in the royal inheritance of His precious son?

I can.

Why should I gain from His reward?

Because I am not just a wretch on whom God took pity, but rather a lost daughter, dead in my sins, made alive again!

"For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found" So they began to celebrate! (Luke 15:24)

Did you catch that?

It's because I am a daughter of the King!

Because I am not just a saved sinner, but a redeemed son, created for son-ship.

Because my Father is a prodigal Dad; a Father who is extravagant - who gives profusely and generously and lavishly.

Because I was loved and pursued from the beginning of time, and it was always my Father’s design and desire to have me gain from His reward.

Because my Father runs to me “even while I was still a long way off” (Luke 15:20).

The cross doesn’t just make me worthy.

The cross tells me I was already worthy.

The cross is what makes it possible to share in the inheritance the Father always wanted to share.

The cross is not the why but the how.

The why is answered in the very first line.

In the depths of our Father’ love.

For God so loved the world, He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).

How Great is Our God?!