He Came to Himself

Overview

We’re looking at the parables of Luke 15. Of course, the biggest, longest, and most famous of them is the parable of the prodigal son. We see how the grace of God not only changes my individual life or your individual life, but how the grace of God creates a new kind of community, a new kind of human society, and how it creates new kinds of relationships.
This parable is essentially an image about the meltdown of a community and the restoration of it. The key theme we’re going to look at in this text is the theme of repentance — this is crucial for the restoration of community. Even though the word is not in this text, what we have when the younger son decides to go back to his father is an example of repentance. Let’s notice three things: the importance of repentance, the anatomy of it (what it’s actually made of), the key to doing it, and the kind of community that results from it.