Can You Be Close to God but Still Lost?
Luke 15:1-32
The God Who Runs: Lessons from the Prodigal Sons
There is a poem written in the 1800s by a man named Francis Thompson called "The Hound of Heaven." Thompson was a man who had failed at seminary, failed at medical school, and eventually surrendered himself to substance abuse and homelessness. In the poem, he describes his desperate attempt to outrun God, fleeing down the nights and down the days, down the arches of the years. Yet no matter how far he ran, God pursued him with relentless, unhurrying pace. He could not escape the love that was chasing him.
That image, God as the Hound of Heaven, is precisely what Jesus is communicating in Luke 15. When the Pharisees grew angry that Jesus was spending time with sinners and tax collectors, he did not argue with them. He told them three stories. A shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to find one lost one. A woman who tears her house apart searching for a single lost coin. And a father with two very lost sons. The message woven through all three is the same: this is what God is like. He pursues. He searches. He runs.
The Son Who Left
The younger son in Luke 15 does something shocking. He asks his father for his share of the inheritance before the father has died. In the culture of that time, this was not simply rude. It was a declaration. It was the son saying, in effect, I would be better off if you were dead. Give me what is mine and let me go.
The father, remarkably, complies. He would have had to sell livestock and land to convert his estate into cash, a humiliating and public spectacle. The whole town would have known. And yet he gives his son what he asks for.
The son takes the money, travels to a distant country, and wastes everything on wild living. When a famine strikes and the money runs out, he finds himself feeding pigs, a deeply shameful situation for a Jewish young man, and longing to eat what the pigs were eating. The world had promised him freedom, pleasure, and happiness. What it delivered was slavery, hunger, and isolation. That is the nature of sin's great bait and switch. It invites you in with a promise it has no intention of keeping.
Coming to His Senses
Then comes one of the most important phrases in the entire passage. Luke 15:17 says the son "came to his senses." He looked around at the pigsty. He thought about his father's house, where even the hired servants had more than enough to eat. And he decided to go home.
But here is where the story becomes theologically rich. The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2 that apart from God, we are dead in our transgressions and sins. Dead. A dead person cannot come to their senses on their own. A dead heart cannot decide to turn toward God through sheer willpower. When Jesus told Peter that his recognition of Christ as the Son of God was not revealed by flesh and blood but by the Father in heaven, he was making the same point. Spiritual awakening is a gift. The discomfort you feel when you have done something wrong, that quiet warning in your conscience, that unsettled spirit, that is the Holy Spirit at work. It is God loving you enough to not leave you where you are.
C.S. Lewis put it plainly: unless God wanted you, you would not be wanting him.
This does not remove human responsibility. Scripture holds both truths in tension. We are responsible for our choices, and God is sovereignly at work in human hearts. The son got up and went home. And God was the one who moved him to do it.
The Father Who Ran
Here is where the story becomes almost scandalous in the best possible way. While the son is still a long way off, rehearsing his apology speech, the father sees him. And he runs.
Men of standing in that culture did not run. Running meant lifting your robe, exposing your legs, abandoning all dignity. It was not done. And yet the father does not walk calmly to meet his son. He does not wait on the porch with arms crossed. He sprints. He throws his arms around his son. He kisses him before the boy can even finish his speech.
Then he calls for the best robe, a ring, sandals, and a feast. He is clothing his son in his own dignity. He is restoring what was lost. The father absorbs the shame and the loss himself, and places his own honor on the shoulders of the child who had disgraced him.
This is the picture of the gospel. Romans 5 reminds us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not after we cleaned ourselves up. Not after we proved we were serious about changing. While we were still in the pigsty. The righteousness placed on the believer is not earned. It is given by a father who ran.
The Son Who Stayed
The older brother is easy to overlook, but Jesus includes him for a reason. He has stayed home. He has followed the rules. He has never embarrassed the family. And when he hears that his wayward brother has been welcomed back with a party, he is furious.
Listen to what his anger reveals. He tells his father he has been slaving away for years, never disobeying, and never received so much as a young goat for his trouble. He is not serving out of love. He is serving out of obligation, keeping score, and expecting payment. He wants what the father can give him. He is not so different from his younger brother after all. One son was lost in a distant country. The other was lost right at home.
The coin in Jesus' earlier parable was lost inside the house. Some of us are sitting in church, doing all the right things, and missing the heart of it entirely.
The Invitation
Luke 15 ends with the father outside, pleading with his older son to come in and celebrate. The door is open. The feast is ready. The question left hanging in the air is whether the older son will walk through it.
That same question hangs over every reader. Where do you find yourself in this story? Have you wandered far and convinced yourself there is no way back? Or have you been close all along, quietly resentful, serving out of duty rather than delight?
The father in this story does not wait passively. He sees from a long way off. He runs. He pursues. He is, as Francis Thompson discovered after years of running, the Hound of Heaven. And he is still running toward you.