Luke 13, 15

Question: Luke 13 and 15; Many believers would value your judgment on the enclosed tract (“The Strait Gate, and the Prodigal Son”). Is its teaching scriptural? G.S.B.
Answer: No wonder that sober Christians are disturbed by these speculations. We may not set scripture against scripture in our zeal for the full gospel of grace. The sermon on the mount is no more the gospel of the kingdom than that of Christ’s glory. The reception of Christ by the true action of the Spirit and the word was always requisite, which works both faith and repentance in the soul. On this the Lord insists in Luke 13:24 as in Matt. 11:12 and John 3:3-5; the form and figures suiting its own context, but the same truth substantially. To be born anew goes to the root of the need, is a vital want, and cannot be without painful exercise before God, expressed in the first case by striving at all cost to enter through the narrow door into God’s kingdom. In the glad tidings is His answer to what the heart craves for peace and joy.
This is anticipatively shown in the three parables of Luke 15, the lost sheep, the lost piece of silver, the lost son: activity in straying, insensibility Godward, and on the sail’s self-judgment, the full revelation of the Father’s love and the riches of grace in “the best robe” and all other blessing in the communion of His love. It is false that a backsliding saint is here contemplated. How can any instructed Christian err so profoundly? Is a fallen believer a “lost” one, as the Lord here reiterates? Is it not the full salvation of the sinner’s soul? Who could allow or teach that it is the restored saint that receives “the best robe,” the ring, the sandals, the fatted calf, the joy shared with God when the dead one came to life, and the lost one was found?
There is no real difficulty in the “two sons” as the Lord spoke. For man naturally is by Luke treated as “God’s offspring”: so the apostle preached to the heathen Athenians; with which we may compare Luke 3:38, as to Adam so constituted by God in contrast with the brute, or the clean animal. He only had an immortal soul and must give account to God; but after the fall and all God’s dealings he is pronounced “lost,” and needs a new nature, as well as redemption, whereby he becomes a child, and an adopted son of God by grace. The natural relationship could not avail against sin: and self-righteousness made things worse for the “elder brother.” Hence evidently the “elder brother” fully confirms the just application, and refutes the blunder that either one or other as such means a son of God by faith in Christ Jesus. This the prodigal does become when he comes not only to himself but to the Father; this the elder son, as far as the parable teaches, does not become, whatever his pretensions, and whatever the external privileges shown here. The upshot is that He “would not go in”; he has no part in the Father’s joy of grace. He has only satisfaction in himself, reproaches for the saved sinner, and insult for the God of all grace and His boundless goodness to “this thy son.”
Luke 16:9
Question: Luke 16:9. What does this mean? E.G.R.
Answer: The Jew was losing his earthly place through rejecting God in Christ. Yet grace wrought not only to save the lost (as shown in chap. 15), but also to set aside wealth and honor in this world, and all is changed as to the use of present possessions, which are turned into a path of heavenly fruit for heaven. The Jew was steward for God but abused his trust. The Gentile was and is nothing. The disciple of Christ may follow the unjust one for present life in his prudence of looking out for the future. But our future is in heaven. The world is really bankrupt. True wealth is in the world to come. These are the real privileges to faith, our own things; whereas present things are Another’s, which we are called to sacrifice freely in view of glory on high, instead of hoarding “the unrighteous mammon” as men like to do. We are entitled to treat money as “the mammon of unrighteousness,” looking to be received, when it fails, “into the everlasting habitations.”
“That they may receive you” is only a mode of speech for “that ye may be received;” as we may infer from similar phraseology in Luke 6:38-44, which really means “shall be given” into your bosom, instead of “shall men give.” For in fact men do not so give. It is an ignorant misuse of the phrase. Compare Luke 12:20; 14:25. We cannot have two masters; and are bound as Christians to imitate the God of grace. If not faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who shall entrust to us the true? and if we have not been faithful in what is Another’s, who shall give us our own—what we are to share with Christ? We are called to follow in His steps, who though rich for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich.