Love Wins (7)

Chapter 7 of Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, is entitled “The Good News is Better Than That.” I want to focus on how heaven and hell are conceived in this chapter.

The first big point is that heaven and hell are about separation. It is based on choice and how one conceives of this situation before the Father.

Bell utilizes the Parable of the Prodigal Son to make his point. But to use this story to prove that the Father’s love is universally dispensed no matter what a person believes or practices is to engage in “eisegesis” and spurious hermeneutics. By this I mean, that the story as utilized by Luke in his gospel is being used to argue something totally foreign.

In the Lukan context, this parable is used as exhibit #3 to substantiate the claim against Jesus that “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” On this specific occasion tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathered around to hear Jesus.

The NIV correctly puts the word “sinners” in quotation marks. Who are the “sinners” in Luke’s gospel? Simply,  they are the disenfranchised. They are the beggars, the lame, the lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, and any others who might be perceived as “low-life.” Jesus’ life touched the untouchables.

Yes, Jesus sits down and eats with untouchables.

Yes, Jesus wants to touch the untouchables.

The parable of the Prodigal Son gives us another dimension of an untouchable—a wasteful, prodigal son who runs away from home, blows all of his money, and comes back home broke and dejected.

An extravagant Father’s love and a resentful, judging attitude of the older brother.

This contrast sharpens just how much Jesus goes to touch the lives of those who need him and those who do not think they need him!

This extravagant love of the Father is experienced by both sons. Both sons are part of the family already. When the son leaves home, with his inheritance in his pocket before its rightful time (and as some have pointed out was tantamount to spitting in his father’s face and one of the most disrespectful acts a son could engage in!), he goes into a distant country.  While there, the Father believes the son is “lost” and “dead.”

Listen to Luke’s closing of this parable:

 “’My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”(Luke 15:31-32)

What makes the extravagant love of the waiting Father (Helmut Theilicke’s phrase) such good news? Because of such bad news! The good news of the gospel is that God’s invitation to come home is universally offered to all who are “lost” and “dead.” For Luke, even those who have had it so good in the Father’s family and leave, they can still return to the outstretched arms of a forgiving Father.

We need to be careful and not take the edge off of this powerful parable! When the younger son becomes destitute, hungry and with no friends, the story says, “when he came to his senses” (Luke 15:17). Actually, the Greek phrase expresses “when he came to himself he said…” This goes one step deeper than just coming to his senses. It is a statement of repentance. It is an inner change of heart and direction in one’s life.

This is substantiated by  his further monologue: “I will set out and go back to my Father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”

Good news is only possible because we recognize the sin in our life. We recognize what we have done to ourselves and against our Father.

It is the bad news that makes the good news so good!

In Christian love, Curtis