Gratitude; Rejoicing in Restoration.
(Luke 15:25–32)

The music was already swelling when the elder brother approached the house. Rejoicing drifted through the air along with the scent of roasted calf. Inside, the father had opened the storeroom of joy. A son once dead was alive, once lost was found. Yet one voice refused to join in the chorus: the brother who had never left.

Ingratitude begins as a whisper: “I’ve been overlooked.” The elder son could not restrain himself. “This son of yours came, who has devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf!” (v. 30). Notice the language: this son of yours. In one breath, ingratitude severed the tie of brotherhood. The repentant prodigal became a stranger, and the elder brother became judge.

Restoration requires rejoicing with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15), but ingratitude demands a ledger: What have I received? What has he lost? The father’s answer should have been enough: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (v. 31). But ingratitude counts deficits.

He overlooked existing blessings the way a man starves beside a banquet. Every day he had walked the fields that were already his, and had eaten from tables never denied him. Yet ingratitude rewrote history: “these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid…” (v. 29). The lie is breathtaking. He had not been a slave but a son. He had not been denied but entrusted. Ingratitude turned sonship into servitude and generosity into grudge.

The elder brother’s complaint was not about goats or calves; it was about merit. I stayed. I worked. I deserved. The prodigal’s return exposed the elder’s idolatry. Bitterness judges repentance and finds it wanting (cf. Hebrews 12:15). The father’s feast became an offense because it celebrated restoration without recognition for himself.

Worst of all, his ingratitude led to a self-imposed separation from the repentant. The prodigal had come home repentant, rehearsing confession. The father had run, embraced, restored. But the elder brother refused to cross the threshold. His ingratitude built a wall where none existed. The repentant son was inside, clothed in the best robe, ring on his finger, sandals on his feet. The unrepentant brother stood outside, arms crossed, heart closed. The father left the rejoicing to plead with him; a heartbreaking moment of reversal. His prodigal son was inside, but his faithful son was now outside.

We never learn if the elder brother ever softened, we’re left to examine ourselves. When someone returns, when someone repents, when someone is restored, will we stand outside, cataloging slights? Or will we hear the music, remember the blessings, and join the rejoicing (Luke 15:7)?

Agape
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