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Contrary to the way of life Jesus taught for His followers, the elder son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son was judgmental, condemning, and unforgiving. He epitomized the Jewish leaders. But do many professing Christian today also show the elder son’s attitude? Background image by Barbara Bonanno from Pixabay

In part 3, we saw how Jesus used the parable of Luke 15 as a way to warn the Jews who lived in His time. We also saw how those warnings were fulfilled. Now, in this final installment, let’s look at why Jesus’ warnings in the Parable of the Prodigal Son are so important to Christians today.

“they were written for our admonition”

You might wonder about the significance of knowing what happened to the Jews of Jesus’ generation. Is this information that we learned in the last installment important to us as Christians today? Yes! Why? Because the New Testament says this about Israel: “Now all these things happened to them by way of example, and they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:11).

Israel Was a Type

All that happened to Israel happened for our admonition. The Greek word translated as “example” in that passage is tupos, the word from which we get the English word “type.” As Young’s Literal Translation translates the verse: “And all these things as types did happen to those persons, and they were written for our admonition, to whom the end of the ages did come” (1 Corinthians 10:11).

Israel under the Old Covenant typified Christianity under the New Covenant. Israel was the type, and Christianity is the antitype. Paul gives some examples. The Israelites, by being under the cloud and passing through the sea typified baptism (1 Corinthians 10:1-2). Eating the manna and drinking the water that sprang from the rock typified Christians’ spiritually partaking of Christ through belief (read John 6:47-58 and notice the equivalence between “he who believes in me has eternal life” and “he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life”).

Paul goes on to tell of how most of the people of Israel who left Egypt fell in the wilderness because of their faithlessness as revealed in their evil deeds (see 1 Corinthians 10:1-12). This typifies that, walking amongst the Body of Christ, there are always some unbelievers. But more specifically, it pictures large-scale defection from the faith. Almost that entire generation apostatized, and God made everyone wander in the wilderness for forty years until they died off. Hundreds of years later, Israel and Judah each individually fell into apostasy, and God had them taken captive by Assyria and Babylon. We should see these as typical and for our admonition.

Again, in Jesus’ generation, the Jews were apostate. As we saw in part 3, Jesus warned them and pointed out their misconduct, including in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But they didn’t listen. Continuing to think of themselves as righteous and God’s nation, they plotted against the Messiah God sent them. Idolizing their place and nation (John 11:48), they maneuvered the Roman government into arresting and crucifying Jesus, and seeking to ingratiate themselves to get what they wanted, they declared, “We have no king but Caesar!” That was open rebellion against God, as they should at least have had a general idea that God was their king (see 1 Samuel 8:6-7). Continuing in their stubborn ways, persecuting Jesus’ followers who pleaded with them for forty years, God destroyed them, their city, their Temple, and their nation.

The events in the history of typological Israel should make us reflect on Christian forays into politics and collaborating with those who revere their nation and leaders. Political-Christian alliances happened during the Middle Ages and, again, soon after the start of the Reformation, and there is a popular call for them again today. Ought we not be concerned about what Rome’s capturing Jerusalem and destroying the Temple with fire might typify in Christianity?

Israel’s multiple apostasies show that apostasy is always a peril in Christianity. Through the centuries, along with the many truly faithful elect, there have always been false brethren mixed in whom Jude describes as “hidden rocky reefs in your love feasts” (Jude 12). Jesus’ parables of the Sower, the Tares of the Field, and the Dragnet tell us that, until the harvest at the end, we will have these shallow, fruitless people among us. It’s when they become numerous, dominant, and attain leadership that things can get rough for true believers. For example, Christianity suffered massive apostasy in the fourth century with what many call the Constantinian shift. Rome first persecuted Christianity, then tolerated it, and then, in 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica, made it the state church. That’s when Christianity, with the exception of a small remnant, morphed into another religion—Catholicism. The tares had become dominant and controlling, and they persecuted those who stood for the faith, subjecting them to whipping, racking, having their tongues cut out, and, if they didn’t recant, execution.

As the Jews had earlier done, the Catholic Christians adopted the Roman Caesar as their king. A primary characteristic of that religion was its suppression of the reading of Scripture by the common people. A period of spiritual darkness followed. Writing centuries later, in his The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther considered that, much as Babylon had physically captured Israel, Roman Catholicism had spiritually captured the church. Luther shed light into that spiritually dark world by, among other things, translating the Bible into German. Translations by other people into common languages, including English, followed. The ensuing Reformation was a blow to Catholicism that allowed people to rediscover many biblical truths. Yet, it wasn’t long before the Reformed leaders were torturing and executing those they called Anabaptists because they refused to accept the Reformers’ magisterial power.

Are we again in a time of apostasy? Are even the elect being led astray because they’re not taking the initiative to study the Scriptures themselves (see John 6:45), and are allowing themselves to be led astray by leaders preaching health and wealth, nationalism, politics, and moralism? If so, will a spiritual captivity follow? Or is the institutional church already both apostate and captive to a false religion that covets worldly power? Perhaps, following the typology of AD 70, what comes next is the antitype of burning and destruction.­

Jesus’ Warning for Twenty-First-Century Christians

How can a parable designed to warn first-century Jewish religious leaders and those who followed them apply to the twenty-first century? First, we must see if there are parallels between the first-century people it applied to and a class of people today. Second, we must check whether the warning is still a valid one.

	1st Century Judaism	21st Century U.S. Evangelical Christianity
Works Oriented	√	√
Legalistic	√	√
Moralistic	√	√
Judgmental	√	√
A Mentality of Walls Against “Others”	√	√
Xenophobic	√	√
Protective of Position Held by Its Race and Religion	√	√
Nationalistic	√	√
Seeking Political Power	√	√
Trusting in Human Leaders	√	√
Willing to Turn to Violence	√	√

Obviously, some individual Evangelicals and churches don’t fit this checklist. But, sadly, from what I’ve been seeing, many of the prominent leaders and churches meet most or even all of these points. In fact, I have on this website addressed just about all of these characteristics as problems in the modern, Evangelical church.

Now, I’m going to compare these traits with what Jesus teaches:

21st Century U.S. Evangelical Christianity	Biblical Christianity
Works Oriented	Grace Oriented
Legalistic	Gospel Centered
Moralistic	Loving
Judgmental	Forgiving
A Mentality of Walls Against “Others”	No Partition
Xenophobic	“you took me in”
Protective of Position Held by Its Race and Religion	Servant Attitude
Nationalistic	Neither Jew nor Greek…
Seeking Political Power	Citizenship in Heaven
Trusting in Human Leaders	Trusting in Christ Alone
Willing to Turn to Violence	Turning the Other Cheek, Loving their Enemies

What we’re now seeing in America—and, increasingly in the rest of the world—is an apostasy from the teachings of Jesus Christ to a dogma that spins moralism with prosperity and faithfulness to God with patriotism. It is akin to the works-oriented, self-righteous, nationalism held by the first-century Pharisees.

We must understand what’s at stake. This is not a time to play pattycake with the purveyors of false doctrine. God took the kingdom away from the Jews of Jesus’ generation and destroyed those people for the very spirit now displayed by much of the church—and especially the American church. We’re now nearly two-thousand years after Jesus warned the Pharisees that their self-righteousness, judgementalism, lack of forgiveness, desire for political control, and arrogance would lead to their downfall, and we have “Christian Pharisees” in the pulpit and in government proudly displaying these same faults.

The Values of Antichrist

Of course, the Christian Right, the Christian Conservative Movement, the Evangelical Nationalists, or whatever you want to call them, excuse their actions by saying that they are trying to restore “Christian values” with the goal of winning God’s blessings. This goal, however, exposes the platform of the Christian Right as being a form of the prosperity gospel. This, in turn, is merely a “Christianized” expression of the unregenerate mind’s attempt to gain favor with a god through works that most primitive and pagan religions practice.

The dealers of this carnally minded religion, which they misidentify as Christianity, ought to follow this instruction of Jesus Christ: “But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). Notice that in this one sentence, Jesus not only destroys the works foundation of this false gospel, but He also echoes the message of Luke 15. God is saving the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the profligate son. He is bringing them into His kingdom while leaving on the outside those who consider themselves the citadels of decency to smugly insulate themselves in their moral superiority.

The goals of the elder son and the Pharisees

Instead of trusting his father’s grace, the elder son wanted to earn merit with his father by his works of righteousness. If he really wanted to glorify his father, he would have repented at his father’s correction. Instead, he had set up his own religious system, and he expected his father to conform to it.

What about the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ generation? Although they were trying to be meticulous about keeping the law, were they doing it for God’s glory? No. If they had honestly searched their Scriptures, they should have known that God wasn’t pleased with that. They were doing it for their own glory. Did they hold exclusionist opinions of themselves and exceptionalist views of their nation because God told them to? No. They did it to set themselves up as superior and remain comfortable in their own society without having to rub shoulders with people of other cultures. And their actions, including delivering their Messiah to the Romans, showed they had a political agenda. They wanted to manipulate the Roman leaders in order to preserve their place and their nation (John 11:48). In other words, their goal was Jewish Nationalism.

You can see this same pattern in the Christian Right. They twist Scripture to preach a works-oriented, moralistic, Christianity that is devoid of compassion, hostile to immigrants, admiring of wealth and power, gun-loving, war-hawkish, and rewarding of white, affluent, American values.

The goal of Christian Conservatism

Christian Conservatives often say they want to restore “Christian values.” What are these values they want to restore? Are they really biblical?

Do these values include feeding the hungry, caring for the stranger, housing the homeless, clothing the poor, giving medical care to the sick, helping the prisoners, loving their enemies? These are the values Jesus explicitly stated should be those of His followers (Matthew 5:44; 25:31-46). Yet, they are also the very things the Christian Right manifestly works against. The goal of these people—professing to be Christians but working for worldly ends through a political party or candidate—is obvious. It is not the glory of God or the Good News of the glory of Christ or the spreading abroad of God’s love in their hearts.

The Christian Right has been working to manipulate political power so as to secure their place as the established church—whether formalized by law or de facto. In return for getting what they want, they will mingle the idolization of the nation into their worship so that their followers see the reverence of God and nation as inextricably linked. In other words, their goal is the gaining, retaining, and wielding of power through Christian Nationalism. And, we mustn’t forget that white Evangelicals dominate Christian Nationalism, so that their idea of “others” is anyone who is not them. Christian Nationalism is a movement with an agenda that is against what Jesus Christ wants. It wants to figuratively rebuild the middle wall of partition. Christian Nationalism is not only not Christian, but works so contrary to the Spirit of Christ that it is the spirit of antichrist.

Christian Nationalism’s goal—like the goal of the elder son, like the goal of the Jewish leaders, and like the goal of the Catholic Church that once ruled through the defunct Holy Roman Empire—is not God’s glory. With the ostensible aim of obtaining God’s favor on the nation, Christian Nationalism seeks the political power to suppress through law what fits its ideas of immorality and to maintain that position of dominion. All the while, it does not see the plank in its own eye. This is apostasy, idolatry, merciless hatred, and hypocrisy.

To many of its adherents, Christian Nationalism looks like Christianity, so that they think they’re following Christ. But it’s a deceptive appearance (notice the “two horns like a lamb” and the “deceives my own people” [at least for a time] in Revelation 13:11-18). Christian Nationalism is really just the lackey of what is now apparently mainstream Republicanism, which is itself merely the American image through which global corporatism expresses its political desires in the United States.

As many readers know, I have always refrained from any sort of political taking sides or outright endorsement or condemnation of a political party or candidate in an election. But, by swallowing the doctrine of Christian Nationalism and receiving its beliefs into the party’s platform, the Republican Party has made itself into a virtual religious sect, or, more accurately, a pseudo-Christian cult. As such, it has opened up itself and its members who espouse Christian Nationalism to evaluation, criticism, and polemics from Christians.

Christian Nationalism is a rejection of God

When, during the time of Samuel, the people wanted to have a king, God plainly said that by wanting a human king, “they have rejected me as the king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). The principle is clear: When those who claim to be God’s people seek to set up worldly authority and human leaders to achieve their ends, they are turning from God and, by definition, apostatizing and committing spiritual prostitution. We are to have no king (or other worldly authority) but Christ. We are to obey the already established human government, but we do so because Christ through the writings of His apostles tells us to do so. We are obeying Christ. But we are not to seek to elect people or to put into effect a political agenda to achieve what we believe to be Christian goals. That is faithlessly turning from Christ.

Christian Nationalism is a carnal, faithless apostasy. I expect that, just as God has destroyed all past apostasies as spiritual prostitution, so, if Christian Nationalism continues, He will destroy it. I’m not saying this as a prophet, but simply as a student of God’s Word and an observer of history. And, I’m not saying it will or will not be a physical destruction, but I believe God will bring it and all involved in it to ruin and shame.

Apocalyptic Warning

The Book of Revelation shows a repeating pattern in history from John’s time until Christ returns to judge the world and usher in the New Heavens and New Earth. As the Jews held the position of God’s nation on earth but exhibited self-righteous judgmentalism and a lust for worldly power instead of grace, and as the Catholic Church claimed to be God’s spiritual nation but corrupted the grace of the Gospel to legalistic ritual and coveted worldly power, so now we live in a time when those who promote themselves as Christian Nationalists may become the latest to fulfill these apocalyptic warnings.

He said to me, “The waters which you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages. The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the prostitute, and will make her desolate, and will make her naked, and will eat her flesh, and will burn her utterly with fire.

Revelation 17:15-16

Here is what the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary says about Revelation 17:16:

As Jerusalem used the world power to crucify her Saviour, and then was destroyed by that very power, Rome; so the Church, having apostatized to the world, shall have judgment executed on her first by the world power, the beast and his allies; and these afterwards shall have judgment executed on them by Christ Himself in person. So Israel leaning on Egypt, a broken reed, is pierced by it; and then Egypt itself is punished. So Israel’s whoredom with Assyria and Babylon was punished by the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. So the Church when it goes a-whoring after the word [sic—should be “world”] as if it were the reality, instead of witnessing against its apostasy from God, is false to its profession. Being no longer a reality itself, but a sham, the Church is rightly judged by that world which for a time had used the Church to further its own ends, while all the while “hating” Christ’s unworldly religion, but which now no longer wants the Church’s aid.

I cannot see the result of the course of these things as anything but destruction unless, by the mercy of God, this madness stops.

What Should You Do?

So, what should you do? Having been saved entirely by grace in the pattern of the younger son, don’t be tempted to stumble into the mindset of the elder son. You were the lost sheep; you were the lost coin; you were the prodigal son. Remember 1 Timothy 1:15: “The saying is faithful and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” When you look at the behavior of the unbelievers around you, keep in mind that the only essential difference between them and you is that Jesus Christ washed, sanctified, and justified you (1 Corinthians 6:11). He could not have done that if you, like the elder son, had stood your ground as a self-righteous law-keeper.

You should also bear in mind that Christians slinging accusations and epithets or enacting laws against you or erecting walls to stop you wouldn’t have helped your conversion one bit, and may even have been a stumbling block. Have nothing whatsoever to do with Christian Nationalism. Separate from it. Warn others. Tell people of “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all those who believe” (Romans 3:22). Be an example of Christ’s love in your life. Don’t be judgmental of others, but show Christ’s love to them. Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

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