the role of the lukan parables in terms of the purpose of luke's gospel

understand his father’s generous and unmerited actions. After all, his obstinacy makes him
fail to feel his father’s love, even to find the fact that he has been living in the shade of his
father, “Son, you are always with me.” But if having discarded his own standpoint, he stands
in his father’s position with love and compassion towards his younger son, he will obviously
understand the grace offered without any cost and unconditional forgiveness. In the case of
the preceding two parables, he is to treasure the mind of the shepherd and the woman who
place tremendous value on their lost one. The open-end of the parable makes the invitation to
the audience all the more strong. Jesus’ aim is not to rebuke, but to persuade. 153
Having
abandoned their grumbling, will they join in celebrating God’s feast which comes with Jesus’
ministry?
Thirdly, the purpose of the parable lies in the father’s love and compassion. At the
heart of the parable is the father’s love towards his sons in which the father deals impartially
with his sons. His love not only enables repentance for the younger son, but could also
prospectively, demolish the elder son’s hostility and grievances and elicit participation in the
celebration. Along this line of analogy, God, whom Jesus represents in his ministry, is
identical with the forgiving and merciful father presented in the parable.
Finally, if we can elicit a subsidiary theme from the parable, it is an attitude to and use of
wealth and possessions. The younger son squanders his inheritance in loose living. The elder
son expresses a complaint about his father throwing a great feast for the scoundrel, while the
father generously uses his property, not only to restore his younger son but to celebrate the
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return of his younger son.
153. Hunter, Interpreting the Parables, 61; L. Goppelt, Theology of the New Testament (2 vols.; ed., J. Roloff;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), Ι, 136.
154. Helmut Thielcke, The Waiting Father (London: J. Clarke; New York: Harper and Bros, 1959), 17-40;
Eduard Schweizer, The Good News according to Luke (Atlanta: John Knox; Lundon: SPCK, 1984), 247-48;
Marshall, Luke, 604.
155. For more detail, See Eastman, “The Foolish Father and the Economics of Grace,” 402-405. It is also
possible, to some extent, to read two parables in the following chapter according to the economics of grace.
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