An Empty Stomach Will Do

When the prodigal returns to his father’s house in the Lord’s parable in Luke 15, his motive is quite self-serving and pragmatic. “I perish here with hunger.” For all the insight we have into his thought processes, his resolve to confess his sin to his father may have had more to do with his empty stomach than an abiding sense of guilt or an accurate assessment of the scale of his own perfidy.

Even in the moment his father ran to meet him while he was still a long way off, it’s evident the son had no real concept of his father’s immense generosity of spirit and indomitable hope for the restoration of his child. He came expecting to be a hired servant and got the fatted calf treatment instead. Nor did he have a biblical measure of his own iniquity. Not only was he no longer worthy to be called son, his dreadful track record disqualified him from service as readily as it disqualified him from sonship. Happily, his own worth didn’t enter into it.

What matters most, of course, is that he went where he could be helped, not the reason why.

So it is with most of us when we come to faith. Our motives are invariably suboptimal and our thoughts about God and the nature of our salvation comparatively uninformed. It may be that some less-callused souls are drawn to faith by the loveliness of Christ; I just haven’t met any yet. Thankfully, crossing the line from death to life depends on confession and belief, not the accuracy of our knowledge about our situation or on the purity of our motives. A theologically correct view of the cost of our redemption or the wickedness of our own rebellion, let alone the depths of the Father’s love or the moral glories of the Son, awaits fuller instruction in the word of God, as do the emotions that sometimes accompany such revelations.

The sick don’t need to know their diagnosis in the correct medical terminology or what prestigious school the doctor on call graduated from, they only need to know where they can find the emergency room. That means that when we get on our knees before the Lord about our friends and family, we are not asking for the moon on their behalf, just the opening of blinded eyes and the unstopping of deaf ears. If repentance and faith are genuine, all the rest will follow in good time.

And as for motive, an empty stomach will suffice. The Father’s abounding love does the rest.