Day One

The Elder Brother’s Resentment

His Hypocrisy

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in”

— Luke 15:28, NIV

Sinners come in two basic vari­eties. Some don’t really care who sees what they do. Invari­ably their beset­ting sin is pride – the kind of pride that is seen in an undue love for one­self and uncon­trol­lable lust for self-indulgent pleasures.

At the other end of the spec­trum are secre­tive sin­ners, they pre­fer to sin when they think no one else is look­ing. They try to mask there more obvi­ous sin in var­i­ous ways – often with the pre­tense of reli­gion. Their beset­ting sin is also pride, but it’s the kind of pride that man­i­fest itself in hypocrisy.

Of the two types of sin­ners, the wan­ton sin­ner is much more likely than the sanc­ti­mo­nious sin­ner to face the real­ity of his own fal­l­en­ness, repent, and seek sal­va­tion. His sin is already uncov­ered. It is unde­ni­able. He has to face up to it. Not so with the Phar­isee. He will try as long as pos­si­ble to cam­ou­flage his immoral­ity, deny his guilt, dis­avow his need for redemp­tion, and declare his own righteousness.

In Jesus’ para­ble, the prodi­gal son obvi­ously rep­re­sents open sin­ners – the rebels, the dessolute, the debauched, the delib­er­ately immoral peo­ple who make no pre­tense of faith in God or love for Him. In other words, the char­ac­ter of the prodi­gal is a sym­bol for those whom we encounter back in verse one: “the tax col­lec­tors and sin­ners” – soci­eties out­cast. Such peo­ple start out by run­ning as far away as pos­si­ble from God. They have no innate love for Him. They desire no rela­tion­ship with him. They want noth­ing to do with His law or his author­ity. They have no inter­est in ful­fill­ing some­one else’s expec­ta­tions or demands – espe­cially God’s. They want no account­abil­ity to Him what­so­ever. They don’t even want to retain Him in their thoughts.

As Jesus con­tin­ues with his para­ble, it becomes obvi­ous that the sec­ond (and oppo­site) kind of sin­ner is epit­o­mized by the elder brother.

Read Luke 15:25–30.

Describe what the elder brother looked like on the outside.

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Describe what the elder brother looked like on the inside.

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The elder brother is an emblem of all the seem­ingly hon­or­able super­fi­cial moral, or out­wardly reli­gious sin­ners – peo­ple just like the scribes and Phar­isees . Here is a sin­ner that thinks hypocrisy is as good as real right­eous­ness. What he looks like on the out­side cloaks a seething rebel­lion on the inside.

The elder son is the one who embod­ies the parable’s main les­son. He is a pic­ture of the reli­gious hypocrite.

The elder son is the third major char­ac­ter in the para­ble, and as it turns out, he is the one who embod­ies the parable’s main les­son. His most obvi­ous char­ac­ter­is­tic is his resent­ment for his younger brother. But under­neath that, and even more omi­nously, it is clear that he has been nur­tur­ing a qui­etly smol­der­ing hatred for the father – a long, long time, it appears. This secretly rebel­lious spirit has shaped and molded his char­ac­ter in a most dis­turb­ing way.

Peo­ple often assume that the elder son rep­re­sents a true believer, faith­ful all his life but sud­denly caught off guard by his father’s gen­eros­ity to the way­ward brother and there­fore a lit­tle bit resent­ful. By that inter­pre­ta­tion the elder brother really needs noth­ing more than just an atti­tude adjustment.

That inter­pre­ta­tion misses the whole point of the para­ble, though. The elder son has never truly been devoted to his father. He is a pic­ture of the reli­gious hyp­ocrite. He is the Pharisee-figure in Jesus’ story. He prob­a­bly had the whole vil­lage sin­cerely believ­ing that he was a “good” son – very respect­ful and faith­ful to his father. He pre­tended to be a loyal son. But in real­ity, he had no gen­uine respect for his father, no inter­est in what pleased his father, no love for the fathers val­ues, and no con­cern for his needy younger brother. That all becomes very clear as the story unfolds.

The elder brother turns out to be just as lost and hope­lessly enslaved to sin as his brother ever was. He just won’t admit that – not to him­self, or to any­one else.

Read 1 John 1:6–10.

What false claims do hyp­ocrites make about themselves?

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What true claims does God make about hypocrites?

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