Luke 15:11
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons.
BSB
ASV
And he said, A certain man had two sons:
KJV
And he said, A certain man had two sons:
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
You see that the divine inheritance is given to those who ask. You should not think that the Father was guilty because he gave to the younger son. There is no frail age in the kingdom of God nor is faith weighed down by years. He who made the request surely judged himself worthy. If only he had not departed from his Father, he would not have known the hindrance of age.
They are sometimes ranked with harlots ( Matt. xxi. 32 ); here and elsewhere with sinners, such as were openly vicious, that traded with harlots, known rakes. Some think that the sinners here meant were heathen, and that Christ was now on the other side Jordan, or in Galilee of the Gentiles.
And he said - Jesus, to illustrate still farther the sentiment which he had uttered, and to show that it was proper to rejoice over repenting sinners, proceeds to show it by a most beautiful and instructive parable. We shall see its beauty and propriety by remembering that the “design” of it was simply to “justify his conduct in receiving sinners,” and to show that to rejoice over their return was proper. This he shows by the feelings of a “father” rejoicing over the “return” of an ungrateful and dissipated son.
