The Prodigal Son Allegory

Parables are stories with meaning behind them. Parables in the bible always have a bibilical meaning or moral to the story. In the bible they always illustrate something God wants the people to hear, but if a person was to read one without knowning it was biblical they could get a different meaning from it.

Biblical Meaning

The Prodigal Son

The biblical meaning behind this parable is that God forgives, the same way the father in the story did. No matter how lost you get, you can always come home. No matter how far you get from God, you can always come back to Him. And he won't have hard feelings when you come back, He'll be happy and excited, kill the fattened calf for you. It's doesn't matter how badly you sin, He'll welcome you back with open arms. It's a very encouraging story for people who know the biblical meaning behind it.

What's a parable?

How this can apply today?

The prodigal son is a parable in the bible, it's found in chapter fifteen of Luke. The parable is pretty long, it's about a man and his two sons. One of the sons decides that he wants to leave home, so he asks for his inheritence and leaves. He spends all his money and then a famine occurs. Now he's very poor, and has nothing so he gets a job feeding pigs. He eats pig food and lives very poorly, then he realizes that his fathers servants are doing better than him. He decides to go home and ask his father to be a servant. When his father sees him, he runs to him and hugs him. He tells his servants to kill the fattened calf because his son is home. Then his other son, the one that has stayed with him and helped him with everything, get really mad. He get's mad because he's been there, he never left, but his father never threw a party for him. But now when his brother comes back from blowing all his inheritence on women and gambling, his father kills the fattened calf and has a big party. The father responds by saying "Son, you've always been here, you have everything of mine, but your brother was lost, and now he's found, so we have to celebrate.

If a person was to read this today without knowning the biblical meaning they could take it a number of different ways. The first part could represent spending your money wisely. This saying is used all the time in our society, because once it's gone, it's gone. The son in the story didn't use his money wisely and ended up in poverty. Another interpretation could be that it doesn't matter how much you have, or don't have. It could represent this because the father loved his son when he was there, and he loved him when he was poor, it didn't matter. Another way it could be taken is that you should forgive anyone who wrongs or hurts you. In the parable the father forgives the son, and welcomes him home, even though he blew all of his money on girls, gambling and useless stuff. There's also a bigger meaning, It's saying that you're never too late. The first son was always there, he got his share, but the other son came back to his roots and they celebrated. It's also saying that sometimes you need to go out and make mistakes in order to grow. The older son played it safe and stayed home, he didn't learn nearly as much as his brother did. His brothers mistakes brought him closer to his family. Not all of life's lessons are learned by playing it safe, sometimes you have to learn the toughest lessons by experience.

The Prodigal Son Allegory