Luke 15:24 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

This my son was dead. — The words, looked at merely as part of the story, have a wonderful pathos. Absence, alienation, the self-chosen shame, this had made the father think of the son as “dead.” Death would indeed have been far easier to bear. Spiritually, we are taught that repentance is nothing less than the passing from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, from the “graves of lust” (Numbers 11:34) to the power of the resurrection. The “lost” and “found” appear as furnishing the link that connects this with the preceding parables, and makes the trilogy, as it were, complete.