And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.
And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. Mark the term, "Father." Though "no more worthy to be called his son," the prodigal sinner is taught to claim the degraded and defiled, but still existing relationship, asking, not to be made a servant, but remaining a son to be made "as a servant," willing to take the lowest place and do the meanest work. Ah! and is it come to this? Once it was, 'Any place rather than home.' Now, 'O that home! could I but dare to hope that the door of it would not be closed against me, how gladly should I take any place and do any work, happy only to be there at all!' Well, that is conversion-nothing absolutely new, yet all new; old familiar things seen in a new light, and for the first time as realities of overwhelming magnitude and power. By what secret super-natural power upon the heart this change upon the sinner's views and feelings is effected, the parable says not, and could not say, without an incongruous and confusing mixture of the figure and thing figured-the human story and the spiritual reality couched under it. We have that, however, abundantly elsewhere, (Philippians 2:13; 1 Corinthians 15:10, etc.) The one object of the parable is to paint the glad WELCOME HOME of the greatest sinners, when-no matter for the present how-they "arise and go to their father."