The Savior as the Prodigal Son

Elder Gong posted on the Church website how he hears the Savior, and in it he made this interesting statement about the parable of the prodigal son: “I feel particularly drawn to a verse in the parable of the prodigal son where the Lord expresses His love for those of us who feel lost. The Lord says, ‘For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found’ (Luke 15:24). What I’ve come to feel in a deep, deep way is that the first part of the verse refers to our Savior: ‘For this my son was dead, and is alive again.’ Our Savior lives! And because He lives, we are never lost. The second part of the verse states, ‘He was lost, and is found.’ This part reminds me that because of our Savior’s sacrifice, we can always be found.” Certainly it is not hard to see how the statement “he was lost, and is found” is symbolic for all as we week to be “found” by the Savior and brought back to our Father. In that sense we are all the prodigal son in the story, separated from our Father and working to come back to Him as we overcome sin and death. As for the phrase “For this my son was dead, and is alive again,” it is easy to apply this to the Savior if we take the sentence by itself. But in the story this is referring to the prodigal son who wasted his days in riotous living. Can his story really be symbolic of the Savior?

               While not everything about the prodigal son’s story matches up with the Savior’s life, I believe that we can see a connection between the two and understand the story on a different level. The story starts with a separation of the son from his father, “The younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country” (Luke 15:13). In the same manner, the Savior left his Father to come to earth, a very “far country” away from the heavens indeed. He too had great “wealth” in terms of His status in heaven, and it was essentially lost as He came to earth. In other words, He chose to give up His high station to come in humility to the earth. Whereas the prodigal wasted his wealth and the Savior gave His up, the result was the same for both: they were left in a humble position without what they once had had. The prodigal’s state was so low that he spent his time with the pigs—there is perhaps no earthly position more humiliating than that. And the Savior “descended below them all,” choosing the most lowly status of all as He took upon Him the sins of all mankind (Doctrine and Covenants 122:8). The story tells us of the young man, “And no man gave unto him” (Luke 15:16). He was totally alone and without help. In a similar manner, ultimately the Savior was rejected by nearly all around Him: “I came unto my own, and my own received me not” (3 Nephi 9:16). Even when He suffered in the garden with His three closest associates, they fell asleep on Him. After this experience, Matthew recorded, “Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled” (Matt. 26:56). Christ was utterly alone to finish His mission and work out the great atoning sacrifice for us all. The prodigal nearly did “perish with hunger,” but the Savior did actually perish—not with hunger but under the weight of all the sins of the world. The prodigal after this great turning point, like a rebirth, “arose, and came to his father” (Luke 15:20). Similarly, the Savior too arose from the dead and went to His Father. To Mary He declared, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17). And this statement then works perfectly as a description of the Savior from the eyes of the Father: “For this my son was dead, and is alive again” (Luke 15:24). The prodigal son suffered because he sinned, whereas the Savior suffered because He chose to leave His divine station to come among the children of men, but in both cases they arose again out of that suffering to go to the Father. And because of Christ so too can we no matter what the cause of our trials are here on earth.