<p>15:31 <i>And he said to him: Son, you are ever with me, and all that is mine is yours</i>- See on :29. Who does the father represent? The context for the three stories is the Lord Jesus justifying his eating with sinners. The fact that the father had received the sinful younger brother is phrased in the same way as the Pharisees&rsquo; complaint about the Lord Jesus receiving sinners (Lk. 15:2 = Lk. 15:27). And each of the stories involve a closing scene featuring a joyful meal of celebration. The father would appear therefore to refer to Jesus; and yet clearly enough we are intended to see the father as also our Heavenly Father. I don&rsquo;t go for the primitive equation &lsquo;Jesus = God&rsquo;. I&rsquo;m not a Trinitarian. So I take this to be an exemplification of how &ldquo;God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their iniquities unto them&rdquo; (2 Cor. 5:19). Notice in how many ways the father humiliates himself before everyone, and breaks all traditional Jewish expectations to do so. He gives the younger son what he asks, and more than the Law allowed; he runs to meet the son; he accepts the son; he leaves the banquet where he is the host in order to plead with his older son; he doesn&rsquo;t discipline either of his sons as expected. He makes a fool of himself time and again, upsetting Jewish rules and norms. And the younger son pestering the father to divide up the inheritance may indicate that the father was about to die. Likewise, when the father says to the older son that he gives him there and then all that is his&hellip; this is language only really appropriate if the father is about to die, or has actually died. Does not all this speak of the cross as the basis for the Father&rsquo;s love, grace and acceptance? That there, God was in Christ to reconcile us to Himself, not imputing sin to us&hellip; there the Father was humiliated in Christ, made a fool of, ridiculed. The Almighty God came this low&hellip; to the public shame and death of the cross. The suffering of God in the cross was all about rejected and unaccepted love; and so it is to this day.</p><p>Much homework awaits someone to work out all the times when the Lord was speaking <i>to Himself</i> in the parables, through the elements of unreality. Perhaps He saw Himself tempted to be like the elder brother in the Prodigal parable, who was &ldquo;always&rdquo; in the Father&rsquo;s house (as Jesus per Jn. 8:35) and &lsquo;everything the father has is his&rsquo; is the very wording of Jn. 17:10. Or is it co-incidence that the only time the Greek word translated &quot;choked&quot; is used outside the sower parable, it's about the crowds 'thronging' Jesus (Lk. 8:14,42- note how they're in the same chapter and section of the Lord's life)? Was the Lord not aware of how the pressure of the crowds, whom He carefully tried to avoid, could choke His own spiritual growth? Was it for this reason that He begged those He cured not to generate big crowds to throng Him? And thus yet another layer of the Lord's mind and thinking will be revealed to us.</p>