The parable of the prodigal son is often read as a story of return — a wayward child welcomed home by a faithful father (Luke 15:11–32). But lived experience complicates that image. Sometimes the child stays. Sometimes the parent disappoints. Sometimes both do. And sometimes the ache comes not from distance alone, but from the quiet realization that no one in the story stands clean (Romans 3:23).
Scripture does not deny disappointment, but neither does it grant us permission to use it as a refuge. Pain explains much — but it cannot carry the weight of identity forever (2 Corinthians 5:16). When disappointment becomes the lens through which every failure is interpreted, it quietly turns into an alibi. A way of sharing the blame for choices that still belong to us (Ezekiel 18:20).
This is where enemy-love becomes difficult — not because it asks too much compassion, but because it strips away comparison. The reluctance to love enemies is often rooted less in fear than in pride: the need to believe that while we may be flawed, we are still better. More aware. More justified. Less guilty (Luke 18:9–14). Enemy-love dismantles that posture by refusing to let another person carry the weight of our failures (Matthew 5:44).
Jesus levels the ground. When He speaks of family, He does not divide the world into righteous insiders and failed outsiders. He points instead to obedience shaped by humility — a belonging not built on contrast, but on surrender (Matthew 12:50; Philippians 2:3–5). In that light, enemies are no longer scapegoats, and the “least” are not merely those beneath us. We discover something more unsettling: we are often the least we resist loving (Matthew 25:40).
This does not erase responsibility. Parents fail. Children fail. Wounds are real (Psalm 34:18). But redemption does not begin by ranking guilt — it begins by owning it (1 John 1:8–9). Forgiveness becomes possible when we release others from being the explanation for who we are, and accept responsibility for who we are becoming (Galatians 6:5).
Christ does not enter the story to assign fault more accurately, but to redeem what pride cannot repair (Romans 5:8). At the cross, no one stands above another (Galatians 3:28). We are not prodigals to each other, but to God — and it is our nearness or distance from His love that shapes how we love one another (Luke 15:20; 1 John 4:19).
Wholeness does not require that every relationship be resolved, or every sorrow acknowledged. It requires a heart no longer invested in moral distance (Ephesians 2:14–16). When we love without comparison — without leverage — we begin to see clearly: the ground is level, grace is sufficient, and redemption is not a verdict against others, but an invitation for all (2 Corinthians 12:9; Titus 2:11).
Two of A Broken Kind
I’ve said the words before but I’ve not felt them like I do now
When forgiveness was a theory I professed but didn’t quite know how
When you cease to be my scapegoat in place of the Sacrificial Lamb
I abandon my defenses and come to terms with who you are and who I am
You are not the enemy nor am I, despite our broken ways
When we’re both of us culpable of grieving the Father’s heart and squandering our days
When forgiving you is a lesson in learning to forgive myself
I fall on my own sword to sever ties with the ways the both of us have failed
Enemy in the mirror of these eyes reflecting back at me
Learning to look beyond the scars that fabricate a false sense of my identity
Wearing drabs of resentment in the tensions of unresolved animosity
Todays the day of reckoning that I decide this isn’t who I want to be
Learning how to love you is learning how to love myself
When resentment found me drowning in my instigated need for help
Acting of my own volition then resigning my sins to the thought of you
This alibi is paper thin when self justification makes pride out to be a virtue
Owning up to it all in mutual disappointments that find me just as responsible for all the ways I hurt
For deeds, for thoughts, for actions, for every broken hearted word
To hate you is to hate myself when we’ve our reasons to self destruct and blame
No one wins in the end when we keep playing the accusers game
Falling short, when I’m not prodigal to you and you’re not prodigal to me
We are both of us prodigal to the same God and you are not my enemy
Least of these by how we esteem one another on the premise of the betrayed
Negligence is mutual as suffering we for the choices that we made
I love you and I miss you and evermore I’ve prayed
Reconciliation pulling us together for all the ways we’ve strayed
Prodigals we are, like father like son when we inherit a common sense of nature, frailty prone
We’re not so different after all and we’re only truly prodigals to God alone…
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