The Father Who Runs To You: Luke 15
The parable of the prodigal son is one of the most familiar stories Jesus ever told, but it is not mainly a story about a son who ran away. It is a story about a Father who runs.
“So he got up and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20 CSB)
Does God love me? If you have ever asked that question in the quiet, here is the answer the Bible gives: yes, and His love comes looking for you before you ever clean yourself up. Scripture shows a God who runs toward His children while they are still a long way off, and that is true whether your wandering was loud and obvious or quiet and respectable. The most important thing you can ever come to believe about God is His love for you.
Paul prayed the church would grasp it, and even then he reached for the biggest words he could find:
“I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge.” (Ephesians 3:17-19 CSB)
Length and width and height and depth. That is not the language of a God keeping His distance. That is the language of a God who comes. You can read the whole prayer in Ephesians 3 to feel how far Paul stretches for words.
God has always been the One who comes
Read the Bible from the beginning and you notice a pattern that never breaks. God came to Adam in the garden. God came to Noah. God came to Abraham. God came to Jacob. God came to Israel in Egypt when they had done nothing to earn it. Again and again, through the judges and the prophets, God came. The story of Scripture is not the story of people climbing up to God. It is the story of God coming down to meet people where they are.
And then, in the fullness of it, He came in Person.
“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.” (Hebrews 1:1-2 CSB)
Jesus told a parable about this, about an owner who sent messenger after messenger to a vineyard, and every one of them was turned away. Then the owner made a decision that should stop us cold. “Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said” (Matthew 21:37 CSB). He sent the Son into the very place the messengers had been killed. That is how far the love goes. That is the length and the depth Paul was straining to describe.
He comes to the ones far off and the ones standing right there
Here is the part of Luke 15 we tend to rush past. There are two lost sons in that story, not one.
The younger son is the obvious one. He took his share, left home, and wasted it. His lostness had an address and a smell. We know what to do with that kind of lost, we can see it. And notice the word Luke uses when the father spots him coming home. He was “filled with compassion” — a word that means moved in the gut, the deepest kind of visceral pity, not a polite sympathy from a safe distance.
The older son never left, and he was just as lost. He stayed home, kept the rules, and grew bitter. When his brother came back, he stood outside the celebration with his arms crossed. “Then he became angry and didn’t want to go in” (Luke 15:28 CSB). And notice what the Father did. He did not leave the younger son in the field and He did not leave the older son on the porch. “So his father came out and pleaded with him.” The Father came out twice. He ran to the one who ran away, and He walked out to the one who stayed and seethed. If you have ever mistaken rule-keeping for closeness to God, the older brother is worth a long look, and so is what Jesus really meant by righteousness.
“Son, he said to him, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:31-32 CSB)
So which one are you? Maybe you left, and you assume the door is shut. It is not, He is already running. Or maybe you never left, and somewhere along the way keeping the rules curdled into resentment, and you are standing outside your own Father’s joy. He is coming out to you too.
Does God still love me when I keep messing up?
This is where the question gets honest. It is easy to believe God loves people in general. It is hard to believe He loves you on the day you failed the same way for the hundredth time. But look again at the two sons. One sinned openly and one sinned quietly, and the Father came after both without waiting for either to fix himself first.
Isaiah said it plainly, and it covers both brothers at once.
“We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6 CSB)
All of us. Not just the ones whose wandering was dramatic. The quiet drifting counts too. And the same verse that names how lost we are names what God did about it, the punishment we earned, He laid on His Son. The running Father of Luke 15 is not sentimental. His compassion cost Him everything. This is the heart of the gospel, that we are both saved and loved, not one without the other.
Is this your image of God?
A lot of us carry an image of a God who is mostly disappointed. Arms folded. Waiting for us to come grovel back. That is not the God Jesus described. The God of Luke 15 sees us while we are still a long way off. He does not wait on the porch to be approached. He runs. And when that picture finally replaces the folded-arms one, it does not just comfort you, it changes you from the inside out.
So let the question sit with you. Is that your image of God? Because if the truest thing about Him is His love for you, then it changes how you pray, how you fail, how you come home. It is why Jesus taught us to pray to Him as Father in the first place.
Does God love you? He came to Adam. He came to Israel. He sent His Son. And He is still the One who comes.
Frequently asked questions about God’s love for you
Does God love me?
Yes. The Bible describes a God who comes looking for His children, not one who waits at a distance for them to earn their way back. Luke 15 pictures the Father running to meet the son while he is still far off, which is Jesus’s own picture of how God feels toward you.
Does God love me even though I keep sinning?
Yes, though His love is never approval of the sin. In Luke 15 the Father runs to the son who wasted everything and also comes out to the son who stayed home and grew bitter. Both were in the wrong, and He came after both. Isaiah 53:6 says the punishment we earned was laid on Jesus instead, which is love meeting sin head-on, not ignoring it.
Why does God love me?
Not because of anything you have done to deserve it. Ephesians 3 describes a love with length, width, height, and depth that surpasses knowledge, meaning its source is God’s own character, not your performance. He loves you because of who He is.
How do I know God loves me?
Scripture points you outside your own feelings to something God actually did: He sent His Son (Hebrews 1:1-2, Matthew 21:37). When your emotions say you are unlovable, the cross is the fixed evidence you can return to.
Does God love me no matter what?
The love itself never changes, and it reaches both kinds of lost people in Luke 15. The invitation is always to come home to it, and the Father is already moving toward you before you take the first step.
Isaac Henson
Taking care of home, pastor, science teacher, Bible reader
