Alongside the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of the Prodigal Son is another of the best-known parables of Jesus, and as a story it has the most fully developed characters, motivations, settings, plot, resolution, and emotional impact. Some lists of Jesus' parables refer to it as the parable of the two sons, because of the contrast drawn between two of the three central characters. Reminiscent of the stories of Cain and Abel, and Jacob and Esau in Genesis, the story has served as inspiration for some of the great works of literature, including Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, John Steinbeck's East of Eden, and for movies including Legends of the Fall and Boogie Nights.

The Child Who Rebels

Like the Good Samaritan, only Luke recounts the parable of the Prodigal Son. In current speech, a prodigal son refers primarily to any child who rebels and becomes a new kind of person, especially if he or she openly rejects father and family and later returns with his tail between his legs. But Jesus' parable contrasts the rebellious son who leaves with a good and loyal son, who stays.

After asking for his inheritance from his father early to leave and make his own way in the world, the younger, rebellious son spirals from liberation into debauchery until eventually, broke and jobless, he ends up tending a herd of pigs for the privilege of being able to eat any of the pigs' food they miss.

Nothing would seem more demeaning to a good Jewish son than to have fallen so far. Finally, in desperation, the younger son sees the error of his ways, and returns home to offer to take a job as one of the household servants, just to be able to live on the family's farm again. The father, seeing him approaching “from afar,” welcomes him with great fanfare by running to embrace him and order that he be given new clothes, a ring, and a feast featuring the family's fatted calf as the entrée. “For this my son was dead, and is alive again;” the father says, “he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.”

Sibling Rivalry

Everyone was overjoyed … except for the older, loyal, son who realized that if his rebellious brother is again taken back into the family, part of the inheritance he was expecting to receive is going to be diminished by the portion the brother has already squandered. “And he said to his father, ‘All these many years I have served you, and I have never disobeyed your commandment. Yet you never gave me a kid [a young goat], so I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son came back who devoured your substance with harlots, you have killed the fatted calf for him.”

The father's response is one of the most dramatic and touching in the New Testament:“

Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was proper that we should make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found” (see Luke 15:11–32).