"The prodigal son in today’s Scripture passage lost everything. He had gone out to the world and squandered all the inheritance that he had received from his father, and although he tried to survive on his own later on, he couldn’t even do this. He got a job as a hired servant to feed someone else’s pigs and tried to survive on the pods that the pigs ate, but he couldn’t even do this job and he was eventually fired. In Luke chapter 15, God is saying that His blessings are received by precisely people who cannot live without God, who are devoid of any spiritual righteousness of their own before God, and who are complete sinners. In other words, in God’s sight it is those who have nothing of their own that unite their hearts with God, put on His salvation and love, carry out His work, and are approved by God as upright and blessed people to receive His blessings.

What is the real reason why so many people in this world are still standing against God, unable to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior who has blotted out all their sins? It’s because they are too full of their own merits, righteousness, and virtues. For those whose own virtues and righteousness have been broken down and lost, they have no choice but to believe in Jesus Christ the Savior.

Jesus Christ, God Himself, came to this earth incarnated in the flesh of man as the Savior of sinners, and He accepted all our sins by being baptized at the age of 30. He carried all these sins of the world to the Cross, was crucified to death, and thereby bore the condemnation that we should have borne. Jesus Christ then rose from the dead again on the third day, thereby becoming the Lord of salvation to all those who believe in Him as their God of salvation. It’s so clear that this is God’s work of salvation. There is no reason why we can’t believe. There is no need to decline, hesitate, or to wait. Like a lovely daughter accepting her father’s birthday present with joy, all that we have to do is just accept this salvation that Jesus Christ has fulfilled for us by blotting out all our sins and delivering us from them.
Why must we do this? It’s because we humans have no righteousness, or any merit, or virtue, or any goodness. Quite the contrary; all that we have are just inadequacies and sins. That is why we must believe in this salvation fulfilled through the baptism of the Lord and His blood on the Cross. It is only through this process that you and I can be truly saved."
Paul C Jong