I was watching a Christian/Muslim debate, the Christian said Allah is not a God of justice because from the Muslim point of view Allah forgives while neglecting justice due hence the need for Jesus to serve justice. The Muslim replied saying the parable of the prodigal son shows forgiveness without justice.
How do we explain this?
The parable of the prodigal son is not about forgiveness it is about mercy. The boy does not deserve his father’s forgiveness and to receive it is mercy. We also do not deserve God’s forgiveness, we cannot earn it, and that God forgives us is a choice He has made because He is merciful.
But the mercy of God comes with a price. “When he came to himself…” the parable says, thus the boys surrenders any attempt to make himself acceptable to his father and instead goes home empty handed counting on his father’s mercy to be received again.
But the other brother does not have the same realization. He thinks that because he has spent his life in service of his father he has earned his father’s favor and wants nothing whatever of his father’s mercy or his love. He only sees that the younger son did not get justice, but in seeing this he failed to see that he himself was not more than an unprofitable servant. After all what had he done other than what his father had told him to do, and yet he expected to be treated as though he had done something special because he had managed to avoid squandering his father’s possessions on whores and riotous living.
The older brother refused to see that he to needed his father’s mercy and no good deeds he had done for him had earned him anything more than having done the minimum. Remember this parable is being told to Pharisees who thought they had earned God’s favor by right living, but Paul says none will be made righteous by works of the Law. They too needed the mercy of Christ in order to be held righteous before God but they did not want it and hated that He told them they needed it.
So yes this parable does speak of forgiveness without justice, because that is what mercy is, but the caveat is that only those who receive God’s mercy (those who are in Christ) will escape justice. Nobody actually wants justice from God. If anyone were to receive actual justice from God they would never escape hellfire.
Remember what the Psalmist says, “If you O LORD did count sin who could escape?” The answer of course is no one because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
God Bless
