As you scan through the pages of Scripture, you find an interesting pattern in many biblical families—the older brothers are jerks. Here’s a few to consider:

– Joseph’s older brothers sold him into slavery.

– Cain killed Abel in cold blood.

– Ishmael mocked and ridiculed Isaac.

– David’s brothers made fun of his youth and inexperience.

That’s not to say that the younger brothers had nothing to do with this treatment. Many of them were arrogant, had special treatment from parents, or were deceptive. Nevertheless, there seems to be this pattern set up of brotherly competition and hatred. The issue is no more clear than in Jesus’ story of the prodigal son in Luke 15.

If you’ll recall, this parable is about extreme and audacious grace. A man’s young son asked his father to treat him as he would be treated if the father was dead. Then the boy took his inheritance and squandered it away before he decided that life with his dad was not so bad after all. He was met with a knock-down embrace by a weeping old man when he finally returned home. And then there was a huge party. Everyone was happy; everyone, that is, except the older brother.

The older brother here fits the biblical pattern. He had always done the right thing. He’d always plowed the fields. He’d always been faithful to the father. He’d always been “the good boy.” But when his younger brother returns home, his bitterness comes spilling over to the surface. He wants restitution. He wants punishment. He wants his brother to be ridiculed, for him to be put on probation, and for him to suffer. The father enraged the older brother because of his foolish grace, his willingness to receive home his lost son.

Another in a long line of jerk older brothers.

Maybe there’s so many bad older brothers in the pages of Scripture in order to point us to the true goodness of our real older brother. If God is our Father, then Jesus is our brother. And He’s radically different than any of these brothers, especially the older brother from Luke 15.

Because in our story—the story of the gospel—when all of us played the younger son and were out wasting our lives in trivial sensuality and meaningless excess, our older brother went to the Father and said, “Father, it is obvious to me how much you love your children. And so I will go and get your children back. I will spend my resources, my effort, my energy, and even my life if necessary, and I will go out to the far country. I’ll go and I will bring them back to you.”

That’s what our brother did. He came into the far country of the earth and spent everything He had to bring us back to the Father.

(NOTE: For a better treatment of Christ as the older brother, I recommend you picking up a copy of The Prodigal God by Tim Keller, which I reviewed here.)