Question:,I recently read an article written by a person named Raul in his website ( www.santiagoicc.org) about the Luke 15, and he say that “the lost son” it is not in fact a walk away son of God, but a lost person as any non-Christian is. I would really appreciate your comments of both. ,Answer:,Please forgive me for being so slow to respond. I was traveling for 16 days in China and SE Asia teaching for several churches there.,As a general rule, we ought to be careful not to over-interpret parables. The Parable of the Lost Son is about a person who has been given a lot by God. It is a person who has been entrusted by God with great gifts but also great responsibility. The Lost Son is the person who uses his free will to indulge in sinful behavior rather than in respecting and serving the Father who gave him those gifts. The Lost Son is the person who later repents and comes back to his Father and is subsequently forgiven by his Father and taken back into a relationship with God.,Is the Lost Son a Christian who has strayed or is he a sinner who has never repented but who needs to come to salvation? The answer is yes. He is both. The story is about those of us who as young people chose to sin rather than to serve God but who come to their senses and become a Christian. It is also about a saved person who does something similar.,You can look for details in the story to try to prove that the Lost Son is one or the other, but I believe this violates the nature of parables as Jesus told them. We need to look at the big picture in the story and not over-intepret it.,I say you and Raul are both right.,John Oakes, PhD