55 pages • 1-hour read
The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
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Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and religious discrimination.
Chapter 4, Section 1 Summary: “Anger and Superiority”
Keller considers Jesus’s metaphor that compares sin to being “lost.” While the younger brother’s lostness is obvious, the parable exposes a subtler “elder-brother lostness” that Keller breaks down into specific features.
Its first sign is anger when life goes wrong, which stems from a belief that good behavior entitles one to a good life. When hardship strikes, an elder brother may therefore rage against God (for breaking what they see as a deal) or against themselves (for not being good enough). In both cases, they have approached morality as a transaction to control God, not an expression of love. An apocryphal story illustrates this: Jesus tells his disciples to carry stones. Peter chooses a small one, which Jesus later turns into a small lunch of bread. The next day, Peter carries a boulder, expecting a feast. Instead, Jesus tells them to throw the stones in a river, asking, “Who were you carrying the stone for?” (59).
The second feature of elder-brother lostness is superiority. The elder brother boasts of his actions and disparages others, to the point that he refuses to call the younger son his brother. Keller argues that being better than others is key to an elder brother’s sense of self. This can manifest in various ways, including racism, classism, and religious intolerance. However it manifests, this sense of superiority makes elder brothers unable to forgive, as they’re unable to imagine making mistakes because they have hidden their own flaws under a veneer of morality. Keller suggests that this dynamic is often at the heart of codependent relationships: “It may be that the elder brother, to bolster his own image of himself, needed a chronically wayward sibling to criticize, and the smug older brother only made it harder for the younger to admit his problems and change his life” (64).
Chapter 4, Section 2 Summary: “Slavishness and Emptiness”
Keller turns to another sign of elder-brother lostness: “joyless, fear-based compliance” (65). The elder son says that he has been “slaving” for his father, revealing that his obedience is driven by duty and fear, not love. This motivation is fragile. Keller discusses a business ethics course that advises honesty based on the fear of being caught, observing that this advice will inevitably fail when dishonesty seems more profitable. Such morality entrenches self-centeredness rather than challenging it.
To demonstrate this, Keller recounts a story about a gardener giving his king a carrot out of love. The king rewards him with land, so a nobleman, seeking a greater reward, gives the king a fine horse but receives nothing. The king explains, “The gardener was giving me the carrot, but you were giving yourself the horse” (70). Elder brothers perform good deeds out of self-interest, but their hidden selfishness usually surfaces at some point.
The final sign of elder-brother lostness is insecurity regarding God’s love. The elder son’s complaint that he never got a party reveals a joyless relationship, pointing to the fact that those trying to “earn” salvation must necessarily worry about falling short. This leads to anxiety over failures, difficulty with criticism, and lingering guilt. Keller particularly singles out a “dry,” petition-based prayer life as a warning sign. Prayer that lacks intimacy or spontaneous praise reveals a desire to control God rather than know him.
Chapter 4, Section 3 Summary: “Who Needs to Know This?”
Keller identifies three groups who need to understand elder-brother lostness. First are the elder brothers, who are the parable’s target audience. Second, the parable can help younger brothers understand Christianity better. Many people with this temperament reject religion because they associate it with joyless moralism and see it as a source of misery. Jesus’s parable affirms this critique but also positions the Christian message as something distinct from conventional religion. The author recounts starting a church in New York City and finding many “‘recovering’ believers”—younger brothers who had fled devout, elder-brother families but were drawn to the message of the gospel itself. Third, Christians need this understanding so that they can guard against elder-brother attitudes: “If you have not grasped the gospel fully and deeply, you will return to being condescending, condemning, anxious, insecure, joyless, and angry all the time” (79).
Keller reiterates that the parable exposes both the younger brother’s rebellion and the elder brother’s moralism as spiritual dead ends. This invites the reader to question what the alternative is, and Keller argues that the answer lies in finding a key person missing from the story.
Chapter 4 Analysis
This chapter continues to deconstruct conventional ideas of sin, in keeping with the theme of Sin as Self-Salvation and the claim that Both Brothers Are Lost. Keller’s focus on “elder-brother lostness” mirrors the parable’s own concerns. Noting that the younger brother’s overt rule-breaking is obvious, Keller emphasizes the subtler signs of sin that is rooted in moralism: anger, superiority, “slavishness,” and emptiness. Thus, for example, the elder brother’s fury reveals a transactional faith where good behavior should yield a good life—a morality rooted in control, not devotion. Similarly, the elder brother’s claim of “slaving” reveals that his dutifulness reflects a broken relationship devoid of intimacy or assurance. For readers, this enumeration of traits associated with elder-brother lostness serves as a checklist. Keller has already indicated that he is writing primarily for elder brothers, and he here provides concrete details to help them understand the broader arguments he has previously laid out, all in an effort to prompt religiously observant readers to confront their own self-righteousness.
However, this chapter also clarifies that Keller is not writing exclusively for elder brothers. In the final section, he establishes a direct relationship with the reader by explicitly identifying who needs to understand elder-brother lostness. By addressing elder brothers, younger brothers, and “genuine” Christians separately, the author tailors the argument’s application. For elder brothers, the parable functions in the way Keller has highlighted throughout, serving as a mirror to reveal their spiritual alienation. For younger brothers—those repelled by religious hypocrisy—Keller employs a form of concession, arguing that the parable validates their critique of religion. However, he goes on to suggest that the parable also distinguishes the gospel from the “religious moralism” that repelled them. In this sense, The Prodigal God functions as Christian apologetics, and Keller grounds this approach in his anecdote about the New York City church, lending it credibility.
Keller avoids didacticism in making these claims; in fact, he frequently uses humor to convey his points. Both the story of the gardener who gives a carrot out of love versus the nobleman who gives a horse for gain and the apocryphal story of Peter carrying the stones culminate in punchlines. Elsewhere, Keller compares the elder-brother approach to prayer to a conversation with “a business associate you don’t really like” (73). These moments of levity underscore Keller’s claim that Christian life is supposed to be about joy rather than drudgery.
This chapter also sets up the book’s next central theological claim. After methodically exposing both brothers’ approaches to life as “dead ends,” Keller brings his argument to a point that mirrors the story’s concluding “crisis.” However, he also introduces a key to resolving the tension: the character that is missing from the parable. This builds suspense and shifts the reader’s focus from the two sons to a significant absence. By stating that Jesus “deliberately left someone out” (81), the author reframes the story as a theological mystery. This rhetorical move prepares the reader for a christological (i.e., Christ-centered) resolution, foreshadowing Jesus as the third way and laying the groundwork for explicit consideration of Costly Grace and the True Elder Brother.
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