Abandonment

The Biblical view of sin, however, replaces the phrase “not yet” by “no longer”. Sin is not the primary phenomenon, it is not the beginning, but it is a turning-away from the beginning, the abandonment of the origin, the break with that which God had given and established. Wherever the Prophets reproach Israel for its sin, this is the decisive conception: “You have fallen away, you have strayed, you have been unfaithful. You have forsaken God; you have broken the Covenant, you have left Him for other gods. You have turned your backs upon Him!” Similarly, the Parables of Jesus speak of sin as rebellion, as leaving God. The Prodigal Son leaves home, goes away from the Father, turns his back upon him. The Wicked Husbandmen usurp the master’s rights and wrongly seize the land which they only held on a rental. They are actually rebels, usurpers. The Lost Sheep has strayed away from the flock and from the Shepherd; it has gone astray.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 91

<idle musing>
He's continuing the theme we saw yesterday. So, sin, rather than a moral issue, is a conscious turning away from God. Which makes perfect sense in the Hebrew, where the word šûb, "to turn, return," is the word commonly used for repentance.
</idle musing>

Kindness and mercy

Whether this parable [of the prodigal son] is meant more to map sinners and Pharisees, or Gentiles and Jews, or waywardness and self-righteousness in more general terms is impossible to decide. For in fact it is all of them in turns or at once. At each level and in every case, the Father is the one whose mercy is worked out as kindness to the wicked and ungrateful. In Luke’s Gospel, this is the God whom Jesus calls Father.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 128