“The targets of this story ( The Prodigal Son ) are not “wayward sinners” but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. He wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self-righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them…
I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace?
She replied something like this: “If I was saved by my good works — then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace — at God’s infinite cost…
THEN THERE’S NOTHING HE CANNOT ASK OF ME.”
― Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Women With Destiny 