Rembrandt's Final Confession

In 1668, in a cramped Amsterdam apartment, a bankrupt old painter picked up his brush one last time. Rembrandt van Rijn had once been the toast of the Dutch Republic — wealthy, celebrated, living in a grand house on the Sint Anthonisbreestraat. But decades of reckless spending, failed investments, and personal tragedy had stripped him bare. His wife Saskia died young. His beloved partner Hendrickje was gone. His son Titus had just been buried. The man who once painted kings now couldn't pay his rent.

And yet, with trembling hands, Rembrandt painted the most tender scene in all of Western art: a father pulling his ragged son into an embrace. The Return of the Prodigal Son shows a young man on his knees, head pressed against his father's chest, one sandal missing, his clothes in tatters. But it is the father's hands that stop you — one strong and firm, the other gentle and soft — resting on the boy's back with a love that asks no questions and demands no explanations.

Rembrandt knew both figures from the inside. He had been the reckless son who squandered everything. Now, at the end, he painted what he most desperately needed to believe — that there is a Father whose first instinct is not to lecture but to embrace.

That is the scandalous heart of Luke 15. While the older brother calculates and the Pharisees grumble, the Father is already running down the road, arms open, robe flying, dignity abandoned — because the one who was lost has come home.