What A Return to God’s Mercy Really Meant

Rembrandt painted the picture of the prodigal son between 1665 and 1667, at the end of his life. As a young painter, he was popular in Amsterdam and successful with commissions to do portraits of all the important people of his day. He was known as arrogant and argumentative, but he participated in the circles of the very rich in society. Gradually, however, his life began to deteriorate:

First he lost a son,

then he lost his first daughter,

then he lost his second daughter,

then he lost his wife.

Then the woman he lived with ended up in a mental hospital,

then he married a second woman who died.

It was a man who experienced immense loneliness in his life that painted this picture. As he lived his overwhelming losses and died many personal deaths, Rembrandt could have become a most bitter, angry, resentful person. Instead he became the one who was finally able to paint one of the most intimate paintings of all time—The Return of the Prodigal Son. This is not the painting he was able to paint when he was young and successful.

No, he was only able to paint the mercy of a blind father when he had lost everything; all of his children but one, two of his wives, all his money, and his good name and popularity. Only after that was he able to paint the mercy of a blind father when he had lost everything: all of his children but one, two of his wives, all his money, and his good name and popularity.

Only after that was he able to paint this picture, and he painted it from a place in himself that knew what God’s mercy was. Somehow his loss and suffering emptied him out to receive fully and deeply the mercy of God. When Vincent van Gogh saw this painting he said, “You can only paint this painting when you have died many deaths.” Rembrandt could do it only because he had died so many deaths that he finally knew what the return to God’s mercy really meant.