I wouldn't venture to say which kind of sin is more prevalent. I wouldn't even want to try to characterize certain 'circles.'

The targets of this story 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. H 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.

It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul's prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances.

You won't be able to change the world, yourself, anything, if you don't change yourself inwardly, deeply, enduringly.

Neither son loved the father for himself. They both were using the father for their own self-centered ends rather than loving, enjoying, and serving him for his own sake. This means that you can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It 's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God .

What you do today is shaped by what you believe about tomorrow.

It's important to remember the Gospel is a story; not a set of bullet points.