Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” So He told them this parable, saying, “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’ In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (15:1–10)

The Bible reveals the many attributes of God, both His incommunicable attributes (those true of Him alone, such as omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, immutability, and eternality) and communicable attributes (those also true to a far lesser degree of humans, such as righteousness, holiness, wisdom, love, compassion, grace, and mercy). Believers are very familiar with these. But one of God’s attributes that is often overlooked is His joy. Though an eternally joyful God seems hard to accept, texts like First Chronicles 16:27 and Nehemiah 8:10 refer to that reality. Luke 10:21 even records that Jesus “rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit,” while in John 15:11 and 17:13 Christ spoke of His own joy. Even enduring the cross as a “man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3) He knew would bring Him joy, the joy of recovering lost sinners (Heb. 12:2).

God, who is by nature a savior (Matt. 1:21; John 3:16–18; 1 Tim. 2:3–4; Titus 1:3, 2:10, 13; 3:4, 6), brings Himself everlasting joy in recovering the lost. It is that joy which is expressed as the point of the three parables the Lord devised in this chapter (vv. 7, 10, 32). And God’s joy in recovering the lost is not an obscure theme in Scripture. In Deuteronomy 30:9 God promised Israel that when He punished them for their disobedience and they repented (vv. 1–8) He would “again rejoice over [them] for good, just as He rejoiced over [their] fathers.” In Psalm 105:43 the psalmist declared that God “brought forth His people with joy, His chosen ones with a joyful shout.” Looking ahead to the future salvation of Israel, God said through Isaiah, “For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you” (Isa. 62:5; cf. 65:19). Similarly, God declared through Jeremiah,

The prophet Zephaniah wrote,

God’s joy is the source of believers’ joy; it is a component of the kingdom of God dispensed by the Holy Spirit to the redeemed (Rom. 14:17; cf. 15:13; Ps. 51:12; 1 Thess. 1:6). While Christians are blessed with a rich measure of joy in this life (John 15:11; 16:20, 24; 17:13; Acts13:52; Rom. 15:13; Gal. 5:22; Phil. 4:4; 1 Peter 1:8; 1 John 1:4; 2 John 12), the full joy of eternal perfection awaits them in heaven when as faithful slaves they “enter into the joy of [their] master” (Matt. 25:21, 23). Believers’ highest joy in this life does not come from the trivial, insignificant, temporal things of this world, but in the spiritual life and fellowship of lost sinners found, restored, and united in Christ’s true church. Believers’ joy, as God’s joy, is the result of the greatness and glory of God’s saving work.

Three points provide necessary background information for the parables in this chapter. The first is clarity. These stories cannot be understood in a vacuum, but only in light of the cultural setting in which they were given. What they meant to the people of Jesus’ day is what He intended them to mean to each and every succeeding generation. A parable in a sense can be like a political cartoon, the point of which is lost on those from a different society. The message of our Lord’s parables was clear to perceptive listeners living together in the common culture of the time. Thus, the essential prerequisite for understanding the message of the parables is established by reconstructing the cultural setting in which they were told.

The second is location. This chapter is centrally placed in Luke’s gospel. The introductory section (1:1–9:50) covers Luke’s prologue, the events surrounding Christ’s birth, and His Galilean ministry. The middle section (9:51–19:27), chronicles the Lord’s ministry in Judea. The final section (19:28–24:53), focuses on the passion of Christ; the events surrounding the cross, His death, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances. The middle ten chapters, containing more than twenty parables, are the heart and soul of our Lord’s kingdom teaching. Chapter 15 is in the middle of those ten chapters, and the three parables it contains form the high point of Jesus’ teaching in this section of Luke.

The final point is complexity. While illustrations and analogies and never allegories with mystical, hidden, secret meanings, parables can contain various features and layers. In each of these parables, the story itself is first and follows the same form or outline in all three. Something valuable (a sheep, coin, or son) is lost, sought, found or restored, and celebrated. The second layer consists of an ethical implication that everyone would have understood. Did the shepherd do the right thing in leaving the ninety-nine sheep to look for the one that was lost? Should the woman have dropped everything to search for her lost coin? Was the father right to take back the son who had wasted his inheritance? Third, there are theological implications in the lessons each parable teaches about the kingdom of God. The final layer involves what the parables teach about Christ. All three parables also illustrate an aspect of the lost sinner, who like a sheep is stupid and helpless; like a coin is senseless and inanimate, and like a rebel son is wicked and destitute. In each case the seeker (the shepherd, woman, and father) represents God, who after restoring the lost sinner rejoices along with all those in heaven.

With that as a background, the chapter opens on the foundational reality that sets the stage—all the tax collectors (despised traitors who extorted money from their fellow Jews to fill Rome’s coffers) and the sinners (the irreligious and unrighteous riff-raff, whom the scribes and Pharisees considered beneath them and refused to associate with) were coming near Jesus to listen to Him. As a result, both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” William Barclay details the Pharisees’ disdain for such people:

That the Lord associated with the despised outcasts of Jewish society shocked and appalled the religious authorities, and drew their sharp criticism (cf. 5:29–32; 7:34–39; 19:7). But Christ associated with sinners because His mission was to “seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10) and consequently bring joy to God.

It is in the context of His conflict with the scribes and Pharisees that Jesus created the three parables that make up the chapter. They not only reveal that God and all heaven rejoice when the lost are found, but at the same time indict the scribes and Pharisees because they did not find joy in Jesus’ mission of saving sinners. They claimed to know God, but in truth were abysmally ignorant of the heart of God toward the lost. They were just another generation like those whom Isaiah described as hypocrites who “draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me” (Isa. 29:13). These stories are the means by which the Lord exposes their complete alienation from God, His joy, and mission of salvation.

THE LOST SHEEP

So He told them this parable, saying, “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. (15:3–7)

By introducing the first two parables with a hypothetical question, the Lord drew the scribes and Pharisees deep into both the experience and thinking of the main characters. Having assumed that role in their minds and affirmed that what the character in the story did was right ethically they were trapped. There was no way to avoid the Lord’s clear and unmistakable application of the truth that it was right to recover a valuable coin and sheep—was it less important to rescue a soul from judgment?

This first story involves poor peasants in a village setting. The man caring for a hundred sheep probably did not own all of them, since it would have been unusual for one villager to have a flock that large. Villagers would often consolidate their sheep into large flocks and hire shepherds from the lower end of the village’s social structure to take care of them. They were reluctant to hire outsiders since such hired hands, having no personal stake in the flock, were not concerned about the sheep (John 10:12–13).

Even though such prominent Old Testament figures as Rachel (Gen. 29:9), Jacob (Gen. 30:31; 31:4), the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel (Gen. 37:12–13; 47:3), Joseph (Gen. 37:2), Moses (Ex. 3:1), and David (1 Sam. 16:19; 17:15, 20, 34) had been shepherds, and even God is described as a shepherd (Gen. 48:15; Pss. 23:1; 80:1; Isa. 40:11; John 10:11, 14; Heb. 13:20; 1 Peter 2:25; 5:4; Rev. 7:17), shepherds were near the bottom of the social ladder. Caring for sheep was the lowest of the legitimate occupations, ranking just above the outcast line, below which were tax collectors and other irreligious sinners. Shepherds were uneducated and unskilled, and were increasingly viewed in the post-New Testament era as dishonest, unreliable, and unsavory—so much so that they were not permitted to testify in court. Sheep had to be watched and cared for seven days a week, leaving shepherds unable to fully comply with the Pharisees’ man-made Sabbath regulations. Because they were in continual violation of those regulations, shepherds were perpetually ceremonially unclean. For Jesus to ask the scribes and Pharisees to imagine themselves in the role of a shepherd was insulting. No Pharisee would demean himself by becoming a shepherd, not even hypothetically. By challenging them to put themselves in the imaginary shepherd’s place, the Lord once again attacked their overweening pride.

As the story opens, the shepherds (there would likely have been two or three for a flock of this size) had lost one of the sheep. This was a dangerous and potentially life-threatening situation, since sheep are defenseless against predators and unable to take care of themselves. For example, if they roll over onto their backs they are often unable to right themselves, which places them in grave danger, as Phillip Keller explains:

Losing one of the sheep was therefore a serious situation, which called for immediate action. Shepherds were accountable for their flock, and if a sheep wandered off, they were responsible to rescue it (cf. 1 Sam. 17:34–35), or produce evidence that it had been killed by a predator or stolen (cf. Gen. 31:39). It was this shepherd’s duty to leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture under the care of others and go after the one that was lost and search for it until he found it.

In the Lord’s story the shepherd found the lost sheep, so his search was successful. Having found it, the shepherd laid it on his shoulders, its stomach against his neck and its feet tied together in front of him, and started on the long, arduous journey home carrying the heavy animal (an adult sheep can weigh more than 100 pounds). Further, that he brought the sheep home to the village, not back to the open pasture from where he had set out on his search, implies that it was after nightfall and that he made the return trip in the dark. Yet, he did not do so unwillingly, but rejoicing.

After being lost, sought, and found, the sheep’s safe return was celebrated. In his joy over finding the missing sheep, the shepherd called together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!” The scribes and Pharisees, though loath to be shepherds, even in their minds for the sake of illustration, would have understood fully the monetary value of sheep, since they were “lovers of money” (Luke 16:14). They would have grasped the joyous celebration that would have ensued when the shepherd returned with the lost sheep. They would have agreed that, ethically, the shepherd’s relentless pursuit of the lost sheep was his obligation.

Having drawn the scribes and Pharisees into the story, the Lord delivered a devastating application to them. I tell you, He solemnly declared, that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. The contrast between the scribes and Pharisees, who were indifferent to the plight of the lost, and God, who seeks them and rejoices when they are found, is striking. That those who claimed to officially represent God did not understand His mission or share His joy at the recovery of lost sinners reveals that their thinking was alien to His. The scribes and Pharisees lived within the narrow confines of superficiality and triviality while all around them souls were perishing. They were hypocrites, false shepherds who knew nothing of the compassionate, caring, loving heart of God; they were depicted by the ninety-nine self-righteous persons who saw no need for personal repentance and brought no joy to heaven.

The story also contains Christological overtones. God incarnate in Jesus Christ is the good shepherd (John 10:11, 14), who came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He has compassion on lost sinners, whom He likened to sheep without a shepherd (Matt. 9:36; Mark 6:34), and bore the full burden of their restoration to God by laying down His life for them (John 10:11; cf. Isa. 53:4–6; 1 Peter 2:24–25)

THE LOST COIN

Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!” In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. (15:8–10)

Like the first story, this one also takes place in a village setting. As does the previous parable, this one presents a poor person of low social standing facing a major crisis—a woman who lost a coin of great value.

If the scribes and Pharisees were insulted that Jesus asked them to think like a shepherd, calling on them to imagine themselves in the place of a woman was an even greater insult. Shepherds were considered unclean, and in that male-dominated culture women were deemed insignificant and not worthy of respect. It should be noted that while the scribes and Pharisees resented being compared to a shepherd and a woman, God Himself did not. In Psalm 23 He not only pictured Himself as a shepherd (v. 1), but also as a woman (v. 5; preparing a table was women’s work), while in His lament over Jerusalem, Jesus pictured Himself as a mother hen (Luke 13:34). It was mercy that prompted Jesus to assault their foolish pride, since only the humble can be saved (Matt. 5:5; James 4:6, 10).

The parable describes a woman who had lost one of her ten silver coins. The coin was a drachma (a Roman denarius), which represented a day’s wage for a common laborer. While that may not seem like a large sum, in a bartering society, where money was not used as frequently as in most modern societies, it was a significant loss. The money may have been an emergency fund, to be used when needed to make critical purchases. A more likely possibility is that the coins represented the woman’s dowry, given to her as a wedding gift by her father and providing security for the future.

How she lost it is not relevant to the story. It may be that she had strung the coins together and worn them around her neck and the cord broke, or she may have bound them up together in a rag as a sort of purse and the knot came undone. To carry out her desperate search, it was necessary for her to light a lamp even in the daytime, since houses usually had either no windows, or at best very small ones. When a quick look around failed to reveal the coin, she proceeded to sweep the dusty, hard-packed dirt floor of the house and search carefully and intensely for it.

At last, to her great joy, she found the missing coin. To celebrate, she called together her female friends and neighbors (both nouns are feminine) saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!” People in a small, tight-knit village would share each other’s sufferings and joys, so a party celebrating the woman’s joy at recovering what she had lost would have been appropriate. Are eternal souls worth less?

In terms of ethics, the Pharisees would once again have agreed that she had done what was necessary under the circumstances. All would agree that having lost a significant sum of money, there was nothing else for her to do but diligently search for it until she found it. This parable too was aimed squarely at them, as Christ’s emphatic statement I tell you indicates. Yet they again failed to make the connection between their contemptuous disdain for lost souls and God’s passionate concern for them. They failed to share in the joy that exists in the presence of the angels of God, who have a keen interest in the redemption that produces God’s joy (cf. Matt. 18:10; 25:31; Luke 2:10–14; 1 Peter 1:12; Rev. 3:5), over one sinner who repents. The joy here is God’s joy, the joy that fills heaven, and in which the angels and the redeemed share (cf. Rev. 4:8–11; 5:8–14).

The Lord’s indictment of the scribes and Pharisees was clear and inescapable. How could they affirm the ethical responsibility of a shepherd to search for a lost sheep and a woman to search for a lost coin, while condemning Him for seeking to recover lost souls? How could they understand the joys of the humble men and women in a village over temporal recovery, and utterly fail to comprehend the joy of God in heaven over eternal salvation?

The theological and Christological elements of this brief parable are clear. The woman represents God in Christ seeking lost sinners in the cracks, dust, and debris of a dirty world of sin. He initiated the search for those sinners who belong to Him through His sovereign choice of them, since like the lifeless, inanimate coin, they can do nothing on their own (Eph. 2:1–3). Jesus came all the way from heaven to earth to search for His lost ones, pursuing sinners into every dark corner, and then shining the light of the glorious gospel (2 Cor. 4:5–6; 1 Tim. 1:11) on them. Having found the lost sinner, God in Christ restores him or her to His heavenly treasury, and then expresses joy in which the holy inhabitants of heaven share.

Recovering the lost requires costly grace. The sinless Son of God became a man, lived with sinners, bore God’s wrath for sin on the cross, and rose in triumph from the grave. None of the false gods of the world’s religions are like the true and living God, who seeks and saves unworthy sinners because He values them as His own; who makes His enemies His friends for the sheer joy that He receives in saving them.

Yet God’s seeking and saving lost sinners does not happen apart from their repentance. That reality is not part of the sheep and coin stories, since they are not persons. It is, however, a theme of the last and longest of the three parables in this chapter, the tale of two sons and a loving father (vv. 11–32), which is the subject of the next chapter of this volume.