The Parable Of The Lost Coin
by Chris Simmons
“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? And 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” (Luke 15:8-10).
This is the second of three parables in Luke chapter 15 which record Jesus response to the complaint raised against Him in verse 2 that “this man receives sinners and eats with them.” On several other occasions, Jesus received this same accusation of not only “receiving” and “eating” with sinners, but also being their “friend” (cf. Matthew 9:11; Luke 5:30; 7:34). The Scribes and Pharisees held such “sinners” in great disdain and they could not grasp why Jesus would not turn them away and why He would not recognize “what sort of person” they were (Luke 7:39). So, on one hand, this parable is an apology, or defense, to those Jews who perpetrated such an attitude. On the other hand, this parable represents His declaration of good news to those who recognized their lost and undone condition before God. It’s a divine message that God is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (II Peter 3:9). Jesus said in Matthew 18:14, “Thus it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.” God is not willing that even one coin remain lost in His house without diligent effort to restore it to Himself.
All three parables in Luke 15 contribute to the establishment of the point that Jesus came to save those who are lost (Luke 19:10) and that it is the sick who need a physician and not the healthy (Matthew 9:12). But perhaps more than the other two parables in Luke chapter 15, the parable of the lost coin stresses the value of the lost soul and challenges each of us to see the same value in the soul of the alien sinner as God Himself does. During the first century, the pious Jews saw no value in those who were known to be sinners and considered them social outcasts. Jesus teaches this parable to help us understand the immense value of each and every lost soul that is found by God.
The Elements Of The Parable
The coin mentioned is concluded to be a Greek drachma which by our standards would only be worth 20 cents, but to those of that day, it represented a full days wage earned by a common laborer. The woman lost one of only ten that she had. What did the coin represent? It could have simply represented a piece of money owned by a poor woman and thus was extremely significant to her sustenance. Or, Jewish women would save up ten of these coins and join them together to form a necklace or hair dress which became a very treasured ornament of a married woman, worn much like a wedding band is today, perhaps having been handed down from generation to generation. Lacking one of the coins would make the ornament essentially worthless. Regardless, the coin was something of priceless value to this woman and the value to the woman is illustrated by the degree for which she searched for it.
The coin obviously represents the lost souls that are in the world and just as the coin had no recognition of the fact that it was lost, so are many in the world who never realize (are ignorant of the fact) that they are lost, yet God desires their return (Acts 17:23ff). We also need to understand that just as the lost coin was of no value to the woman in it’s lost condition, a lost sinner can not be of service to God – though in both cases, all who are lost are desired back to a restored relationship (I Timothy 2:4; II Peter 3:9).
A couple of other points about the coin. First, just as it would have born the image of Caesar (Luke 20:24), even so each lost soul bears the image of our Creator (Genesis 1:26; James 3:9) who jealously desires its return to Him (cf. James 4:5; Colossians 3:10). Also like a coin, a child of God can become out of circulation. Even when it’s out of circulation, a coin still retains its value.
The woman represents God who seeks the souls of those lost in sin. The home represents the world and all of the places in which lost souls live. The home of such a poor woman would be without windows (thus necessitating the lamp and reflective of her social standing) and would have dirt floors, possibly covered with reeds and rushes, making it very difficult to find a single coin that had been lost. Conditions for finding one small coin were not ideal and the woman certainly knew it wouldn’t be easy, but we must be impressed that she “pressed on” anyway.
The search for the coin represents the efforts made to find those lost souls that desire to return to their God in heaven. We need to appreciate that the woman used every available means at her disposal to find the lost coin. She first lit a lamp in order to begin the search. The lighting of the lamp represents the word of God even as David wrote in Psalms 119:105, “Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” (cf. Proverbs 6:23; II Peter 1:19). God’s word is the only light to be used in the search for lost souls. Whenever man substitutes other man-devised methods for reaching the lost, he will be unable to find the true penitent sinner and will instead find those who are looking for something other than God’s words of eternal life (John 6:68).
The search for the coin also included her sweeping of the floor. I believe the broom can represent God’s collection of the saved (members of the Lord’s church), each canvassing their portion of the world they come into contact with for the lost coins of the world. In order to reach the lost, God needs man to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). God cannot reach the lost without “laborers” in His fields. Luke 10:2, “And He was saying to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’” To continue with the analogy of the broom, we must remember that each strand of the broom head must be attached to the handle even as Jesus describes the branches being attached to the vine in John 15:5-6. If we do not “abide in” Him, we will most certainly be “thrown away” and “cast into the fire.”
We also need to note that the careful search continued until she found what she was looking for. We see in this woman continued diligence – she refused to quit searching no matter how much failure she faced. I appreciate the point that the woman went to find the coin – she didn’t wait for it to come to her. Will we be moved by the countless number of lost coins that are yet in the world to do all we can with those we come in contact with to reach them with the truth? Like Jesus Himself, the church in the first century understood the role they played in reaching out to sinners, teaching them the gospel and extending their fellowship to all who responded with faith, repentance and obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The basic lesson of this parable is about our attitude towards the lost, the value we place upon a lost soul compared to the value God has for the lost. We need to be as concerned about the lost as God is and show the same diligence in reaching the lost as the woman showed in searching for the lost coin. Or will we be unmoved by the countless number of lost souls in the world today that we come into contact with who haven’t had the truth of God’s word taught to them? The woman was not content with the nine coins she did have and ultimately, we can’t be content (as God is not) with those that have already become Christians.