35
RECOVERING WHAT WAS LOST Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth (Luke 15:8-10).
This parable is placed in between two far more familiar parables: the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the prodigal son.(1) All three parables present the same theme: the high value to God of recovering one lost sinner. Jesus offered all three in response to the Pharisees' criticism: "Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them" (Luke 15:1-2).
A Lost Coin The woman had lost a coin. She still had nine. Her concern was with finding the lost coin, not preserving the nine. Why?
We assume that whatever we possess is physically secure. Normally, this is a correct assumption. There is continuity of ownership. But then comes a day when we lose part of what we had thought was secure. We then focus on the missing item. Our main concern is the recovery of what is now lost. This valuation is even clearer in the parable of the lost sheep. "What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?" (Luke 15:4). The shepherd leaves behind the ninety-nine other sheep. His concern is with the one lost sheep, which is under his care legally. It is now lost. He feels greater responsibility for that lost sheep than for the ones that never strayed.
This indicates that men normally trust in God's providence or in some other force to protect the bulk of what they possess. They assume that things will probably go all right for the nine remaining coins or ninety-nine remaining sheep. What bothers them is the missing item. They want to reassure themselves that the missing item is not permanently missing. They want reassurance that all is fundamentally right with their world. They go looking for the missing item. The recovery of that lost item concerns them more than the preservation of what they already possess. They do not like to suffer losses.
The fact that the owner went looking for the lost sheep, leaving ninety-nine behind, indicates that he was confident about those ninety-nine. He assumed that they would not wander off, too. So, he focused his efforts on recovering the lost sheep. If men expected additional disasters to fall on them, they would be far more concerned about protecting whatever remains of their possessions. But they are optimistic. They expect good times to persist. They have faith in the future. When they do not, that lost sheep had better be able to find his way back to the flock.
Men rely on God far more than they admit to themselves. They rely on the continuity of ownership. They assume that things will go well with them most of the time. This is why their loss concerns them. It is an anomaly: bad news in otherwise good times. They want to restore the status quo ante as a symbol of more good times to come. They feel the burden of the loss more than they feel the benefits of preservation. The loss testifies against them. They were careless. They do not want to be known as careless. So, when they recover what they had lost, they celebrate. They invite their friends to celebrate with them. But they remained silent about their loss until they recovered it.
Jesus said that this attitude toward lost souls is true of residents in heaven and angels. "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance" (v. 7). "Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth" (v. 10).
A Warning to the Pharisees Jesus was criticizing the Pharisees. His goal was to save the lost. The Pharisees believed that they were among the saved. They knew that the tax collectors were lost. So did Jesus. Jesus also knew that the Pharisees were equally lost, but their hard hearts resisted His message of redemption.
He said that the recovery of one lost soul is worth more to God than the preservation of the righteous. This was an indirect assault on the self-righteous Pharisees. He was saying, "So, you think you are righteous and not in need of grace. Very well. But this does not prove that God is more interested in you than in these tax collectors. He is more interested in recovering them than worrying about you." The same message is conveyed in the other two parables. The lost coin and the recovered son were the focus of concern of the persons who were responsible for their care. Their primary focus of concern was not the nine coins or the outwardly responsible older brother.
Had the Pharisees admitted their own need of salvation, they would have self-consciously entered the category of "lost sheep." They would have perceived their need of a searching shepherd. Their resistance to this self-awareness was evidence of their lost condition. The tax collectors welcomed Jesus: "Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him" (v. 1). The Pharisees and scribes pulled away because of the presence of the tax collectors. In the parable of the prodigal son, the older brother pulled away, too.
The three parables may appear to be about the restoration of the previously redeemed, as if men could fall from grace. But this is not what they are about. They are about a category of humanity: fallen man. Adam became lost. His heirs are born in a lost condition. These are stories of redemption.
Were the ninety-nine sheep saved? Did the nine coins represent the redeemed? Was the elder brother regenerate? If we move backward, from the elder brother to the ninety-nine sheep, we see that the brother was rebellious. He did not love his younger brother. He resented the celebration that their father organized. He thought he deserved this public celebration for having dutifully remained at home. The seemingly faithful elder brother was in need of redemption.
The parable of the lost sheep is a parable about the lost ninety-nine. The lost sheep was found. The residents of heaven rejoiced when the shepherd restored it to the flock. The restored sheep represented visible sinners who gained redemption. Ultimately, it represented the gentiles. While the ninety-nine sheep were still formally under the authority of the shepherd, they were judicially like the elder brother. They were in need of salvation. They just did not know this.
The text says, "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance" (v. 7). These self-righteous ninety-nine were the Pharisees. They were in need of repentance. Jesus had told them this at previous feast. "And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them. But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners? And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:29-32).
The ninety-nine were not in need of redemption in the same way that healthy people are not in need of a physician. All men are sick, Jesus had implied, including Pharisees. So, the righteous ninety-nine were not really righteous. They were merely self-righteous. But even if the Pharisees had been righteous, this would not have changed Jesus' statement. The residents of heaven really do rejoice more over the redemption of one unredeemed person than the preservation of the redeemed. In this sense, they are the opposite of the elder brother.
Sunk Costs and Reservation Demand The pain of loss is matched by the joy of recovery. There is great joy in recovery. The owner has the feeling that his affairs have been restored to their previous condition, which is as it should be. It was better before.
The shepherd did not estimate the value of his time before he began his search for the lost sheep. He did not consider purchasing a replacement sheep, any more than the disappointed father imagined adopting a replacement son. There was a personal relation involved. This was beyond monetary calculation. The shepherd had compassion on the single lost sheep, for the sake of that sheep. The father had the same emotional commitment to his lost son.
The woman searched diligently for the lost coin. It was an inanimate object. Jesus indicated that the same principle was operative: concern for the lost. There is something about the lost object that makes it special in the eyes of the owner. It had been under the authority of the owner; now it is lost. This breaking of the bond of ownership bothered the woman. She did not estimate the value of lost time spent in looking for the coin. She did not ask whether her time might be more profitably employed on the job. She wanted that lost coin back in her possession.
Sunk Costs
The economist argues that the rational person should not concern himself about the wealth he has lost. The only question worth asking is this: How can I recover the economic equivalent of this lost wealth least expensively? What is gone is gone. There is no use crying over spilled milk. Find a way to get replacement milk at a competitive price.
The libertarian economist Murray Rothbard once bought an ice cream cone. His wife bought a different flavor. He asked her to let him have a bite of her ice cream. He liked it much better than his. He walked over to the trash container, dropped his ice cream cone into it, and bought one like hers. She was appalled. "Murray, you just threw away your money!" He corrected her. "I spent my money when I bought the cone. My money was gone. I could not get it back. I wanted a cone like yours more than I wanted either my original cone or the money I just paid to buy the new one." This is the economist's concept of sunk costs, i.e., irrecoverable costs. What is past is unrecoverable.
The doctrine of sunk costs dismisses as economically uninformed a major psychological fact: if a man loses money in an investment, he wants to make the money back in that same investment. This, he thinks, will prove to himself that he was not wrong in making it in the first place. But this objective ignores the fact that he should have waited to buy until the price went down. He could have bought more for the same price. The market has already imposed a loss on him, whether or not he admits this by selling it and buying what he hopes is a better investment. He could also have bought more of the substitute investment with the money he spent on the investment that dropped in price.
The loser does not want to admit publicly that he had made a mistake by buying too early. He wants to validate his original decision. Is this rational? In His dealings with Old Covenant Israel, God implied that sometimes it is rational. God told Moses that He wanted to destroy Israel and raise up a new nation for Moses to lead. Do not do this, Moses replied; your reputation is at stake. "And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people" (Ex. 32:11-14). Better to bear with the existing nation than to raise up a new one, Moses advised God. Why? Because God's reputation was at stake. God should not allow Himself to become regarded publicly as a loser, Moses said. Reputation counts.
Was Rothbard a loser for having selected a less preferable flavor of ice cream? Yes. But his loss was insufficient to justify eating that cone, he believed -- and what he believed counted. He had available a cheap replacement: cone number two. He tossed away cone number one, and bought a replacement. His wife thought he was being wasteful. She regarded this public loss as too great. He did not.
Defending Our Dreams
An element of ownership can sometimes be highly personal. Our dreams, expectations, and self-worth are bound up in certain tangible possessions. A man may be willing to fight an intruder in order to defend a trophy whose market price is surely not larger than the value of the life insurance policy that his wife owns on his life. The same man may not fight to defend a full wallet from a thief. He probably would not fight to keep an antique that his wife bought that is worth more than the trophy or the money in his wallet. His commitment to the defense of his property depends on the dreams that he has for the respective pieces of property. The deciding factor may not be an item's market value. "It's the principle of the thing! This is mine!"
The modern economist tends to discount to zero the economic value of the owner's dreams. What matters, he argues, is the market price of the item. But the owner's dreams may be bound up in a piece of property, and even though the market will not pay him for this value, his demand to retain ownership -- called reservation demand -- registers in his subjective valuation. He will fight to defend it or pay a great deal above its market price to remain its owner.
High reservation demand is what God has for certain members of the lost. He cares deeply about those people whom He has picked out to redeem from among the disinherited family of Adam.(2) He is like the good shepherd who seeks for one lost sheep. He is like the father who rejoices when his lost son returns. He is the like the woman who searches for her lost coin.
Rothbard did not care deeply about his ice cream cone. He had no dreams invested in owning it. He preferred the taste of his wife's ice cream. He tossed his into the trash. His wife could not understand this. She thought that his purchase of that ice cream cone implied some sort of commitment on his part. She was like the mother who tells her child to eat everything on his plate. "There are starving Chinese children who would love to have your spinach!" To which the spinach-hating child might think, "Then let's send my spinach to some Chinese kid."
The doctrine of sunk costs should not be used as an explanatory device without some consideration of reservation demand. God had a reservation demand for Israel for many centuries. He still retains it. Paul wrote:
I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? (Rom. 11:11-12)
For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches (Rom. 11:15-16).
Israel in Moses' day meant more to God than the first ice cream cone meant to Rothbard. Rothbard had made no public promises regarding his ice cream cone. His reputation was not tied up in eating that cone. As soon as he tasted his wife's ice cream, his reservation demand dropped precipitously. But God was jealous about His good reputation. He was unwilling to toss Old Covenant Israel into the trash until there was a replacement heir available for His kingdom: the church of Jesus Christ (Matt. 21:43).
Conclusion Jesus used three parables to show that God cares for lost souls. The redemption of one lost soul provokes more rejoicing in heaven than the preservation of many redeemed souls. God retains high reservation demand for His elect. He does not intend to replace them in the book of life. He does not regard all mankind as a sunk cost, completely unrecoverable, gone forever.
The underlying theme of all three parables is the spiritually lost condition of the Pharisees, who regarded themselves as members of God's faithful flock. Jesus was warning them not to take comfort in their imagined status as saved sheep. They were in need of redemption, just as the tax collectors were.
Footnotes:
1. Chapter 36, below.
2. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph. 1:3-7).
If you are interested in receiving Dr. North's FREE monthly e-mail newsletter send an e-mail to:
If this book helps you gain a new understanding of the Bible, please consider sending a small donation to the Institute for Christian Economics, P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711. You may also want to buy a printed version of this book, if it is still in print. Contact ICE to find out.