Women

WOMEN IN LUKE PART 8

by GLENN PEASE
03/01/21
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LUKE 15:8-10
8 "Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one
coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek
diligently until she finds it?
9 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.'
10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God
over one sinner who repents."

This whole chapter 15 is a parable in three parts. There is
the lost sheep, the lost silver, and the lost son. It is a triune
parable. It is like a pyramid with a different picture on each
of the three sides. It is a progressive parable with one out of
a hundred sheep that is lost; one out of ten coins that is lost,
and one son out of two that is lost. Each parable deals with a
higher value.

Men and women have the same inner desire to find what
is lost and preserve what is valuable. Women are just as
concerned about the evangelistic outreach of the Gospel as
men are. If women do not feel the pull to go after a lost
sheep, they could grasp the need to search for a lost coin.
Jesus used illustrations to appeal to both sexes. We see that
the man was the bread winner and controlled the source of
income into the family, but we see the woman did have
control of the purse strings to some degree once the money
was earned. She had the ten silver coins, and was apparently
in charge of them. This was her spending money, and so she
did have some economic responsibility just as women always
have.

The woman loses what is lifeless, but because it has value
it motivates a concern to search and to rejoice in its recovery.
Finding what is lost is so enjoyable because of the value of
what is lost. If you lose a rock in your shoe, you don't go try
to find it, for it has no value. The whole point of Jesus is that
the worst of people; the tax collectors and sinners have value.
Even lost people are precious, and we are to seek to restore
them to God because of their worth. It is never a Christian
attitude to despise any for whom Christ died.

Many Christians misunderstand separation. It does not
mean we are to have no love for, or relationship to, the
worldly people, but rather, we are not to be partakers with
them in their godless values, pleasures, and sins. To
withdraw from any relationship, however, is to let the lost
sheep stay lost, and not try to find it. It is to say, let the lost
coin stay lost, we will do without it. Even if one could do this
to a sheep or coin, it can never be rightly done with an
infinitely valuable soul of a sinner.

This second parable adds nothing to the first as far as the
lesson of the lost being of value. The real value of the parable
is that it allows us to see that a woman can be symbolic of
God's love and the evangelistic search for the lost equally
with men. Both the man and the woman are representing
God's love for the lost and his efforts to restore them, and the
joy of seeing it succeed. One can ask in the light of this
parable; is there any aspect of the nature of God that a
woman cannot illustrate as well as a man?

In the case of the sheep and the coin, the lost will not come
back as in the case of the Prodigal Son. They must be sought
out and brought back, and so two out of three lost people
probably need to be found where they are lost, for they will
not likely wander back to the fold. Most evangelism must be
done outside the church walls. We see three kinds of lostness
in this larger context. The sheep just wanders away; the coin
is lost by the carelessness of someone; the son chooses to go
his own way.

The woman did not just sit and cry about her loss, but she
got busy searching for it. God did not sit back in heaven and
cry about the fall of man; nor did he take the opposite view
that there is no sense in crying over spilt milk. He got busy
doing something about overcoming the negative state of
affairs. It was action that counted. The Pharisees had their
philosophy of how to relate or not relate to people, but Jesus
had His plan of action to find and save people. She looked
everywhere, and so the Lord will look everywhere to find
sinners ready to return to God. Go into all the world He
said. What kind of search would it be if she just looked
under one chair and quit? It is diligent search until the
object is found that is needed. So Jesus wants His body to
look into every nation and tribe on the planet until every
possible sinner is confronted with the Gospel.

The coin represents the total helpless state of the sinner if
a Savior does not seek to find them. Someone wrote,
"It was for me that Jesus died! For me, and a world of men,
Just as sinful, and just as slow to give back His love again;
And He didn't wait till I came to Him, but He loved me at my
worst; He needn't ever have died for me if I could have loved Him
first."

Many have tried to see all kinds of symbolism here. The
three stories representing the three persons of the Godhead is
one example. The first represents the Son who, as a
shepherd, went after the sheep; the last one represents the
father of the Prodigal as being God the Father. This one of
the woman is seen as a picture of God the Holy Spirit.
Outstanding scholars like Bengel, Alford, Stier, and
Habershon held that the woman represents the Holy Spirit.
So also does Spurgeon and S.M. Brown, a Baptist author and
editor who says the woman's sweeping fits the work of the
Holy Spirit in removing rubbish and revealing lost truth and
values to the church. He says, like the woman, the Spirit is
the Comforter. One parable in three parts representing the
three persons of the trinity. The woman is said to best
symbolize the Holy Spirit because women were veiled and so
also the Holy Spirit is the most hidden of the Persons of the
Godhead. Trench suggests that the shepherd is Jesus going
after the lost sheep, whereas the woman is the church filled
with the Holy Spirit seeking those who are lost right in the
very house of God.

If we see the whole picture, we see the lost who are not
able to find their way back, but we see also the lost who by
their free will respond and chose to come back. We need to
see the whole picture for part of it is not the whole truth.
Whole denominations develop by taking one parable and
making it the whole truth. The lost are both dead in sin as a
coin, and yet also as responsible as a son to repent and return
home.

Matthew Henry has a fascinating idea here. In the first
parable only one out of 99 is lost, and in this one only one out
of ten is lost. And so only a small proportion of people are
lost with the rest still in the fold, or in the purse. He says this
could mean there are many in the universe who never fell,
but remained faithful to God. Why should we assume that
the freedom God gave Adam must always lead to failure? He
writes, "O the numberless beings, for ought we know,
numberless worlds of beings, that never were lost, or stepped
aside from the laws of their Creator!" This is not a far
fetched idea. It is based first of all on the infinite nature of
God, and the nature of the universe. Then there are other
hints in Scripture of beings that never fell. There is no reason
to believe that God in His eternal nature never created other
universes before He created this one. He may have dozens,
and even millions, of other universes, and with creatures that
have never fallen and left the fold of loyalty to Him and His
will. This is, of course, speculation, but there is no reason to
think that it could not be true, and the eternal nature of God
makes it likely that it is true. But this is not the place to
pursue it.

Joy is an emotion of heaven. Angels can experience it,
and do when the purpose of Christ's death if fulfilled. They
see the fruits of His cross and rejoice, for they stood ready to
come and deliver Him, but He would not call for them. They
must have longed to come at His command and wipe out the
cruel men who crucified Him. But now they understand and
see the fruit of His death and rejoice. What is the
murmuring of the Pharisees on earth compared to the
rejoicing of the angels in heaven. Note, the angels could do
nothing for the recovery which was purely a human matter,
but they can rejoice when human efforts are successful. St.
Bernard said, "The tears of penitence are the wine of
angels."

What happens on earth does have an effect in heaven.
Angels are emotional beings, and they can be gladdened or
saddened by what happens among men. The Pharisees were
not in touch with the spirit of heaven, for they did not
rejoice, but complained. We need to see all events on earth
from the perspective of heaven. Jesus emphasized the infinite
worth of every eternal soul. Every sinner is a potential
citizen of heaven, which the angels will one day meet, and
they rejoice, for every repentant sinner is an addition to their
eternal family of friends. Angels are spectators, and it is like
watching a football game to them. Every time a soul is saved
it is like a touchdown for the team of Christ against the team
of Satan. There can be great emotion connected with being a
spectator, and the angels have that pleasure.