Sunday June 13, 2010 | Greg Boyd
“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn't she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
In the parable of the lost coin, the woman calls her friends and neighbors together to rejoice with her when she finds it. Greg explores why she was so excited to recover a single coin of seemingly limited value.
In the parable of the lost coin, the woman calls her friends and neighbors together to rejoice with her when she finds it. Greg explores why she was so excited to recover a single coin of seemingly limited value.
From her response to finding the coin, it seems clear that the coin has great personal value to her—even though it is not especially valuable in the market of her time. Greg offered a possible explanation of this. Among peasants at that time, there was a custom of giving a necklace of 10 silver coins as a sign of the marriage covenant. In other words a wedding necklace—much like a wedding ring of today. An item like this would clearly be of great personal value.
The value of the missing coin is one that the woman places on it, not the value the market of the day places on it. This is also how it is with our own value before God. God values us so highly that he came to earth personally, suffered and died so that he might recover us each individually! This is an infinite value that we each carry because of the value God places on us. The real danger is in not believing we have this value individually. Our culture evaluates individuals very differently than God does. Our culture is interested in our wealth, our appearance, our accomplishments, our race, our politics, our religious affiliations and many other things. We can only really trust one or the other. Either we believe God about our value, or we end up trusting our culture and those around us to establish our individual worth.
Just like the woman in the parable, God is looking for you individually and rejoices over the individual who was lost but is now found and reunited with God.