✨WEB · Luke 15:4
What does Luke 15:4 mean?
"“Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it?"
— Luke 15:4 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming close to him to hear him.
The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.”
He told them this parable.
“Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn’t leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it?
When he has found it, he carries it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
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 even so there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.
Explanation
Luke 15:4 opens the Parable of the Lost Sheep, one of three parables Jesus tells in this chapter about things that are lost and then found. In plain language, Jesus poses a simple, rhetorical question: if a shepherd owns a hundred sheep and one wanders off, wouldn't he leave the ninety-nine safely grazing in order to go search for the one that is missing until he actually finds it? The question is framed so that the answer is obvious — of course he would. No reasonable shepherd would simply shrug off the loss of one sheep out of a hundred; the value of even a single animal, and the shepherd's sense of responsibility for his whole flock, would compel him to go looking.
The context matters a great deal here. Luke 15 begins with tax collectors and sinners drawing near to Jesus, while the Pharisees and scribes grumble that he welcomes and even eats with such people. Jesus responds to their complaint with three parables — the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (or "prodigal") son — all making the same basic point from different angles. He is defending his practice of seeking out morally and socially marginalized people, using imagery that his audience, familiar with pastoral life in first-century Judea, would immediately understand. Shepherding was a common occupation, and everyone knew that sheep are prone to wandering and getting lost, and that a shepherd's job included recovering them.
Theologically, this verse reveals the character of God as one who actively pursues those who are lost or estranged, rather than passively waiting for them to return on their
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