Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 15:4

"What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost 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 (ASV)

What man of you, having an hundred sheep ...?—The meaning of the parable is so clear that it requires little in the way of explanation. It gains, however, fresh force and interest if we remember that it followed the great parable of the Good Shepherd in John 10:1-16, and the compassion for the lost sheep of which we read in Matthew 9:36.

The thought was, if we may use the language which rises to our lips, a dominant idea in the mind of Him who spoke. The primary application of that idea is clearly to be found in the immediate occasion of the parable, in the love that compels the Son of Man to concentrate His thoughts, energy, and prayers on some one soul among those publicans and sinners who were gathered together; but it is, at least, a legitimate extension of it to think of it as embracing also His whole redemptive work as the Son of God, leaving the “ninety and nine”—the hosts of unfallen angels and archangels, or perhaps unfallen beings more like ourselves in other worlds than ours—and coming to the rescue of the collective humanity that had fallen and wandered from the fold.