LOST.—The word ‘lost’ has come to be invested with a sinister theological significance. A moral sense hopelessly degraded, a sullen abandonment to evil, a persistent closing of the heart, and a future determined beyond the possibility of alteration—are some of the ideas which it compels in the mind. As it fell from Christ’s lips, however, the word did not, as a rule, convey any such harsh suggestions. It was rather a word of infinite pathos and of Divine pity. Used in its Middle voice, the verb ἀπόλλυμι denotes irretrievable ruin, as in the great text, John 3:16 (cf. also John 17:12 ‘None of them is lost, but the son of perdition’; see Judas Iscariot); but as a participle used passively, the form in which we find it in Luke 19:10, and in the group of parables in Luke 15, which bear especially on this subject, it signifies simply a condition of peril, grave, yet with the glad prospect of recovery.

What moral condition of humanity is meant by the word ‘lost’ appears from the character of those to whom Jesus directed His message. Broadly speaking, the society of His day was split up into two classes. There were those who, with the advantage of wealth, or, if wealth were denied them, with praiseworthy self-denial, contrived to satisfy the demands of the Law; and, on a platform infinitely lower, stood those who had neither the will nor the means to bear so heavy and so doleful a burden. These latter comprised the sinners, the lapsed, and those recreant Jews who so far forgot themselves as to take service under the conquering Power. They had no share in Israel’s hopes; they had ceased to cherish the ideals of the race. It was precisely to this class, called by the Pharisees in a bitter hour ‘an accursed multitude which knoweth not the law’ (John 7:49), that Christ mainly appealed. He ate and drank with them: He made the conditions of entrance to His Kingdom such as were possible for them all. With a profound sense of what they had missed in life, He summed up their imperfections under this term, ‘the lost.’ Reviving a beautiful OT figure, He compared them with sheep that had gone astray. If the reality of the case demanded sterner language, His supreme pity covered that fact from His eyes. They were simply ‘lost’; and the word, sorrowful as it was, yet with a ring of hope in it, expressed, while at the same time it concealed, the heinousness of their sin. It was a moral condition full of danger, because they acquiesced in it, and were in some measure content to abide under the shadow of the contempt of their fellow-men. It was a condition full of hope, because it was due partly to circumstances that were invincibly against them, and partly to a merely thoughtless divergence from the true way of human life.

But the delicate shades of meaning which Christ imparted to the word may best be appreciated from it use in the trilogy of parables in Luke 15. From there we learn that, however sinister may be the suggestions which the word carries to our minds, it did not, as employed by Christ, indicate any supreme or singular degree of vice. To be lost was to wander, aimlessly and thoughtlessly, or in wantonness and self-will. It was to live in vain, as a coin that lies hidden among the dust; to turn aside from life’s true way, and therefore miss life’s true end. There is a suggestion in the term of the lost ideals that one used to hold, and of the forlornness of the mind from which those ideals have fled. There is a hint of the entanglement of the wandering soul in influences that hold it back from safety. There is the generous implication that sin is always in a greater or less degree the result of ignorance, of a thoughtless and wild pursuit after unknown pleasures into unknown paths, until the true path is lost to view, and the unhappy wanderer does not know where it lies. The term leaves also upon the mind the impression that to be lost one does not need to wander far. A man need step but a little way aside to find himself among circumstances that stand up about him and shut out the light, and then, equally with him whose ‘feet stumble on the dark mountains,’ he is lost. But the singular and appropriate beauty of the idea lies in the prospect of recovery which it implies. Whatever is lost may be found, if in its ignorance it cannot find itself. It may be found by him who has lost it, and whose heart, tortured by anxiety and thrilled with exquisite devotion, will carry him in his search over difficult and perilous roads.

Literature.—Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Lex. s.v. ἀπολλυμι; Bruce, Parab. Teach. of Christ, 261, 293, Gal. Gospel, ch. vii.; H. E. Manning, Teaching of Christ, 105; A. Maclaren, Beatitudes, 243; Stopford A. Brooke, Unity of God and Man, 34; C. H. Spurgeon, Parables of our Lord, Nos. 57, 58, 59; F. W. Robertson, Sermons, ii. 190; G. S. Barrett, Intermediate State, 187.

A. G. Campbell.

Bibliography Information
Hastings, James. Entry for 'Lost'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/l/lost.html. 1906-1918.

Bible Dictionaries Lost

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

Bible Dictionaries
Lost