The Gold Coins of Como and the Parable of the Hidden Treasure

Have you ever found money on the ground? How did that feel to you? Now, imagine discovering a jar full of gold coins buried in your own backyard!

The feeling of finding hidden treasure is one of incredible excitement, and even the humblest person could be overwhelmed by this occurrence. Finding lost treasure is an experience that people have encountered for thousands of years, one which touched the human spirit of adventure then, as it still does now.

Recently, national and local news services throughout the world have reported the story of hundreds of gold coins unearthed in the basement area of an old theater in Como, Italy—you may have even found this article while searching for more news on these coins. In a press release, Italy's Ministry of Culture and Environment estimated that the gold coins could be "of the late imperial era." That would date the coins anywhere between late 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD.

These gold coins remind us of the treasure that Jesus spoke about in the Parable of the Hidden Treasure, roughly around that same time period. Perhaps one reason Jesus used a field full of buried treasure as the scene for his parable is that hiding valuables in this fashion was a common practice to which people could relate. Moreover, it's possible the exhilarating feeling of finding hidden treasure became his analogy in order to help people understand how it feels to discover the potential of heaven.

Jesus truly knows the hearts and minds of people. The Parable of the Hidden Treasure is one of the shortest and most straightforward parables Jesus taught. It is only one verse: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field" (Matthew 13:44, NLT).

To understand this story in today's times, it is helpful to understand how people of that era kept their valuables safe. They did not have banks as we have now. The gold coins found in Como, Italy show how people cared for their treasures. The reason that valuables were buried was to keep thieves and conquering armies from taking them.

In 70 AD, Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote about how the Roman army, then led by future Emperor Titus, conquered Jerusalem and unearthed many buried treasures. Josephus wrote that in Jerusalem, "there (was) no small quantity of the riches that had been in that city still found among its ruins; a great deal of which the Romans dug up" (Josephus, 70 AD). After the armies had left, if the owners survived, they would recover their valuables. Apparently, whoever hid the gold coins in Como did not survive to retrieve their treasure.

How the treasure in Jesus' Parable of the Hidden Treasure was found and retrieved is critical to the story. You might be asking yourself, "Why did the man that found the treasure hide it after he found it, then sell all his possessions and buy the property that the treasure was on? Why did he not just take the treasure?" At that time, according to John MacArthur, "Jewish rabbinic law was very specific about such things. When an object of value whose owner was unknown was found outdoors, the landowner had no necessary claim to it" (MacArthur, 2016). The man that found the treasure could have taken it and never told the landowner.

He did not; he acted honorably. He sold every possession that he owned. He gladly paid the landowner the price he was asking for the property because the man knew he would get an immense treasure in return. That is the point of the parable. The man must have had a fantastic feeling when he found the treasure. That is the exuberance we should feel when we realize that heaven is a great treasure that God has made available to us. We should unquestionably give up whatever is required to obtain the glory of heaven.

The Parable of the Hidden Treasure has a message that resonates even today. The gold coins found in Como remind us that all the treasure of this world would never be adequate to pay for the value of heaven. Heaven, "... was not paid for with mere gold or silver, which lose their value" (1 Peter 1:18, NLT). Heaven was paid for with, "the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God" (1 Peter 1:19, NLT). And we know that Jesus told the Apostle Thomas that the way to heaven was through belief in Christ: "... I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, NLT).

You might not have a hidden treasure. However, you have something even more valuable available to you: the promise of heaven. It has been bought and paid for—to claim this treasure, all you need to do is follow Jesus.

– Van Richards is a Christian financial advisor as well as the founder of https://www.Advice4LifeInsurance.com and http://www.Advice4Retirement.com. Van draws from his 30 years as a financial advisor to write about financial issues from a Christian perspective. You can contact him at van@advice4lifeinsurance.com.