What does it mean to "remember Lot's wife" in Luke 17:32?

"In that day, he who shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not go down to take it away; and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back." It is no question of the destruction of Jerusalem,441 any more than that of the final judgment; and it is absurd to apply it to death. But the mind of man is fertile in expedients to parry the blows of the truth. It is a testimony which keeps the advent of the Lord Jesus to judge the habitable world ever hanging over the heads of careless men.

"Remember Lot's wife." This is a moral touch for those who might seem safer than others, but are not saved. It is peculiar to Luke, and a most searching word for every one whose face and heart are not steadily fixed on the Lord, for she was very near to Lot and seemed to have passed out of all reach of judgment. But her heart was in the city to which she looked back, and she heeded not the admonition of God's messengers, but in her destruction proved the truth of the word which she believed not.442 "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose it shall preserve it."443 There is no security any more than real happiness save in faith, and faith is ever obedient to the Word of the Lord. "To Save" (σῶσαι): so ℵARXΓΔΛΠ and yet later uncials, most cursives, Vulg. — Blass reads "to preserve" (ζωογονῆσαι) with D. Other Edd.: "to acquire," as BL and some Old Lat.

Lot's Wife

Lot's wife looked back. Lot personally was a righteous man, though caught in the toils of the world. His wife was a mere professor who, though she leaves the city, has her heart still there. She looks back to the place of her affections and becomes an everlasting warning to professors who, in a moment of fear may separate from the world, but have never known the call of the LORD. How solemn are the Lord's own words, "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17:32).

First of all, then, we have, for the disciples, God's ways in grace, in the Son of man that first suffers, and finally will appear in power and glory. As for the world, careless indifference and enjoyment of present things will characterise the future as the past; but they will be surprised by the Lord in the midst of heedless folly. To this the Lord appends a peculiar, but not less solemn though brief word: "Remember Lot's wife! "Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it." Apparently the wife of Lot was rescued by angelic power; she was certainly brought out of the doomed city; but it was only the more strikingly to be the monument of God's all-searching judgment. There she stands alone. The others perished; but she abode a pillar of salt, when Moses wrote the (morally speaking) imperishable memorial of God's hatred of a false heart, which, spite of outward deliverance, gave its affections still to a scene devoted to destruction. And so our Lord adds here what touched, not merely the Jewish system, but the condition and doom of the world at large. He lets us know that in that night two should be in one bed; one taken, and the other left. So two women at the mill; for here we have not to do with human judgments. God will then judge the quick; and so, no matter what the association, the employment, or the sex, whether within doors or without, there can be no shelter or exemption. Two might be ever so closely knit together, but God would discriminate according to the nicety of His own discernment of their state: one should be taken, and the other left. "And they answered, and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together." Wherever there is that which is dead, and consequently offensive morally unto God, there unquestionably will His judgments fall.

The great thought embodied in verse 33 occurs no less than six times in the Gospels, and the Lord seems to have uttered it on four different occasions. The context here makes it very striking. Men immerse themselves in the things of earth seeking to save their lives. In result they only lose them. The believer is to let go these things in favour of the far greater things that are revealed to him. He preserves his life, as will be very manifest when the Lord comes. Lot's wife illustrated this principle. The angels pulled her body out of Sodom, but her heart was still there. She lost everything, and her own life as well. We do well to remember her.

Now the Son of man, in His day, would be like the lightning: but, before that, He must suffer many things from the unbelieving Jews. The day would be like that of Lot, and that of Noe: men would be at ease, following their carnal occupations, like the world overtaken by the flood, and Sodom by the fire from heaven. It will be the revelation of the Son of man — His public revelation — sudden and vivid. This referred to Jerusalem. Being thus warned, their concern was to escape the judgment of the Son of man which, at the time of His coming, would fall upon the city that had rejected Him; for this Son of man, whom they had disowned, would come again in His glory. There must be no looking back; that would be to have the heart in the place of judgment. Better lose all, life itself, rather than be associated with that which was going to be judged. If they should escape and have their lives spared through unfaithfulness, the judgment was the judgment of God; He would know how to reach them in their bed, and to distinguish between two that were in one bed, and between two women who ground the corn of the household at the same mill.

The kingdom of God was indeed there in every trait of moral power in the person of Christ "among you" (— observe not "within" Pharisees! as A.V.,) while not yet manifested publicly. But He was to be rejected, so that the time was coming when the disciples would desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man as then present in grace and should not see it. The Son of Man would be revealed in judgment with all the suddenness of lightning flash, as it was in the days of Noah and of Lot. Let them take heed that their hearts were not held by anything they possessed in the judged place. To escape judgment would be impossible, for it was God's, and would take out its objects, even if together in bed or at the grinding-stone.

Having thus spoken to the disciples (17:22), a word of admonition for the future time of trouble now follows. For, since unsparing judgment will alight on some alive on earth at that time, safety for disciples would be found in flight from the scene of judgment. In that hour all must be abandoned which men value connected with earth, rather than risk the being involved in the impending destruction, the centre of the awful storm being, as we learn from Matthew (24), the city of Jerusalem. "Remember Lot's wife." This short but pregnant sentence witnesses of the Lord's love for His own, and intimates what is the danger that will then have to be avoided.

When the angels brought forth Lot from Sodom, their command was, "Escape for thy life; look not behind thee," but Lot's "wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." Although delivered out of Sodom, she had left her heart there, and she was more concerned with Sodom than with the word of God spoken by the angels. Are we not reminded of this in Hebrews 2:2? "If the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward." In Luke 17, where the Lord speaks of the day when the Son of man shall be revealed, He says, "He that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife." Was it in the heart of Lot's wife to return back to Sodom? To the disciples, the Lord Jesus said, "Ye are the salt of the earth;" and Lot and his wife should have been "salt" after this fashion in Sodom. What she should have been morally in Sodom, she becomes physically outside of Sodom, as a memorial of "the goodness and the severity of God."

There was, however, a third object. In the history of the times of Lot there was not only Lot himself, and the people of Sodom, but also Lot's wife. She perished not in Sodom, but between Sodom and Zoar. To her the departure from Sodom was exile, not deliverance. Many of the camp in the wilderness treated separation from Egypt with the same mind. And this yields a solemn, practical question for us. How do our souls entertain the thought of separation from the world? In the esteem of our hearts is it exile or redemption? Are we singing over that thought, like Israel at the Red Sea; or, like Israel afterwards, are we remembering the fish of Egypt, its onions, its leeks, and its cucumbers? Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. She sighed as an exile from Sodom. Do we sing, as the ransomed of the Lord, out of it?

We should not omit to "remember Lot's wife" as one who had great privileges in being in near relationship to a man who was saved and justified; and as one who had been divinely favoured and warned, because of that relationship; who for a time had taken the warning and determined to leave the guilty city; yet who, notwithstanding all this, perished. In Lot we see how near a man can be to damnation and yet be saved: in his wife we see how near one may be to salvation and yet be lost.