Remember Lot’s Wife

A simple exhortation. A simple reminder.

We are no doubt familiar with the history of Lot’s wife. Her history was brief. Her history is likewise well known. Perhaps even the youngest of children knows her history. The history of Sodom and Gomorrah. The horrific state of Sodom and the other cities of the plain. The severe judgment and condemnation of God, who rained fire and brimstone and destroyed the cities of the plain with an overthrow. The gracious deliverance of Lot out of the midst of that overthrow. The providential deliverance of Lot’s wife and two daughters, who were brought with Lot out of that city. 

In the day that God, by the hands of his angels, delivered Lot, his wife, and their two daughters out of the city, there was the gracious deliverance of Lot and the providential deliverance of Lot’s family. One deliverance was gracious, and the other was providential. Lot’s deliverance was gracious; God saved Lot because Lot found grace in the sight of God. Lot’s family’s deliverance was providential; God did not love Lot’s wife and daughters, neither favored them, nor justified them, but they were taken out by an act of God’s providence.

Because the deliverance of Lot’s wife and two daughters was an act of God’s providence, there can be instruction in the exercise of remembering Lot’s wife. God’s providence is his counsel, which God carries out by his everywhere-present and omnipotent hand. Yet the hand of providence, God’s own hand, is for us a fatherly hand. This means that providence, as the carrying out of God’s will, is directed for us and for our benefit, yea, for our eternal good. Such was the deliverance of Lot’s wife and daughters. They were not delivered because God loved them and saved them. They were not delivered because God willed their eternal good. Rather, God delivered them because he loves us, and so he designed their deliverance to be for our instruction, for our remembrance, and for our eternal good.

The question then is, what possible good is there for us in remembering Lot’s wife? What is the instruction that God would give to us? 

What was Christ teaching to his disciples in Luke 17? Jesus’ instruction in verse 32 was prompted by a question to Jesus from the Pharisees. “When he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” We must note that then Jesus “said unto the disciples…” (vv. 20, 22). Jesus’ disciples were the objects of his instruction, though the Pharisees remained in earshot, hearing the Lord’s instruction. There was most certainly a word to the Pharisees and to all those who claim to be of God yet are not of God. Chiefly however the instruction in verse 32, “remember Lot’s wife,” was for the disciples and is for the church, for God’s elect people. 

What then is that instruction?

To understand the command of verse 32, it is necessary to understand the context. This includes both the context of Christ’s teaching and the context concerning Lot’s wife. Christ was teaching about the coming of the kingdom of God. The language he used throughout Luke 17 alluded to Revelation 19. He referred to “the Son of man…in his day,” and he said that the Son of man will be as the lightning that lightens out of the one part under heaven and shines unto the other part under heaven (Luke 17:24). This refers to all the glory of the Son of man and all the glory in which he will appear suddenly. His appearance will be most glorious, as lightning, radiating light, beauty, and perfection. He will come crowned with the glory and honor of the crucified, risen, and exalted Son of man, for God has glorified Christ for all his work. Furthermore, Christ spoke of the fact that two will be together, and one will be taken. Finally, when his disciples asked Jesus where this will be, then he answered, “Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together” (v. 37). 

In Revelation 19 we read of him who is called “Faithful and True,” who rides on a white horse, and “in righteousness he doth judge and make war” (v. 11). And his glorious appearance is described. His eyes are as a flame of fire. His head is adorned with many crowns. He has a vesture dipped in blood. Besides the name Faithful and True, he has a name that no man but himself knows, and he has the most glorious name of all—“The Word of God.” Riding on his white war-steed, he leads the armies of heaven, who are clothed in fine linen, white and clean, and likewise riding on white horses (vv. 11–14).

This one who is adorned in glory, might, and honor comes with a sharp sword proceeding out of his mouth that he might smite the nations and rule them with a rod of iron, and he comes to tread “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Rev. 19:15). This one casts the beast and his false prophet into the lake of fire, which is burning with brimstone (v. 20). This one also smites all those who are with the beast, his armies who set themselves in array against Christ and his kingdom (v. 19), and this one slays all those who are deceived by the false prophet and worship the beast (v. 21). But notably we read, “and all the fowls were filled with their flesh” (v. 21), and this was at the command of an angel who called to all the fowl of heaven, “Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God” (v. 17).

It is not hard to see the similarities between Luke 17 and Revelation 19, especially regarding the fowls of heaven and the eagles of which Christ spoke to his disciples: “Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together” (Luke 17:37). Yet what does Lot’s wife have to do with this? Did she not perish in the plain of Sodom? 

The answer is not difficult. The destruction of Sodom was a picture of the destruction of the world by the hand of the Son of man at his final appearance. But what we must note about this is that Sodom’s destruction was not the singular instance of God’s judgments and destruction. There are slaying and deliverance not only at the end but also throughout all world and church history. The truth of Christ’s words “wheresoever the body is” is that wherever there is a corpse, there are eagles to devour it. The context in which Christ spoke verse 32 was one of eagles—vultures—feasting on the flesh of a corpse.

In that context we are to remember Lot’s wife.

From thence it is plain that remembering Lot’s wife is a history-long reality. 

Fundamentally, we are dealing with God’s judgment. When God’s judgment comes, then there are corpses and those who live. There are two men together; one is taken, and the other is left. That is a reality that always comes when God makes a judgment. One shall be left and the other taken. The wicked shall be left and destroyed, and the righteous shall be taken out and saved. We are dealing with God’s judgment, and God constantly and perpetually judges. He is judging all men, righteous and wicked, this very moment. He judges men when the sharp sword comes, when Christ comes and is heard, and when the word of God comes and the gospel is preached. God is the judge; at all times God is the judge. If I may put it this way, God cannot help it. God is a righteous God. His own righteousness is his perfect love for his perfect being, and in his judgments that is God’s standard. Does this man love me as I love myself? If yes, then he is righteous; if not, then he is wicked.

In this circumstance Lot’s wife found herself. Sodom and Gomorrah had been weighed by Jehovah God. He had entered into the judgment with Sodom and Gomorrah. He had heard the cry of their iniquity. He had searched them out. He had discovered all their wickedness. He had made a righteous judgment; the cities were to be destroyed. Sodom and Gomorrah had filled the cup of iniquity. Their wickedness had come to its extremity. They could not reject God more than they already had, which was manifested in their wickedness—their unbridled, widespread, and predatory sodomy. They were fit for destruction. No longer would God forbear, but he would reduce the cities to ashes with an overthrow.

But Lot’s wife must be remembered in light of her husband. Lot was utterly unique in the fact that he was a righteous man who had a wicked wife and wicked children and lived in a wicked city. He was the one righteous man in the midst of the ungodly. 

That was not a mere coincidence, for to live in Sodom had been Lot’s conscious choice. Sodom had been the choice of his carnality, and his carnality bore further fruits in his marriage and in his children. That was Lot.

Nevertheless, Lot was a righteous man, and the fact that he lived in a wicked city that was fit for the Lord’s destruction presents what seems to our eyes to be a grave dilemma. 

Abraham accurately described that dilemma by his question in his prayer to God after it had been revealed to Abraham that Jehovah would destroy the cities of the plain: “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” (Gen. 18:23). Abraham’s concern in his entire prayer to God was not for Sodom and Gomorrah. That would have been an impossibility. The inhabitants of the cities were the wicked, and Abraham believed in the righteous and holy God. God damns the wicked. They are the reprobate wicked. They are fit for destruction. They hate God. Abraham was not concerned with Sodom and the plain, but he was concerned with the one righteous man who lived among the Sodomites. His concern was for Lot.

But specifically, Abraham was concerned for Lot because Lot was righteous. This made the matter about God, God’s judgment, and God’s righteousness. The question was, how would God maintain himself as a righteous God and as the righteous judge of heaven and earth? This was the question because God is the just judge. This means that God saves and blesses the righteous and that God curses and destroys the wicked. That is God’s judgment. Always God blesses the righteous. Always God curses the wicked. Yet how could this be done when the righteous were intermixed with the wicked? That was Lot in Sodom. God as the just judge not only had to destroy the wicked; that was without question. But God as the just judge also had to bless the righteous; they had to be saved from destruction; that was also without question. Abraham’s concern was this: Since only one righteous man lived in Sodom, would God simply destroy him with the many wicked who were fit for destruction? That is the idea behind the word “destroy” in Abraham’s question in Genesis 18:23. The word literally means to shave. Would God simply shave the righteous and the wicked together? As a man shaves all the hairs on his head by merely running the razor through his hair, would God do that with Sodom? Destroy the righteous like the wicked? Slay the righteous with the wicked? Deal with the righteous like the wicked? Would God make no distinction?

That would have been an impossibility, as Abraham prayed, “That be far from thee to do after this manner…Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25). How then shall the Judge of all the earth do right? When the Judge comes to execute judgment in the earth, how does he do right? How does he maintain himself as the just judge of just judgments? 

God would have us examine the history of Sodom and Gomorrah to know the answer. The whole account in Genesis 19 makes several things very clear. 

First, Sodom and Gomorrah were fit for destruction. The cities had come to the extremity of wickedness, and there was no escape from that destruction. Lot was pulled back into the house; there was no time for rebuke. The door was closed to the men of Sodom; there was no possibility of escaping the judgment of God. The men of Sodom were blinded in their wickedness; they shall grope in the darkness and never see the light. 

Second, Lot and his family had been living in Sodom for almost fifteen years, and they were entirely part of that city. Lot, as it were, had woven Sodom into his heartstrings. His house, livelihood, life, family, and friends were in Sodom. He had left Abraham for Sodom; he did not leave Sodom when the Sodomites had been carried away captive; and he had continued dwelling there apart from Abraham and apart from God’s covenant on the earth. Ultimately, Lot lingered in Sodom. He was in Sodom; thus to all appearances he was a partaker of Sodom’s judgment. That is what it meant to be in Sodom. 

Third, the account in Genesis 19 gives us a small glimpse into the fact that Lot was righteous. It was evident that Lot had faith, for even the Sodomites knew him as a sojourner (v. 9). Lot rebuked the wickedness of the Sodomites (v. 7). Lot sought to defend the angels from the predatory, gang-sodomy of the men of the city (vv. 3, 8).

These things appropriately set the stage for us. The cities were wicked indeed and were to be destroyed, which the angels had been sent to do. Lot was a righteous man, yet because he was in Sodom that righteous man would be destroyed with the inhabitants of the city. On this stage God revealed the answer to Abraham’s questions. No, the righteous would not be destroyed with the wicked, and God showed how. 

The answer can be summarized in one word: Deliverance. And this word can be further qualified: gracious deliverance, sovereign deliverance, irresistible deliverance, righteous deliverance. Nevertheless, deliverance. To deliver someone means to take that one out of some place and to bring him to another place. That is deliverance. The mailman delivers mail, taking it out of the post office and bringing it to someone’s house. The firefighter delivers men out of a burning building and brings them outside to safety. That is how God saved righteous Lot. God delivered Lot by the hands of God’s angels. God laid hold on Lot’s hand, dragged Lot out of the city, and set Lot squarely outside the city. 

Furthermore, Lot was commanded to flee to the mountain and to not look back. Do you see? Deliverance. That is how God saves his people, the righteous. That is the only way. The wicked must be destroyed; God is just. The righteous must be saved; God is just. The righteous must be delivered then. They must be taken out. Then can God (I say “can” because God is just; he will not ever destroy the righteous [Gen. 19:22]) destroy the wicked because the righteous are delivered to safety outside the wicked and their destruction.

And to make an example of the wicked, God took Lot’s wife and two daughters out of Sodom. Lot’s wife was taken out with Lot. She was delivered, not because God loved her, neither because God accounted her to be righteous in Christ, but to make an example of her so that Christ could use her as an example. Having been delivered from Sodom with Lot, Lot’s wife fled with her husband, and in her flight she turned back to behold her city, Sodom. She gazed upon Sodom as Jehovah God was raining fire and brimstone upon it. Her beloved city! Overthrown! The wicked whom God hated, whom God destroyed—her beloved. In the city were her children, her family, and her friends. There was her life, joy, soul, and heart. Her beloved Sodom, destroyed! And in her turning back to Sodom, she was destroyed.

Remember Lot’s wife!

She became a pillar of salt, a pillar because she was an example for remembrance, of salt because it is an example of the Lord’s judgment and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. To that pillar of salt, Christ directed us. She was the example of which Christ spoke: “In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back” (Luke 17:31). The judgment of the Lord had come, and by her looking back, Lot’s wife returned to the stuff of the house and from the field back to the house. 

Had she not been told to not look back?

Her history also explains Christ’s later statement: “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it” (Luke 17:33).

Remember Lot’s wife.

It is not difficult to see the deadly consequence of one’s turning back, or as Christ says, “seek[ing] to save his life.” Turning back is deadly precisely because of the way God saves when he judges. Deliverance. When God saves the elect, the righteous, the objects of his grace, God delivers them. He takes them out. He takes them out of the world, separates them from the wicked, and makes a distinction between his people and the world. And having taken them out, God brings them elsewhere. He brings them into his own fellowship, into his church, and ultimately into heaven. In this way God saves them. He saves through deliverance. God makes a distinction. God makes a separation. The reprobate wicked are left, and the elect righteous are taken out. The elect righteous are taken into the safety of God’s fellowship, and they dwell in that safety alone. 

Is that complicated? Is there any safety in going back? Are the righteous not spared because the Lord has delivered them? If they are safe through separation, then is it not destruction to return back?

Christ’s words are not difficult to understand. To seek one’s life is to do the same thing as Lot’s wife. Her life was in Sodom. In Sodom was all the delight of her soul. In Sodom was her home. In Sodom were her friends, those whom she loved, the beloved of her heart. In Sodom was her family, her daughters, her children, her in-laws. In Sodom was all her wealth and success. In Sodom was her livelihood. Yet it all was in the midst of destruction. She sought her life and returned back. But to return back was to go back to the place of destruction. She had been delivered and taken out; in earthly terms she had been delivered, but returning back, she was destroyed. She left the safety of deliverance. Is it any wonder then that she lost her life? Sodom was a burning building. She had been taken out. But loving her life and the things of the world, she returned to a burning building. Do not those inside a burning building perish?

Remember Lot’s wife.

Now, as I wrote earlier, Christ was speaking to his disciples, that is, to the church. He was speaking to the believer. The believer is the proper object of this exhortation. It belongs to the believer to remember Lot’s wife. It is the believer who is called out and delivered. It is the believer, like Lot, who is taken out of the world, taken away from her abominations, and delivered from her destruction. It is the believer who lives in the world but is not of the world. It is the believer who fellowships with God and is the friend of God. That one is delivered, and as the believer stands as one whom God has delivered, the believer must hear the instruction of Christ.

Remember Lot’s wife.

The believer must hear the sharp warning of Christ’s words: “Remember Lot’s wife. Whosoever seeks to save his life shall lose it.” This is far from teaching that the believer can ever fall away from God. God always sovereignly and efficaciously preserves his people. Lot was an example of this. Even in their wanderings, God always preserves his people. The Judge of all the earth shall do right! The righteousness of Christ imputed to them demands their preservation and all their salvation. Nevertheless, it is a warning indeed. It is the same warning of the angels: “Escape for thy life! Look not behind thee! Escape to the mountain! Escape, lest thou be consumed!”

Remember Lot’s wife!

This goes a long way in explaining the antithesis in the life of the believer. It is often said that the teaching of the antithesis in the Reformed Protestant Churches is legalistic, that the Reformed Protestant Churches teach the antithesis as a made-up law. Some say that the antithesis is spiritual, not physical—that is, the antithesis is something that perhaps they can talk about, but God forbid that the antithesis ever affects their lives. Rather, the antithesis begins with God.

Remember Lot’s wife!

Was there not a distinction made in Sodom and Gomorrah? That distinction, that discrimination, that judgment was God’s. Flowing from the distinction, there was the act of God to leave in destruction and to deliver from it. The antithesis flows from the reality that God delivers some and leaves others. Having delivered Lot, the command to Lot was, “Now, flee!” That is not something that man makes up, but it is that which God commands. “I have delivered thee, now escape for thy life!” That is the reality for the believer. He is delivered out of the world, and his whole life consists in fleeing for his life.

This is because returning to the place from whence he was delivered is of deadly consequence. Men deny that too. There are many good Christians out there. They have good things to say. Are there not many opportunities to witness? Good can come from taking these people in, from fellowshiping with them, from marrying them, from making them our friends. Do you not see all the good that we can do? Can we not advance the cause of Christ in the world? 

Oh yes, the believer certainly may speak the truth. He may speak it freely. He is a partaker of Christ’s anointing! But shall the believer go back? The position of the believer is apart from and outside the world. That is where God put him. There is nothing positive that can ever come from his turning back to the place out of which God called him. God took him out to save him. Shall he return back? God took you out, and you would go back? Know ye not that God delivered you for your good? Know ye not that Israel dwells in safety alone? And you would go back? You would seek to save your life?

That points out the folly of those who refuse the simple command of scripture to be separate. Refusing the command is disobedience, and their very acts of seeking to save their lives destroy them. See the picture. A man had been sitting in a burning building with no escape, and someone delivered him. As he stands outside the burning building, he thinks about all the stuff in his house, and desiring those things, he goes back into the burning building. As he heaps into his arms all his possessions, the building collapses on his head. Would you not say, what a fool? Did he really think that good would come from his running back into a burning building?

Remember Lot’s wife.

That is also why the church confesses that outside the true church there is no salvation. The church is the place to which God calls and brings. The church is where the Word of Life is proclaimed. The church is where the fellowship of God is. That is because Christ is found there, and where Christ is, where the Word is, there also is the Spirit of Christ. That is why the church can say that one has no fellowship with Christ, his church, and with God when one leaves the true church. What? Is the Spirit of God apart from the Word of God? Shall a man live apart from Christ? Shall a man live apart from the Spirit? There is life in the true church alone; outside it there is no salvation. That is where God places those whom he delivers. In the church there is life. Outside the church there is death. That is why God delivers, taking out his people and bringing them elsewhere. 

That is why scripture also says, “God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow” (Gen. 19:29). When God remembered Abraham, God viewed Lot as with and in Abraham. With Abraham was the covenant, the promises, the inheritance, the seed. Outside Abraham there was none of this. God remembered Abraham and saved Lot. God counted Lot with Abraham and thus as a member of the covenant, a partaker of the promises, an heir, and one with the seed, Jesus Christ. That was Abraham, not the world. Outside Abraham there was none of this.

Remember Lot’s wife.

These judgments are pleasing to the Lord. They are his own judgments. Let no man seek to alter the Lord’s judgments. Let no man esteem his own judgments rather than the Lord’s. Let the Lord’s judgments be our judgments. That is what is pleasing to God. The believer is not a judge in himself. Man is always a warped judge. But by grace we speak God’s own judgments. We may judge as God judges. We may judge as God reveals himself to judge. And when God’s judgment is pronounced, even by a man, let none reject it. It is the Lord’s judgment.

And as I write, I am reminded of another part of Luke 17, namely verses 3–4:

3. Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.

4. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.

I am aware of a certain question. It is this: Do we forgive our neighbor before he repents? And since I am writing about the Lord’s judgments, which are pleasing to him, then I may as well write concerning this. Is it not in the same chapter? These verses do not need much explanation, and a simple reading of them ought to be sufficient to see plainly that the answer is no. Do we make forgiveness contingent on repentance? No, but our forgiveness of the neighbor demands evidence. Does not any judgment require evidence? Well, Christ tells you the evidence: “If he repent.” Then there can be forgiveness of the neighbor, and that repeatedly. “If he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.” Is not our forgiveness of our neighbor as God’s forgiveness of us? Yes, it is freely for Christ’s sake, by faith alone. Such is our forgiveness, and such is our forgiveness of the neighbor. 

In addition to the gracious forgiveness of God, there is his work to turn the sinner. This is not difficult. God justifies men through faith in Christ; and on account of the righteousness of Christ, the Spirit is life. God always turns the sinner whom he forgives. Hence there is always evidence of a man’s forgiveness by God—the man is also turned by God.

Such was also the case with Lot’s wife. There was evidence that she was wicked. God did not have favor on her; God did not give faith to her; God did not forgive her sins; and God did not work in her whatsoever by his grace. Hence she looked back.

Remember Lot’s wife!

Whenever the believer must judge, he ought to remember Lot’s wife. She is an example of the Lord’s judgment for our instruction. God hates sin. God judges sin as sin. God does not mitigate sin. God condemns sin. God punishes sin.

Finally, there is also a word of encouragement to the believer in this passage. Having exhorted his disciples to remember Lot’s wife and saying “whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it,” Christ added “whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.” That is the encouragement to the child of God because this is his lot in life. He shall lose his life. This is the fact of the matter for the believer. He must lose his life. It cannot be otherwise. He will be mocked and reviled by the world. The believer will be forsaken by former friends and those closest to him—a man’s wife or a woman’s husband—or even by those who hate the believer. He might lose all his livelihood. He might be a beggar. He might starve. He might be slain. There is much that he must lose for Christ’s sake. The word of Christ to such a believer is that his life shall be preserved.

Christ said this especially in light of the believer’s conscious choice by faith to lose his own life for Christ’s sake. The believer consciously loses his life. It is not merely taken away from him, but he loses it. He gives it up. That was true of Abraham when by faith he left Ur of the Chaldees. That was true of Lot when he left Sodom and even ran ahead of his wife. That was true of Moses. That is the choice of faith. And for the encouragement of the believer, Christ said, “Though you lose your life, you shall preserve it. Flee for your life. Look not back. The Lord has delivered thee. Be of good cheer. Your life is preserved!”

Remember Lot’s wife.