Daily Devotions
Luke
Luke 17 : 31-37 "WHOEVER SEEKS TO SAVE HIS LIFE WILL LOSE IT..." Luke 17:33"
Day 216 – Luke 17
Text: Luke 17 : 31-37
“WHOEVER SEEKS TO SAVE HIS LIFE WILL LOSE IT…” Luke 17:33
All of us regard life as precious. This is the most logical and natural understanding of life. Everyone will try and save his life if that life is threatened.
A person who is diagnosed as having a life-threatening disease will do everything in his power to save his life! He will spare no expense to find a “cure” for his illness. If he cannot find a cure, he will still try his utmost to prolong his life in everyway he can!
However, it seems that this instinct to survive is stronger in the natural, physical world than it is in the spiritual realm. So few do anything meaningful or significant when it comes to the matter of saving one’s soul! Many will do everything they can to have a long life on earth! Yet at the end of life’s day, all efforts at prolonging life on earth will be in vain! Many people’s souls will perish for lack of attention given to it. Many seek only to preserve physical life!
Jesus must have looked at the people who came to Him with sadness of heart. The main preoccupation of the multitudes was to be healed of their physical diseases. Few paid full attention to His message of the Kingdom of God.
Others were caught up with their riches, especially the Pharisees. All were seeking to “save their lives” but were limited to the confines of this earth. Did they not realize that they would lose the very life they worked so hard to preserve? Of what use would wealth be when judgment came and they were not prepared? Of what use would the possession of the things of the world be when one is judge and condemned? To work very hard to save one’s life and then to lose it would surely be “vanity of vanities”!
“WHOEVER LOSES HIS LIFE WILL PRESERVE IT…” Luke 17:33
The challenge of Jesus was unmistakable. What does it really mean to speak of having faith in Him? It is to be prepared to “lose one life” in following Him as His Disciple.
The person who leaves all to follow Jesus because he believes in Him could be said to “lose his life”. He has given his life in faith to Jesus. The world would probably frown upon such an expression of faith, but Jesus commended the wisdom of such a commitment of faith! He who loses his life will indeed preserve it!
We are surely reminded of what Jesus had taught earlier concerning faith in Him and Discipleship. The contexts of those words were not as grave, but the call to Discipleship as an expression of full faith is unmistakable.
“If anyone desires to come after Me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily,
and follow Me.
For whoever desires to save his life will lose it,
But whoever loses his life for My sake
Will save it.
For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world,
And is himself destroyed or lost?”
Luke 9:23-25
“ONE WILL BE TAKEN AND THE OTHER WILL BE LEFT…” Luke 17:34
Did the words of Jesus stir up the hearts of those who had not yet decided that they wanted to follow Him as genuine believers? The next set of illustrations would add impetus to what He had already spoken!
We have to be very careful with these cryptic words that Jesus had spoken. How do we interpret these words of Jesus?
1. Many have mistakenly taken these words together with what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonian Church concerning the Rapture.
“Then we who are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air.
And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”
1 Thessalonians 4:17
2. The context of what Paul wrote was that of joyous anticipation of the Day when we would be caught up to meet Him when He comes again. However, the context of the Lucan passage is quite different. It is the context of judgment, and therefore the two passages cannot be equated as referring to the same event. It might well be that one would be caught up in the air, and another person be left behind. However, having said that, this was not the meaning intended by Luke when he wrote this passage. We are deeply committed to the exposition of God’s Word, and thus we must search elsewhere for the meaning of the words of Jesus.
3. We need to look at a parallel passage found in Matthew 24 where similar illustrations were given. The key phrase that helps us to understand the words of Jesus may be found in these words,
“And did not know until the flood came
and took them all away,
so also will the coming of the Son of Man.
Then two men will be in the field:
One will be taken and the other left.
Two women will be grinding at the mill:
One will be taken and the other left.”
Matthew 24:39-41
Matthew’s account was quite clear. This was NOT a reference to the Rapture at all. The Lord Jesus had not yet revealed the great truth of the Rapture to His Disciples yet. He was referring to the Judgment that will take people unawares! There will be some who will be caught unawares and thus unprepared for the Day of the Son of Man.
This was the theme Jesus was emphasizing! He was talking about the fact that when He, the Son of Man returns, it would be for the purpose of Judgment! Not to be prepared for that fateful eventuality would prove to be their undoing!
The flood came in the days of Noah and took away the lives of those who were not prepared for Judgment! The same thing will happen with reference to the Return of the Son of Man. Are you ready for the Return of the Son of Man?