Choosing between a wasted and a meaningful life (Gen 19:27-38)

Efforts today to share the gospel are often focused on getting people through the door of salvation. Once a person’s eternal fate is secure, everything else is judged a bonus. Not surprisingly, young Christians often lack basic discipleship and only have a vague idea of what they signed up to as Christians. Our language betrays our priorities: we ‘share the gospel’ when Jesus called his followers to ‘make disciples’ (Matt 28:19-20). No doubt our emphasis on salvation by faith through grace and wanting to avoid earning salvation by works contributed to this situation. Moreover, our approach defines salvation very narrowly as being forgiven, accepted by God and having eternal life or a place in ‘heaven’. Scripture, however, has a much broader view of salvation that includes a transformed life with God now. Zaccheus responds to Jesus’ acceptance of him with a changed attitude to money and Jesus states, ‘Today salvation has come to this house’ (Luke 19:8-9). Likewise, Paul exhorts the Philippians to work out their salvation (i.e. its implications), knowing that God is at work in them (Phil 2:12-13). Lot is a sad example of what life can become when someone just tags along for the blessings of God.

Abraham remembered

As the sun rises on the devastation, we see events through Abraham’s eyes (Gen 19:27-28). He has no idea what happened to Lot and may wonder as the smoke rises over Sodom and Gomorrah. Although Abraham cannot know, we as readers do, that God remembered him and saved Lot (Gen 19:29). It reminds us of the flood, where a similarly cataclysmic event occurred to judge wickedness with only one family saved from the disaster. It was when God remembered Noah that the flood started to abate (Gen 8:1). Yet here, it is Abraham, not Lot (the head of the family being saved), who is remembered. It is for the sake of Abraham and because of Lot’s connection to him that he escapes the destruction. The patriarch is a man with a meaningful life that has a beneficial impact on others too.

Lot’s life

Looking at it another way, Lot being saved for Abraham’s sake is also a picture of how Christians are saved for the sake of Jesus Christ, but should not life with God be more than just barely escaping with our life? Lot enjoyed God’s blessings for a while before losing all that he had. In the end, he dared not settle in Zoar but lived in the mountains as a pariah, cut off from human contact other than his daughters (Gen 19:30). Finally, he had to endure the indignity they imposed on him when they intoxicated and slept with him (he would never have consented to incest when sober! Gen 19:33, 35). One can sympathise to some extent with the daughters’ plight – their father was too old to arrange marriages for them (Gen 19:31) and they lost their future husbands in Sodom – yet it is clear that they, too, did not escape the influence of sexual immorality prevalent in Sodom.

The choice we face

Lot’s story then is one of terrible waste. Yes, he survived the disaster that befell the wicked cities, but at what cost! He clearly had no influence in Sodom to confront or challenge its wickedness (Gen 19:7, 9) and once he lived there, he was putting up with evil influences in his family’s life for the sake of material prosperity. The initial small cracks that this created widened into a split with his wife and became evident with his daughters. Compare this to Abraham, who at times faced challenges and heartache (famine, fear for his life in a foreign land, childlessness), yet he responded to God’s call with faith and a life orientated towards Him. Yes, things were not always easy, and he made mistakes, too, yet his deep connection to the Lord ensured that he was never abandoned, and God’s purposes were slowly but surely worked out in his life. Lot’s story challenges us: which road will we choose? Are we satisfied with the bare minimum of being a Christian or are we willing to go deeper with God and know His closeness and support as we live out our faith in real commitment to Him?

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