This is history, and yet it forms a remarkable parable of the dangers that face the one seeking God. The Lord engineered these events to teach us how to escape from the world and the whole episode of departing from Sodom is a picture of conversion. The gospel comes to us and commands us to leave the world and to go to Christ, to turn our back on the old life. Inside us are conflicting desires? Which ones are stronger? The desires to return to the world, which, like Lot’s wife, we have begun to leave, or the desire to come to Christ and to gain eternal life? If we have understood properly, we know we cannot do both at once. Lot’s wife could not look away from Sodom, and at the same time look back at the city. The eyes are key, and behind the eyes are the desires.
God uses fear to cause people to flee from the City of Destruction, as Bunyan called it. But it is fear mixed with hope, and as we come to the Saviour, the fear gives way to love for him, and increasing awareness of all that we gain in coming to him. His grace and his lovingkindness attract us powerfully to him.
But the Spirit shows us the precarious nature of our position if we are seekers after God. As we begin to seek the Lord, we are made aware that we have never seriously thought about these things before. If we now see them more clearly, it is not due to anything in us; we cannot take credit for it; it is the gift of God. We cannot bring ourselves back to that state of concern if we lose it, for we are powerless when it comes to spiritual things. We must act on the light we have received before it is taken away again. We dare not resist it, ignore it, fail to value it. If we do, how do we know whether God will ever give us light again? Often God gives the impulse to come to Christ in a way that means that we must strain to the uttermost to turn our back on sin. We must exert all the power he has given us, and to our perception we will only just overcome. Only complete sincerity will succeed in taking hold of Christ, and the one who is to find the Lord must see this as a matter of life and death, as the most important concern that he has ever faced in his life.
As we start to come to Christ, the devil is not inactive. He sees that he is about to lose another of his slaves, and he fights for all he is worth to retain them. His pride cannot bear that any should prefer God’s service over his service, and he furiously stirs up thoughts about all that we will lose, if we go through with this intention. At this point there is often a flood of thoughts put into our minds to make us turn back to the world. How can we live without those pleasures which we have come to depend on? How can we bear the scorn of the world when it rejects us? For we know enough to calculate that there will be a cost in coming to Christ. Satan represents the Christian life to us as burdensome, and impossibly strict. How will we ever keep it up? He may use unconverted family members and friends who sense what is happening to us. They will appear concerned for our welfare, and give us what seem like sincere and well-meant advice. ‘Don’t become too serious about these things. You don’t want to be one of those people who gets things out of balance. Have some religion in your life, but don’t go over the top.’ But the Spirit comes and reminds us of the standard: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength’ (Mark 12:30), and we see that the world does not understand what is at stake, or what is truly good for our souls. He see that they do not have life themselves, and all their counsel about these things is based on ignorance, for they have never tasted of the powers of the world to come.
Of course all that Satan says is a lie. The world never belonged to us, and it does not legally belong to Satan either. He has no right to promise it to us, and if we trust that promise, we will be cruelly disappointed. By the world Satan means all the sinful pleasures that are to be found in the world. We are forced to ask, ‘Can I live without sin?’ We seem at times to be on our own in answering this question, but if God is drawing us to the Saviour we will not be left without a positive answer.
There is a death in conversion, and it must be a very real death. It is a death to sin, the death of the old man, as Paul calls it, the natural man, the flesh, with all its lusts and appetites. If the old man is not crucified with Christ, he will take us back to what he loves again, and any inclination to come to Christ for salvation will be smothered.
Some fall at this point. The parable of the sower tells us so. Their temporary concern for their souls never actually brings them to the Saviour. They turn back before they reach safety. That is the lesson of Lot’s wife. What a tragedy it is to have understood so much, to be on the way out of the world, and then to be recaptured by it all over again. How the devil must rejoice at the victory he has had.
God knew the danger that Lot and his family faced, and he gave them fair warning of it. So he gives us warning of the pitfalls that face the seeker. Christ says, ‘No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’ (Luke 9:62). God uses this warning to stiffen the resolve of those who feel the world’s pull on them. It is a battle of desires, and it is our desires that will used by Satan to make us prisoners all over again. How do we handle sinful desires? By displacing them with godly desires? By pleading with God not to let us be overcome by our lusts. By actively turning our minds to Christ and to the gospel promises? By reminding ourselves of the goodness of God and trustworthiness.