Luke 21:16 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ’s disciples must prepare themselves for the most painful persecution of all: that which comes from family members, and fractures bonds which on earth are the closest of all ties. The kingdom of heaven will cut across not just nations and communities, but will even divide families. One will be converted and another will not, even within the same family. Elsewhere Scripture tells us that even husband and wife – the closest union on earth – will be separated by the gospel (Luke 17:32; 1 Corinthians 7:15-16). Family members will cause believers in the family to be put to death. The context is persecution, and it is the pressure of persecution that will cause the betrayal of one by another. It will be too hard for the unbelieving brother or parent or child to go on protecting the believer in the family at the expense of their own lives. Under threat of death, they will yield up their kinsman to the persecuting authorities. There may also be such animosity that betrayal comes even before that point. ‘And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.’ This refers to the periodic rejection of Christianity by society in general throughout the history of the world, which at times turns into open persecution, and which will culminate in a widespread rejection of the gospel and turning against the faith engineered by the antichrist at the end of the age. Unbelieving members of society are easily swayed by popular opinion to despise believers for all the imagined ills which they do, and they have very little discernment to take an objective and fair assessment of the church of Jesus Christ.‘But there shall not an hair of your head perish.’ These words could not be understood if they had to be interpreted of the body in this world, for many have perished by the sword and other means, and the Scripture tells us that it will be so. In verse 16 he says that some of us will be put to death. How can not a hair of our heads perish when we have been put to death and laid in the earth? This is speaking of the eternal outcome, and the wonderful preservation of his children by the Lord in raising them from the dead and giving them bodies which cannot perish and are no longer subject to death and decay. The Bible assumes a continuity between the body we have in this life and the resurrection body – it is the same hairs of the head, as it were, and so it can be said that they will not perish. ‘In your patience possess ye your souls.’ Because God watches over the bodies of all his children which sleep in the grave, they can exercise Christian patience. That is not patience as men speak of patience, which waits only for relief during this life. It is patience which looks beyond death, and is ready to suffer for Christ in this life, in the hope of consolation in the world to come. That is the greatest and the truest form of patience. That patience will allow us to possess our souls, that is, to anticipate and rely on God’s deliverance of our souls, while avoiding all the traps and temptations laid by the enemy of souls. One of those traps will be the temptation to avoid persecution by denying Christ. But no, the believer will possess his soul, by faithfully testifying to Christ whatever the cost. He will then find that after he has suffered in the flesh for Christ’s sake, he still possesses his soul in heaven. But if his soul is saved, his body will be also, for man is composed of soul and body, and is not complete without every hair of his head.