The Price of Looking Back

Luke 17:32–33 | NLT

There is one woman in all of Scripture that Jesus specifically tells us to remember. Not Mary. Not Ruth. Not Deborah or Esther or Hannah. He points to a woman whose name we never learn, whose story spans a single verse, and whose end is a monument of salt standing at the edge of a burning city.

“Remember what happened to Lot’s wife!” (Luke 17:32, NLT)

He doesn’t say it gently. He says it like a warning flare — urgent, blunt, and impossible to ignore. If Jesus thought it important enough to command, it is important enough for us to sit with. So let’s sit with it.

The Context: Jesus Is Talking About the End

To understand what Jesus means, we have to understand what He was talking about when He said it. He wasn’t illustrating a general principle about healthy living or personal growth. He was answering a question about the coming of the Kingdom of God — the day when the Son of Man would be revealed. He said:

“When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. In those days, the people enjoyed banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat and the flood came and destroyed them all. And the world will be as it was in the days of Lot. People went about their daily business — eating and drinking, buying and selling, farming and building — until the morning Lot left Sodom. Then fire and burning sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:26–29, NLT)

He is painting a picture of a world that is completely absorbed in the normal — the comfortable, the familiar, the here-and-now — while judgment is already on the horizon. And then He says it:

“Remember what happened to Lot’s wife! If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it.” (Luke 17:32–33, NLT)

This is not a comfort passage. This is a confrontation. Jesus is asking every one of us a question that cuts straight to the heart: What are you still holding on to?

What Lot’s Wife Actually Did

The full story is in Genesis 19. God had already determined that Sodom would be destroyed. Two angels came to escort Lot and his family out of the city before the fire fell. The instruction was clear and non-negotiable: get out, and don’t look back.

“But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt.” (Genesis 19:26, NLT)

She looked back.

That’s all. One look. And yet that one look cost her everything.

Some have tried to reduce this to mere curiosity — as though she was simply startled by the noise and couldn’t help herself. But Jesus doesn’t read it that way. He holds her up as a warning not against curiosity, but against a divided heart. She had been called forward into life, but her heart was still behind her in the city. The look was just the confession of where she truly lived.

She left Sodom with her body, but she never left it with her soul.

The Danger Jesus Is Warning Us About

The danger Jesus is pointing to is not looking over your shoulder at a burning skyline. The danger is attachment to what God has already called you out of.

Think about what Sodom represented to Lot’s wife. It wasn’t just a city. It was her home. Her community. Her friends, her routines, her sense of belonging. The angels told her to leave it all, immediately, without going back even for a single possession. And she couldn’t do it — not all the way. Something back there still had her.

Jesus says that kind of attachment is deadly. Not someday. Not eventually. Right then, in the moment when everything depended on moving forward, her backward look became her last moment.

And this is where the teaching becomes personal.

The question is not whether Sodom is burning. The question is whether your heart is still there.

What has God called you out of that you are still sneaking glances at? What have you left in body but not in spirit? The old relationship that was destroying you. The addiction you’ve been delivered from but still romanticize. The bitterness you’ve confessed but keep visiting. The identity you wore before Christ that still feels more like home than who you are now in Him.

Jesus says: don’t look back.

Clinging to Life — and Losing It

The verse that follows is not separate from the warning — it is the explanation of it:

“If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it.” (Luke 17:33, NLT)

Lot’s wife was clinging. She was trying to preserve something — a life, a world, an identity — that God had already declared finished. And in clinging to it, she lost everything, including herself.

This is one of the most sobering paradoxes in all of Jesus’s teaching. The thing we grip the tightest is often the thing that destroys us. The life we are most desperate to preserve is the life we must be willing to release. Because the life Jesus offers cannot be received with closed hands.

Discipleship, at its core, is the practice of open hands.

Not because our past doesn’t matter, or because the things we’ve lost weren’t real. They were real. Lot’s wife’s grief was real. But there is a version of grief that becomes a grave — where we stand so long at the edge of what’s gone that we become part of it. Jesus calls us away from that. Not callously, but mercifully. He knows what lies ahead. He knows what He is calling us toward. And He knows that we cannot walk into the new thing while we are still bowed over the old thing.

The Hardest Thing to Let Go: The People We Love Most

We need to pause here, because there is a dimension of “looking back” that is far more painful than anything we’ve discussed so far. It is not the pull of an old sin or a past identity. It is the pull of the people we love most — our spouses, our children, our parents, our closest family.

This is where the teaching of Jesus becomes almost unbearable. And yet He does not flinch from it. In fact, He speaks directly to it:

“If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else — your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26, NLT)

These are some of the most jarring words Jesus ever spoke. He names them all — father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters. The people sitting closest to us at the table. The faces we love most in the world. And He says: if following Me costs you those relationships, you must be willing to pay that price.

He says it again in Matthew, only slightly differently:

“If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.” (Matthew 10:37, NLT)

Let’s be careful here, and let’s be honest. Jesus is not commanding us to be cold toward our families. He is not saying love is wrong. He is not calling us to become harsh, detached, or indifferent to the people He placed in our lives. The same Jesus who wept at Lazarus’s tomb, who restored a widow’s only son, who healed a father’s dying daughter — this Jesus is not the enemy of love.

What He is saying is something far more precise: your love for Me must be so primary, so absolute, so defining, that every other love — even the deepest ones — looks like hatred by comparison.

He is establishing a hierarchy of devotion. Not to diminish family. But to put God where only God can go.

And here is the danger He is warning us about: the people we love most can become, if we are not careful, the thing that holds us back from full obedience. Not because they are evil. But because they are precious. The enemy doesn’t always use darkness to keep us from following Jesus all the way. Sometimes he uses the most beautiful things in our lives to do it.

Think of what this looked like in real terms for the disciples. Jesus walked up to James and John while they were working with their father Zebedee in the fishing boat, and He called them. Matthew records it plainly:

“They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind.” (Matthew 4:22, NLT)

That is not abandonment. That is ordering love correctly.

The call of God will sometimes ask you to go where your family cannot follow, to say yes to something your spouse doesn’t yet understand, to obey in a direction that confuses the people who love you most. And in those moments, the temptation — the very human, very understandable temptation — is to look back. To slow down. To ask: Can I really do this to them?

Jesus says yes. You can. You must. Not because they don’t matter — they matter enormously. But because no human love, however pure, was ever meant to hold the place that belongs to God alone.

There is also this: when Christ is truly first, our love for our families becomes better, not smaller. The husband who is fully surrendered to Jesus becomes a better husband — not a colder one. The mother who loves God above her children raises them in the fear of the Lord rather than the fear of losing them. When the ordering is right, every other love is freed to be what it was always meant to be.

But it begins with the surrender. It begins with being willing, if God asked it, to walk forward without looking back — even when the faces of the people we love are behind us.

What It Looks Like to Not Look Back

The Apostle Paul knew something about this. He had a past that could have paralyzed him — a record of violence against the very church he was now building. But listen to what he said:

“I focus on this one thing: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” (Philippians 3:13–14, NLT)

Forgetting what is behind. Straining toward what is ahead.

That is not denial. That is not pretending the past didn’t happen. Paul’s past was well-documented and deeply painful. What he is describing is a chosen posture — a disciplined direction of the soul. He made a decision, day by day, to orient himself toward what God had ahead rather than what the enemy kept trying to drag him back to.

Not looking back is not a one-time decision. It is a daily one.

Every morning, there is a choice. Will you live in who God says you are now, or will you keep returning to who you were then? Will you walk in the freedom Christ purchased for you, or will you stand at the pillar of your old life, looking back at the smoke?

A Word to the One Who Keeps Going Back

If you are reading this and you know exactly what your Sodom is — hear this:

God is not condemning you for the pull. The pull is real. Old patterns carve deep grooves in us, and the enemy knows every one of them. What Jesus is saying is that the pull does not have to win. You are not required to follow every look back into a return. But you cannot afford to keep standing there, either.

The angels didn’t give Lot and his family time to deliberate. They grabbed their hands:

“When Lot still hesitated, the angels seized his hand and the hands of his wife and two daughters and rushed them to safety outside the city.” (Genesis 19:16, NLT)

God is merciful. He grabs hold of us even when we hesitate. But Lot’s wife, once safely outside, still chose the backward look. The mercy of God does not override the choices of a divided heart.

He is calling you forward. Right now. Into the life He has for you — the one you cannot yet fully see, the one that does not yet feel as familiar as the life you left. Trust Him with the unfamiliar. That is what faith is.

But What If You Already Looked Back?

Maybe you have been reading this and the warning has landed differently than expected. Not as a call to courage, but as a sentence of condemnation. Because you didn’t just feel the pull of looking back — you looked. And it cost you.

Maybe you turned around. Maybe you went back to Sodom. Maybe the thing God called you out of pulled you in again, and you followed it. Maybe you chose a relationship over obedience, or a comfort over a calling, or a familiar sin over the forward path God had laid out. And now you are sitting in the wreckage of that choice, wondering if the story is over for you.

If that is where you are, hear this carefully:

You are not Lot’s wife.

Lot’s wife was turned to salt in an instant — a picture of final, physical judgment. But you are still here. You are still breathing. You are still reading. And that means the door of repentance is still open.

The God of Scripture is not a God who stands at a distance watching the consequences pile up on people who failed Him. He is a God who runs. The prodigal son turned around expecting a servant’s wage and got a father’s embrace:

“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20, NLT)

That is the heart of God toward the one who has looked back, paid the price, and is now turning around again.

Think about Peter. If anyone understood the cost of turning back, it was him. He had walked on water with Jesus — and then looked at the storm and sank. He had declared I will never deny you — and then, within hours, denied Him three times beside a charcoal fire. The rooster crowed. The look on Jesus’s face caught his eye. And Peter went out and wept bitterly.

He had looked back. It had cost him everything he thought he was.

And then, after the resurrection, Jesus found him. Not to shame him. Not to remind him of his failure. Jesus made a charcoal fire on the beach — the same kind of fire Peter had been standing at when he denied Him — and over breakfast, He asked him three times: Do you love Me? Three questions for three denials. And three times He gave him a commission:

“Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’” (John 21:17, NLT)

Peter’s backward look did not disqualify him from the calling of God. His repentance reopened the door. And the man who had denied Jesus three times on the night of His arrest stood up on the Day of Pentecost and preached to thousands.

That is what God does with a repentant heart.

The prophet Joel spoke to a people who had watched the locusts devour everything — their harvests, their years, their hope. And God said to them:

“I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts.” (Joel 2:25, NLT)

God restores years. Not just moments, not just fragments — years. The seasons you handed to the wrong thing. The time you spent looking backward. The relationships fractured by misplaced loyalty. He is a Redeemer, which means He takes what was wasted and works it into something that glorifies Him.

But restoration begins in one place. The same place it always begins. Peter wept. The prodigal turned around. Joel’s people returned to God with fasting and mourning and weeping. The invitation is ancient and it is always the same:

“Turn to Me with all your heart… for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.” (Joel 2:12–13, NKJV)

You are not too far gone. The price of looking back is real — but it is not the final word. The final word belongs to a God who restores, redeems, and recommissions the ones who come back to Him with an open and broken heart.

Repent. Turn. And watch what He does with the pieces.

I’ll Not Turn Back

There is an old Salvation Army song that has carried countless soldiers of the cross through exactly this kind of moment. It begins with an honest acknowledgment of what following Jesus can cost:

If crosses come, if it should cost me dearly,

To be the servant of my Servant Lord,

If darkness falls around the path of duty,

And men despise the Saviour I’ve adored —

And then it rises into a declaration that is less a feeling and more a choice:

I’ll not turn back, whatever it may cost,

I’m called to live, to love, and save the lost.

That is the posture Jesus is calling us into. Not the posture of someone who has no grief, no pull, no weight to carry. But the posture of someone who has counted the cost — who knows the crosses may come, who knows the darkness may fall, who knows that saying yes to Jesus may mean saying a painful goodbye to people and things they love — and has decided, by the grace of God: I will not turn back.

Lot’s wife never made that declaration. She walked away from Sodom, but she never declared herself done with it. And so when the moment of testing came, her heart had nowhere to go but backward.

The song invites us to make that declaration before the moment of testing arrives. To settle it now, in the quiet, so that when the fire falls and everything in us wants to turn and look — we have already answered the question.

I’ll not turn back.

Not because the road is easy. Not because it won’t cost us. But because the One who is ahead of us is worth more than everything we are leaving behind.

Questions for Personal Reflection

•      What does your “Sodom” represent — what are you still sneaking backward glances at?

•      Is there a person you love — a spouse, a child, a parent — whose opinion or approval has quietly become more important to you than God’s? What would it look like to reorder that?

•      In what area of your life are you clinging so tightly that your hands are closed to what God wants to give?

•      Have you already looked back and paid a price for it? What would genuine repentance look like for you today — not guilt, but a turning?

•      What would it look like today to take one practical step forward instead of one look back?

•      Who around you needs to hear the mercy in this warning? Who is still standing at the edge of what God has already called them out of?

The pillar of salt still stands as a monument — not only to what Lot’s wife lost, 

but to what God was trying to give her. 

Don’t let your life become a monument to what you wouldn’t let go.
And if it already has — come back. 

Repent. 

He is running toward you. Release it. Walk forward. The Kingdom is ahead.