devotional post #1,996

Luke 13:28-30

Luk 13:28 There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves thrown out.
Luk 13:29 Then people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and take their places at the banquet table in the kingdom of God.
Luk 13:30 But indeed, some who are last now who will be first then, and some are first now who will be last then.”

wide enough

The wider‑hope theory grows out of a compassionate instinct. When we look at the sheer number of people who have never heard the gospel, it feels almost unbearable to imagine that so many could be lost. So some theologians propose that Jesus must save at least a portion of them apart from their understanding or acknowledgment of the good news. They argue that God’s mercy must somehow override the absence of evangelism.

But Jesus’ teaching in this passage pushes us in a different direction. Instead of suggesting that God will bypass the gospel, he shows that God’s heart for the unreached is expressed in a far more demanding way: he sends us. The solution to the world’s spiritual need is not a hidden back door into the kingdom; it is a global mission. God cares deeply about the nations, so deeply that he commands his people to go to the ends of the earth, crossing borders, cultures, and languages to proclaim deliverance through his Son. The urgency of mission is not diminished by Jesus’ words—it is intensified.

Jesus also warns his own generation, the very people who saw him with their own eyes, heard his voice, and witnessed his miracles. They had every advantage, every opportunity, every reason to believe. Yet many of them refused. They were first in line historically, but they rejected the invitation. And Jesus says that on the day of his return, the great reversal will be unmistakable: people from every nation—those who were last to hear, last to see, last to receive the gospel—will enter the kingdom with joy, while many who were first will look on with regret and shame.

This is not a statement of exclusion but of divine fairness. God does not judge people for where they were born or what they did not know. He judges them for rejecting the light they did receive. And he sends his people to carry that light to those who have not yet seen it.

The hope we have in Jesus Christ is not narrow. It is gloriously wide—wide enough to embrace the nations, wide enough to welcome all who believe, wide enough to reach the ends of the earth. But it is not so wide that it bypasses the gospel itself. The door is open, but it is still a door.

LORD, thank you for the hope we have in Jesus Christ. It is wide enough.