<p>9:62 <i>But Jesus said to him: No one, having put his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God</i>- It is amazing that with the clear command echoing in his ears, &quot;neither stay in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed&quot; (Gen. 19:17), Lot could ask leave to live in Zoar, a small city of the plain, and not go to the mountain. He clearly failed to appreciate the reality and seriousness of the Angel's coming- and this will certainly be a temptation to us in that moment when the typology of Lot is fulfilled in us. The only way to guard against this is by consciously living our lives now in awareness of the fact that now we have been called to leave the world and its ways, and therefore our whole life now should have the spirit which we will have when we leave this world when the Angel comes. This is confirmed by an oblique allusion which our Lord makes here to this Angelic command &quot;Look not behind you&quot;, when He says that any who like Lot's wife &quot;look back&quot; are not &quot;fit for the Kingdom of God&quot;. The context shows that starting to plough represents the start of our new life in response to the Gospel call- but the allusion to the Angel's words to Lot show that we should live our whole lives in response to that call as if we are on the way to the judgment, having been called away by the Angel.<br />The Lord spoke of following Him as being like a man ploughing by keeping his eye constantly and unswervingly on an end point- and that point is Him as a person. The account of Peter starting to drown exemplifies all this- when he took his gaze off the Lord personally, in order to notice how the wind was so strongly blowing some object perhaps back on the boat, then his walk to Jesus started to come to an end (Mt. 14:30). <br />All the Gospels present the crucifixion and resurrection as the climax of their presentation of the Gospel. Luke&rsquo;s record is studded with references to the Lord&rsquo;s progress on that final journey up to Jerusalem; events took place &ldquo;as they went in the way&quot; (Lk. 9:57-62), as if they were incidental to the main aim of the record, which was to describe the final coming of the Lord to Jerusalem and death (Lk. 13:22).</p>