You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will have some of you put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of my name. Yet not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives. (Luke 21:16-19 NET)
What really caught my attention was that within one sentence of each other, Jesus says that some of His disciples will be betrayed and put to death, and then says not a hair of their heads will perish. What? Will die, won't be harmed? While these words are seemingly contradictory, the fact that they're so close to each other pretty much guarantees that they aren't. And I think that's really important.
I'll get back to the statements in a minute, but first let me talk for a minute about the "gotcha" mentality with which some skeptics approach the Bible. These folks look for statements that they claim do contradict each other, and then cry "gotcha" and put them down as a reason not to believe in the Bible or in Jesus. In doing this, they ignore the remarkable consistency in this book written by about 40 authors over period of 1500 years. If these two statements of Jesus were spoken on separate occasions, they might be one more in a list of gotchas.
But these statements come almost in the same breath. Our task, then, becomes one of figuring out exactly what Jesus meant. This is always our task, and the tools and methods we use to help us cross the distances of time, language, and culture, are the same whether we we're reading the amazing (and consistent) truths we call the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, or the paragraph-long sentences of Paul. As we do so, resolving this apparent contradiction can be both the push that gets us to examine Jesus' saying more carefully, and the natural result of careful examination. This is true, whether the statements have to be consistent on the basis of common human behavior, or on the basis of our trust in God's inspiration.
In the former case, our thought process goes something like this. No reasonable, normal human being, especially a teacher, makes such completely contradictory statements in the course of such an immediate time span. Either we're not understanding what's being said, we're not grasping some underlying consistent thought, or, perhaps, we're missing some point being emphasized in figurative language.
In the latter case, our thinking might go like this. Over time, reasonable, normal human beings say things that contradict other things they have said in the past. Sometimes that's because they've changed, sometimes it has to do with inconsistencies in their own beliefs and understandings, and sometimes the circumstances are different, and the statements may or may not be inconsistent. Add to that mix the possibility that we're not understanding what's being said, we're not grasping some underlying consistent thought, or, we're missing some point being emphasized in figurative language. How then, do we decide which of these possibilities is true? We begin with this underlying thought -- God-breathed words will be consistent.
Let's move on to the words at hand. The first thing I notice is that the language, "not a hair of your head will perish" is clearly figurative. In fact without seeing this phrase as figurative, we might say that all Jesus meant was that some of His disciples would be put to death, but no harm would come to their hair when that happened. Digging deeper, this figurative language means something like "you'll be so protected, no part of you will come to harm." But it can't mean just, or only, physical harm because then we have the contradiction with the earlier statement. This leads to this observation: the key to what Jesus meant is to understand what he meant by perish. Looking more closely, I notice that Jesus uses two different words, at least in the English translation -- "put to death" versus "perish." Checking the Greek, it turns out that these are two different words: thanatoo and apollumi. Now Jesus spoke in Aramaic, but we assume that the Greek is a faithful rendering of what He said, and so here's a second observation: these statements of Jesus are not the exact opposites of one another. A corollary might be that perish doesn't mean death. The second thing I learn from the Greek words is that the word translated as "perish," also means "lost." It's the same word that is used in the three parables about lost things in chapter 15. Now that's interesting. Consulting several translations, I see that in this verse the Greek word is usually translated as perish, but it certainly makes more sense to see it as lost. Hair doesn't typically perish, but it can be lost -- just ask me. (That was a joke, son.) But we can make this third observation: the phrase, "not a hair of your head may perish," may be tied to the lessons Jesus gave earlier. Finally, by looking at verse 19 at the end of the quoted passage, I see that not only will no part of a disciple be lost, but through endurance, life (or soul) will be gained.
Putting this all together, I think it's pretty clear that Jesus has in mind our ultimate destiny, when it comes to this passage. In fact, He's contrasting that destiny with what may happen physically to the disciples. In a big, broad paraphrase, I would put it this way. 'Life is going to be hard for you. The more you live for Me, the more people will come after you -- even your relatives. Some of you will be put to death because of Me. But hang in there. Don't let your circumstances discourage you from hanging in there. I'll give you the words to respond to your accusers. I'll use these incidents as a witness to who I am. This won't be defeat. Even in the hardest circumstance you could possibly face, I'll use it to My glory. And the Father's. Hang in there. You won't be lost. Your ultimate destiny is with Me in the Father's presence.'
Contradictory? No. Difficult? Yes. Encouraging? Absolutely.
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