Will God Save Few or Many?

Introduction

Many Christians have a fixed pessimism about the world, the church, and the future. They expect the church to always be small and marginalized. They expect the gospel to bear some (but not much) fruit in the world. Rather than prayerfully anticipating that many will hear and respond to the gospel, they expect that relatively few will be saved. What’s more, some assume that Scripture supports such pessimism.

The question is not whether God will, in the end, save a great multitude. Scripture unmistakably says he will.

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, … crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”
—Revelation 7:9–10

The question is whether those who are saved will only ever be a tiny fraction of all humanity. Of the billions of people who have ever lived (and will live), will most people be lost or saved? 

The Text

When it comes to our expectations of how many people will be saved, the passage that seems to address this most directly is Luke 13:22–30.

“He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, ‘Lord, will those who are saved be few?’ And he said to them, ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us,” then he will answer you, “I do not know where you come from.” Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.” But he will say, “I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!” In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’” 
—Luke 13:22–30

The Command

Like many of Jesus’s teachings, this one begins in response to a specific question. Someone asked Jesus, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” From Jesus’ response in verse 24, it is widely assumed that Jesus himself taught us to expect relatively few people to be: “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:24).

But that is not yet a direct answer to the initial question. Rather, Jesus took the question as an opportunity to instruct and warn those who were listening. Jesus was not a walking encyclopedia of useless information and trivia answers to satisfy any curiosity.

Earlier in the chapter (Luke 13:1–5) someone told Jesus about a recent tragedy. He used the occasion, not to wax philosophical about the problem of evil, but to call his listeners to reflect and repent. Twice he said, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5).

In the same way, Jesus used the question about how many would be saved as an opportunity to say, “Don’t worry about everyone else. Pay attention to yourself.” More important than knowing how many people will be saved is being saved yourself by responding rightly to Jesus. 

The Narrow Door

Why, then, did Jesus talk about a narrow door?

The “door” is narrow in at least a few ways. First, there is only one way to be saved, not many ways. As Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And Peter declared in Acts 4:12, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Jesus is the only way, and in that sense, the door is narrow.

The door is also narrow in that it’s not enough to want to get in. “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” (Luke 13:24). The vast majority of people who believe heaven is real also believe they themselves are going there. On the other hand, very few of those who believe hell is real think they are going there themselves. However, wanting to go to heaven and not wanting to go to hell is not the same as submitting to and relying on Jesus. Many are self-deceived. They think they are safe, but they’re not. They are self-righteous, relying on their own goodness or their heritage or their success in life to earn them favor from God. Don’t be one of those.

The door is also narrow in the sense that there is a brief window of opportunity to trust in Christ. In verse 25, Jesus says that when the master of the house shuts the door, it will be too late. This is why Scripture is full of urgent warnings to trust Christ now. Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” And Psalm 95:7–8 (cited three times in Hebrews 3–4) urges, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” Paul writes, “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

The Many

Finally, in verses 28 and 29, Jesus gives a surprising answer to the original question:

“In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God.”
—Luke 13:28–29

Think about how this would have landed on the Jews in Jesus’s audience. He said that many Jews who think they are right with God are not. And those Jews will suffer great anguish when they realize that their forefathers are in the kingdom of God, but they are not.

But then, Jesus says, it gets even worse for the self-righteous. It turns out that Gentiles from all over the world—“from east and west, and from north and south”—will enjoy the kingdom of God forever. Non-Jews from every corner of the globe will sit down to feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the presence of God because they will be justified by faith like Abraham.

In the end, we are not told how many will be saved (other than the fact that there will be an innumerable multitude). But contrary to what many think, Jesus did not teach us to expect that relatively few would be saved. He explicitly taught first-century Jews to expect the grace of God to extend to many more people than they had ever imagined. We should expect the same. There will be people in the kingdom from every corner of the globe.

Only one question remains: Are you trusting Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of your sins and the promise of eternal life?