“Are There Few That Be Saved?”

“Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved?”

It is a question about statistics, and it has been asked in every century since. Jesus does not answer it.

What He does instead is worth watching closely, because the refusal is not evasion. He redirects a question about how many into a question about you, and then tells a small story that makes the redirect impossible to ignore.

The Question Behind the Question

The word is sōzomenoi — a present passive participle, those being saved. The questioner wants to know the size of that group.

Luke sets the scene in one clause: Jesus “went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.” The destination is stated. Whoever is asking is walking alongside a man on His way to be crucified, and wants to discuss the likely headcount.

It is the kind of question that keeps a subject at arm’s length. Speculation about others is comfortable in a way that self-examination is not.

The Answer: A Command, Not a Number

Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.

Luke 13:24

Two things change immediately. The question was in the third person; the answer is in the second. Are there few? becomes strive, you.

And the verb is strong. Agōnizesthe — the word behind our agonise, used of athletes competing and soldiers fighting. It does not mean earn your way in; the door is not a wage. It means the entrance is narrow enough to require your whole attention, and drifting toward it will not do.

Then the sobering clause: many will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. Not many will not try. Many will seek — and find themselves unable.

That distinction is the heart of the passage. What separates seeking from entering?

The Shut Door

Jesus tells it as a scene. The master of the house rises and shuts the door. People stand outside and knock: Lord, Lord, open unto us.

And the answer: I know you not whence ye are.

Their reply is the most revealing line in the passage:

We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.

Luke 13:26

That is their whole case. Proximity. We were around. We were in the room. You taught on our street.

It is not a claim to have obeyed, trusted, or followed. It is a claim to have been nearby — and for the people Jesus is actually addressing, it was literally true. They had eaten with Him. He had taught in their streets.

The householder’s answer does not dispute the facts. It disputes what the facts establish: I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.

What This Passage Is Not Saying

It is not saying that salvation is a matter of striving hard enough, and the passage guards against that reading itself. The people outside the door were not insufficiently energetic — they were knocking. What they lacked was not effort but relationship, and the master’s verdict is about knowing, not about performance.

Nor is it a licence for anxiety. The point of the shut door is not to make believers wonder nightly whether they are inside it. It is aimed squarely at the person who assumes he is fine because of his environment — his village, his family, his church, his familiarity with the teaching.

Read against the whole New Testament, assurance rests on the One who opens the door, not on the vigour of one’s knocking. But this passage is not addressed to the frightened. It is addressed to the comfortable, and it is meant to disturb them.

The Reversal

And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.

Luke 13:29–30

Here is why the original question was the wrong one.

The man asked whether few would be saved, and the shape of his question suggests he expected an answer that sorted insiders from outsiders along familiar lines. Jesus answers with a table filled from all four directions — with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob present, and some who assumed their seats were reserved standing outside watching.

So the number is not the point. The composition is. People who never expected to be there will be, and people who took it for granted may not.

That reversal runs right through Luke. A centurion has more faith than Israel. A Samaritan is the neighbour. A tax collector goes home justified and a Pharisee does not. This is the same theme applied to the final banquet.

Why He Would Not Give a Number

Because any number would have been useless to the man asking.

If the answer had been many, he would have relaxed. If it had been few, he would have speculated about who. Either way he would have gone on treating salvation as a subject rather than a door he is standing in front of right now.

The one thing Jesus will not do is let the question stay theoretical. He answers a request for data with a command in the imperative and a scene of a door being shut, and He leaves the man to work out which side of it he intends to be on.

Strait, Not Straight

A note on the King James wording, since it trips modern readers. Strait is not straight — it means narrow, constricted, the way the Strait of Gibraltar is narrow. The gate is not morally upright; it is tight.

And in this Gospel, tightness has a specific content. What will not fit through is what the rich ruler could not put down, what the Pharisee could not stop reciting, what the elder brother could not let go of. The narrowness is not arbitrary difficulty. It is the width of a person who has stopped carrying his own credentials.

The question was are there few that be saved? The answer, in effect: wrong question — and the door is open now.

This study is part of What Does It Mean to Be Saved?, an examination of every New Testament use of saving language in context, within Resource Cluster 3: Life in Christ. 91 of 91 passage studies are complete — see every occurrence.