What did Jesus mean by ‘No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’? (Luke 9:62)
'Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."' I suppose you are taking that to mean, if a man puts his hand to the plough (to confess his faith in the Lord Jesus) and then looks back (turns back and rejects the faith), he is not fit for the kingdom of God and will not get into heaven at last.
But let me first point out to you what exactly the word means that is translated in our English translation fit for the kingdom of God. The word literally means 'well set': set in a good angle or in a good fashion. Our Lord Jesus is, after all, using a metaphor—the metaphor of the ploughman with his plough.
Now, if a farmer is going to plough a field and his plough is at the beginning of a furrow, he puts his hand to the plough and starts to plough across the field. Then he must keep his eye on the other side of the field to which he is moving. If he constantly keeps turning round to look in the direction from which he has come, his plough, though continuing to move across the field to the other side, will begin to wander in all sorts of directions and not cut a straight furrow. A man who puts his hand to the plough and begins to plough across a field, but looks back, is not 'well set'. He is in an awkward position that will be make his ploughing very crooked.
Our Lord was using this illustration to a man who, when our Lord said to him, 'Follow me', replied, 'Lord, let me first go and bury my father' (vv. 59–61). And our Lord is insistent that, in order to be good followers of his, we are not allowed to put anything first before him. If we try to follow him, and yet all the while are putting other things first, then we are like a man who is trying to plough across a field but is continually looking back in the direction from which he came. Our Christian lives, instead of making straight for the goal, will wander and become crooked.
But that is saying nothing about our eternal salvation, it is talking about the quality of the furrow that we shall plough throughout our Christian lives.
