The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of Jesus’s sayings discovered in Egypt in 1945, contains 114 teachings. Some are long. Some are paradoxical. Some require extensive commentary.
And then there’s Saying 42:
“Be passers-by.”
That’s it. Two words. The shortest teaching in the collection.
It might also be the most radical.
What Does It Mean?
The Coptic original can be translated literally as “Become yourselves, passing by.” Other scholars render it “Come into being as you pass away.”
Scholar Melissa Harl Sellew suggests an interesting context. In the ancient Mediterranean world, roadside grave markers commonly addressed “the one passing by.” They would call out to travelers: stop, linger, remember me.
Jesus inverts this. Don’t stop. Don’t linger. Keep moving. Be the one who passes by, not the one who stays.
An Arabic inscription at Fatehpur Sikri in India, attributed to Jesus, captures a similar idea: “The world is a bridge. Pass over it, but do not build your dwelling there.”
This isn’t nihilism. It’s freedom.
What Passers-By Don’t Do
Understanding this teaching requires understanding what it rejects.
Passers-by don’t accumulate.
We live in a culture that measures success by what you’ve gathered: wealth, possessions, followers, credentials, achievements. We build monuments to ourselves, accumulating evidence that we matter.
But everything accumulated must eventually be left behind. The more you accumulate, the more you must protect, maintain, and worry about losing. Your possessions possess you.
The passer-by travels light.
Passers-by don’t cling.
Attachment creates suffering. Not just attachment to things, but to outcomes, to relationships treated as possessions, to identities that depend on external validation.
We cling because we fear loss. But everything we cling to is already slipping away. The tighter the grip, the greater the pain when it goes.
The passer-by engages without grasping.
Passers-by don’t build permanent structures.
We invest enormous energy in creating things we imagine will outlast us: businesses, institutions, legacies, reputations. We want to matter. We want to be remembered.
But the pharaohs built pyramids, and now tourists walk through their tombs. The structures outlasted them, but what good did that do them?
The passer-by works without attachment to monuments.
Passers-by don’t locate identity in the external.
The deepest trap is identifying yourself with your position, your role, your accomplishments, your group, your story. You become what you possess, what you do, what others think of you.
But all of these are passing through too. The position ends. The role changes. The accomplishments fade. The story gets rewritten.
The passer-by knows that identity doesn’t depend on any of this.
What Passers-By Do
Non-attachment doesn’t mean non-engagement. This is where the teaching gets misunderstood.
Passers-by are fully present.
A traveler passing through a beautiful valley doesn’t refuse to look at the mountains. The knowledge that you’ll move on doesn’t diminish the experience. It might even heighten it.
When you’re not clinging, not calculating what this will mean for your future, not comparing it to what you had before, you can actually be here now. Full presence comes from knowing that presence is enough.
Passers-by fulfill their duties.
Being a passer-by doesn’t mean abandoning your children, neglecting your work, or refusing honest labor. Another teaching in Thomas says the kingdom is found by “fasting from the world,” not by destroying it or fleeing from it.
The Valentinian Gnostics, among the wisest ancient interpreters of these teachings, remained within ordinary society. They had families, jobs, responsibilities. They simply held it all differently.
You can pay your mortgage without thinking the mortgage is your life’s purpose. You can care for your children without using them to fill your own emptiness. You can do your work without making your identity depend on your title.
Passers-by move through without being captured.
The key distinction is between moving through and settling down. A traveler uses the inn for rest but doesn’t confuse it with home. A passer-by accepts food and shelter along the way but remembers the journey.
The world captures you when you forget you’re passing through. When your attention becomes so fixed on immediate concerns that you lose sight of the larger context. When you start thinking this life is the whole story.
The passer-by remembers.
Passers-by act without being bound by outcomes.
This is perhaps the hardest part. We do things because we want results. We invest because we expect returns. We give in order to receive.
But outcomes aren’t in our control. You can do everything right and still fail. You can work hard and still lose. Attachment to outcomes makes you hostage to forces beyond your control.
The passer-by acts because the action is right, not because the outcome is guaranteed. The action itself is complete. What happens afterward is a separate matter.
The Modern Challenge
This teaching directly challenges contemporary culture.
We’re told to set goals, accumulate achievements, build personal brands, leave legacies. Success means getting somewhere and staying there. Failure means falling behind.
Social media amplifies this. We curate permanent records of our best moments, building monuments to ourselves that we hope will outlast our forgetting. Every post is a plea: remember me, acknowledge me, prove I matter.
The anxiety epidemic makes sense in this context. When your identity depends on what you accumulate and how you’re perceived, every moment threatens loss. Something could always go wrong. Someone might always get ahead. The monument might crumble.
“Be passers-by” offers an alternative.
What if you didn’t need to accumulate? What if your identity didn’t depend on external validation? What if you could engage fully without clinging desperately?
What would that kind of freedom feel like?
The Paradox of Rest
Here’s something surprising. The Gospel of Thomas repeatedly promises “rest” as the goal of spiritual practice. Saying 50 identifies “movement and repose” as the sign of those who carry the divine spark.
You might think rest requires stopping, settling down, reaching a destination.
But the passer-by is at rest while walking.
Rest, in this framework, isn’t about location. It’s about the absence of clinging. When you’re not grasping, not fighting to hold things together, not anxiously protecting what you’ve accumulated, you can rest anywhere.
The settled person isn’t at rest. They’re constantly worried about maintaining their position. The passer-by, who isn’t trying to hold anything, can relax into the movement.
Movement and repose together. Active and peaceful at once.
Practical Applications
How do you begin to become a passer-by?
Notice where you’re clinging.
Start by observing. Where in your life are you gripping tightly? What are you afraid to lose? What would happen if it went away?
You don’t have to let go of everything today. Just notice. Awareness comes first.
Practice with small things.
Let someone else have the good parking spot. Let a comment go without needing to respond. Watch something you worked on get changed or dismissed without defending it.
Each small release is practice for larger ones.
Hold your identity loosely.
When you introduce yourself, notice what you mention. Your job? Your relationships? Your achievements? Your affiliations?
These are things you’re doing or things that happened to you. They’re not who you are. Who you are is what remains when all of that is stripped away.
Act for the action’s sake.
Choose one activity this week and do it without concern for the outcome. Cook a meal just to cook, not for the compliments. Help someone just to help, not for the gratitude. Work on a project just because it’s worth doing, not because of what it will get you.
Notice what that feels like.
Remember you’re passing through.
This doesn’t have to be morbid. It can be liberating.
You’re here temporarily. So is everyone else. So is everything around you. This is a journey, not a destination.
What would you do differently if you really remembered that?
Not Nihilism
One more thing needs to be said. This teaching is not nihilism.
Nihilism says nothing matters. “Be passers-by” says everything matters differently.
The passer-by isn’t indifferent. They’re not checked out. They’re not refusing to engage because “what’s the point?”
The passer-by is deeply engaged precisely because they’re not weighed down by attachment. They can give fully because they’re not calculating returns. They can love without possessing. They can work without enslaving themselves.
The world looks the same. The inner experience is transformed.
When you’re not trying to cling, not trying to build monuments, not trying to accumulate proof that you matter, you’re free to simply live.
Two words. A complete philosophy.
Be passers-by.
The Gospel of Thomas is available in translation in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (Marvin Meyer, ed.) and other collections. For scholarly analysis of Saying 42, see Melissa Harl Sellew’s work on ancient epigraphy and Marvin Meyer’s comparative studies.