Luke 13:2-3 (ESV)
[2] And he answered them, “Do you
think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans,
because they suffered in this way? [3] No, I tell you; but unless you repent,
you will all likewise perish.
“Do you think that [they] were
worse sinners?” Isn’t that how we think? We’re not as bad as they are. And then
we look at our circumstances. Why do bad things happen to good people, we ask.
As though God owes us something for being better than “them.”
Jesus’ words must have stung. Their
culture and their beliefs led them to conclude that if bad things happened to
people, they must have done something to deserve it. That was the reasoning of Job’s
comforters. Life is comfortable for me, therefore clearly God approves of me
and is blessing me. Jesus shook that up by saying “No, I tell you; but unless
you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
We live in a broken world due to
sin, therefore bad things happen. It’s not like Karma of Hinduism and Buddhism
where bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. Jesus
said in Matthew 5:45, “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Bad things happen to good and
bad people. Good things happen to good and bad people. To assume otherwise is
to hold too narrow a view of life.
Jesus was calling his audience to
an eternal view. His next story told about a fruitless fig tree (Lk 13:6-9). It
shows that he was giving them time to repent. There will be an accounting
before God, but God in his mercy does not extract mercy immediately. He gives
us time to repent. So stop looking at yourself and at others through the lens
of immediate consequences and begin to see through the lens of eternity and the
mercy of God. That changes everything.
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