“Unless you repent you will ALL likewise perish.” A group of people come to Jesus and tell him about how Pilate had murdered some worshiping Galileans and taken their blood and mixed it with the blood of their sacrifices—their sheep and pigeons and doves. It’s as though some anarchists should break into our church this morning during the Lord’s Supper, cut the necks of a few worshipers, and pour their blood into the communion cups. It was a horrible thing that Pilate did.
The people don’t say it, but Jesus hears it in their voices—these slain Galileans must have done something horrible for God to allow something so horrible to happen to them. In other words extraordinary tragedy must signify extraordinary guilt.
Now ponder for a moment what you would have answered at this point. What does your theology of suffering and sin call for in the face of this kind of tragedy?
What Jesus said was this. He said, “No, their sin was not extraordinarily horrible. It was ordinarily horrible, just like yours. And if you don’t repent, you too will experience a horrible end, all of you.” In other words instead of saying that they are no more sinful than we are and being amazed at their death, he says that we are just as sinful as they are and should get ready to die like they did.
What Jesus teaches, then, is that all of us are extremely sinful. We are so sinful that calamities and disasters should not shock us as though something unwarranted were coming upon innocent human beings. There are no innocent human beings. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10). And what should amaze us in our sin is not that some are taken in calamity, but that we are spared and given another day to repent. The really amazing thing in this universe is not that guilty sinners perish, but that God is so slow to anger that you and I can sit here this morning and have one more chance to repent.
Knowing God through His Word ... Day by Day 