Repent - Luke 13:1-5

Some parts of the scriptures are very difficult for me to understand, and this next part of Luke is another example of that, thankfully with help from the IM and other sources, some of the misunderstanding is cleared up. Luke 13:1 begins with some of the people around Jesus telling him about “the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” An article posted on www.workingpreacher.orgsays, “The grisly mention of Pilate’s mingling the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices appears to refer to a massacre of a group of Galilean pilgrims in Jerusalem. The narrative does not reveal why Pilate slaughtered these people, but the deed nevertheless corresponds with what other historical writings tell about Pilate’s penchant for brutality. The verse offers an ominous characterization of the Roman governor in advance of his appearance in Jesus’ trial.” The IM suggests that the Galileans were killed while the Roman’s “presumably in the quelling of a riot.”

Apparently, in either simply bringing up the subject of their death, or by other words that they used, the people who told Jesus of the fate of these poor Jews, were implying that their deaths were punishment from God for their sins. Jesus responds saying, “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered these things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” It’s interesting to take a stance on this because on the one hand, bad things happen to good people because this is a fallen world, but on the other hand, what goes around, comes around, you reap what you sow. This is a concept that must be considered in the eternal perspective because not everyone who is good is rewarded with good in this life, and not everyone who is bad is punished for it in this life either. In the most recent general conference address entitled, “Do we trust him? Hard is good” Elder Stanley G. Ellis says, “we see that hard is the constant! We all have challenges. The variable is our reaction to the hard… We choose our reaction to hard.” Dealing with negativity in this life is a way for us to come to Christ and be perfected in Him, so everyone is going to face challenges, it’s just that sometimes we can’t see the benefit until the next life.

Jesus brings up another time when something bad happened and many people died all at once, saying, “Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” It’s almost seems like Jesus is saying that all who die do so because they lacked repentance, but that’s not true in the physical sense. Everyone who has ever been born, will die, there is nothing any of us can do to prevent that. However, not everyone must be separated from God forever after they die, only those who refuse repentance cannot stand in the presence of God and are therefore cast out, resulting in spiritual death. Jesus is referring to a time when a tower in Jerusalem collapsed and crushed 18 people to death, and he compares the two situations. In both instances a large number of people died suddenly, demonstrating the precarious nature of life. We can guess based on our parents’ longevity and stuff like that, but any one of us can be hit by a bus at any moment. This is why repentance is so important, because like Jesus said previously, we must always be prepared to meet God because we never know when it will be our time. The IM quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie as teaching that it is “unwarranted” to think that someone’s tragedy is reprisal for misdeeds, but instead, “The Lord brings difficulties upon the most righteous of his saints to test and try them; persecution… is the heritage of the faithful. The real lesson to be learned from Jesus’ conclusion, ‘Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,’ is that there was no difference in righteousness between the slain and the living, and that unless the living repent they would perish with the dead… In a broader sense the thought is that as these have perished temporally so shall all perish spiritually unless they repent.”