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Luke 13:1–5
“[Jesus] answered them, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish’ ” (vv. 2–3).
Why did this tragedy happen? People tend to ask that question when something horrible occurs. We want to understand the reasons for a disaster, hoping to learn from it so that we can try to prevent its recurrence in the future.
Today’s passage shows us that we are not the first generation to ask why specific tragedies occur. Luke 13:1–5 describes an exchange between Jesus and some Jews as He traveled to Jerusalem (see Luke 9:51–19:27). These individuals told Jesus how Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, had killed some people from Galilee and mixed their blood with their sacrifices in Jerusalem (13:1). Such an act was in keeping with Pilate’s character and the often-hostile relationship between the first-century Jews and the Romans who ruled over them.
Luke does not report why the Jews mentioned Pilate’s heinous act, but we do see that Jesus took the opportunity to answer, at least in part, the question they must have had on their minds: “Why did those Galileans suffer and not others?” While Jesus did not give a full explanation for why God in His providence had not kept Pilate from his wickedness and had not spared the Galileans from suffering, He explained what the tragedy did not mean. The Galileans did not die because they were worse sinners than anyone else. Then Jesus brought up a similar example of a tower in Siloam that fell and killed eighteen people, and He gave the same conclusion: those individuals did not die because they were more wicked than others.
Jesus’ answer addresses our common tendency to believe that great suffering invariably comes to those who make themselves especially deserving of it. Yes, Scripture tells us that people reap what they sow (Gal. 6:7), but it does not allow us to draw a simple one-to-one correlation between a great tragedy and a specific sin. God’s providence is more mysterious than that, as the book of Job makes particularly clear. Job suffered more than most people ever will, but not because his sin had “earned” such pain, for he was “blameless and upright” (Job 1:1).
In addressing the tragedies described in today’s passage, Jesus said that the lesson to be learned is not that the people who were spared were more righteous than the sufferers or that the sufferers were more wicked than those spared. Instead, tragedies remind us that God’s judgment is coming on all those who do not repent of their sin and turn to Jesus for salvation (Luke 13:1–5). Much worse than any earthly tragedy will fall on us if we remain in our sin.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Disasters and tragedies are not instances of particular judgment on particular sins in every case, but they do remind us that the world is suffering under a curse and that impenitent sinners will not forever escape the judgment of the Lord. John Calvin comments, “All the calamities which happen in the world are so many demonstrations of the wrath of God; and hence we learn what an awful destruction awaits us, if we do not avert it.”
for further study
- Psalm 73
- Obadiah 15
- John 9:1–3
- Romans 2:1–11
the bible in a year
- Job 26–27
- Acts 11