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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Luke 13:1

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There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

Luk 13:1-9. Accidents and Judgments. The Barren Fig-Tree.

1. There were present at that season ] Rather, There arrived at that very season. The curious phrase seems to imply that they had come on purpose to announce this catastrophe. Hence some have supposed that they wished to kindle in the mind of Jesus as a Galilaean (Luk 23:5) a spirit of Messianic retribution (Jos. Antt. Luk 17:9, 3). But Christ’s answer rather proves that they were connecting the sad death of these Galilaeans with their imaginary crimes. They were not calling His attention to them as martyrs, but as supposed victims of divine anger. Their report indicates a sort of pleasure in recounting the misfortunes of others ( ).

of the Galileans ] who regularly attended the Jewish feasts at Jerusalem, Joh 4:45.

whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices ] Probably at some Passover outbreak, on which the Roman soldiers had hurried down from Fort Antonia. This incident, which was peculiarly horrible to Jewish imaginations, often occurred during the turbulent administration of Pilate and the Romans; see on Luk 23:1; Act 21:34. At one Passover, “during the sacrifices,” 3000 Jews had been massacred “like victims,” and “the Temple courts filled with dead bodies” (Jos. Antt. xvii. 9, 3); and at another Passover, no less than 20000 (id. xx . 5, 3; see also B. J. 11. 5, v. 1). Early in his administration Pilate had sent disguised soldiers with daggers among the crowd (id. Luk 18:3, 1; B. J. 11. 9, 4). The special incidents here alluded to were far too common to be specially recorded by Josephus; but in the fact that the victims in this instance were Galilaeans, we may perhaps see a reason for the “enmity” between Pilate and Herod Antipas (Luk 23:12).

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Luk 9:51 to Luk 18:31 . Rejected by the Samaritans. A lesson of Tolerance.

This section forms a great episode in St Luke, which may be called the departure for the final conflict, and is identical with the journey (probably to the Feast of the Dedication, Joh 10:22) which is partially Luk 9:51-56. And it came to pass, when the time was come that he touched upon in Mat 18:1 to Mat 20:16 and Mar 10:1-31. It contains many incidents recorded by this Evangelist alone, and though the recorded identifications of time and place are vague, yet they all point (Luk 9:51, Luk 13:22, Luk 17:11, Luk 10:38) to a slow, solemn, and public progress from Galilee to Jerusalem, of which the events themselves are often grouped by subjective considerations. So little certain is the order of the separate incidents, that one writer (Rev. W. Stewart) has made an ingenious attempt to shew that it is determined by the alphabetic arrangement of the leading Greek verbs ( , Luk 10:25-42; , Luk 11:1-5; Luk 11:8-13, &c.). Canon Westcott arranges the order thus: The Rejection of the Jews foreshewn; preparation, Luk 9:43 toLuk 11:13; Lessons of Warning, Luk 11:14 toLuk 13:9; Lessons of Progress, Luk 13:10 toLuk 14:24; Lessons of Discipleship, Luk 14:25 xvii. 10; the Coming End, Luk 17:10 toLuk 18:30.

The order of events after ‘the Galilaean spring’ of our Lord’s ministry on the plain of Gennesareth seems to have been this: After the period of flight among the heathen or in countries which were only semi-Jewish, of which almost the sole recorded incident is the healing of the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman (Mat 15:21-28 ). He returned to Peraea and fed the four thousand. He then sailed back to Gennesareth, but left it in deep sorrow on being met by the Pharisees with insolent demands for a sign from heaven. Turning His back once more on Galilee, He again travelled northwards; healed a blind man at Bethsaida Julias; received St Peter’s great confession on the way to Caesarea Philippi; was transfigured; healed the demoniac boy; rebuked the ambition of the disciples by the example of the little child; returned for a brief rest in Capernaum, during which occurred the incident of the Temple Tax; then journeyed to the Feast of Tabernacles, during which occurred the incidents so fully narrated by St John (Joh 7:1 to Joh 10:21). The events and teachings in this great section of St Luke seem to belong mainly, if not entirely, to the two months between the hasty return of Jesus to Galilee and His arrival in Jerusalem, two months afterwards, at the Feast of Dedication; a period respecting which St Luke must have had access to special sources of information.

For fuller discussion of the question I must refer to my Life of Christ, ii. 89-150.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

There were present – That is, some persons who were present, and who had heard his discourse recorded in the previous chapter. There was probably a pause in his discourse, when they mentioned what had been done by Pilate to the Galileans.

At that season – At that time – that is the time mentioned in the last chapter. At what period of our Lords ministry this was, it is not easy to determine.

Some that told him – This was doubtless an event of recent occurrence. Jesus, it is probable, had not before heard of it. Why they told him of it can only be a matter of conjecture. It might be from the desire to get him to express an opinion respecting the conduct of Pilate, and thus to involve him in difficulty with the reigning powers of Judea. It might be as a mere matter of news. But, from the answer of Jesus, it would appear that they supposed that the Galileans deserved it, and that they meant to pass a judgment on the character of those people, a thing of which they were exceedingly fond. The answer of Jesus is a reproof of their habit of hastily judging the character of others.

Galileans – People who lived in Galilee. See the notes at Mat 2:22. They were not under the jurisdiction of Pilate, but of Herod. The Galileans, in the time of Christ, were very wicked.

Whose blood Pilate had mingled … – That is, while they were sacrificing at Jerusalem, Pilate came suddenly upon them and killed them, and their blood was mingled with the blood of the animals that they were slaying for sacrifice. It does not mean that Pilate offered their blood in sacrifice, but only that as they were sacrificing he killed them. The fact is not mentioned by Josephus, and nothing more is known of it than what is here recorded. We learn, however, from Josephus that the Galileans were very wicked, and that they were much disposed to broils and seditions. It appears, also, that Pilate and Herod had a quarrel with each other Luk 23:12, and it is not improbable that Pilate might feel a particular enmity to the subjects of Herod. It is likely that the Galileans excited a tumult in the temple, and that Pilate took occasion to come suddenly upon them, and show his opposition to them and Herod by slaying them. Pilate. The Roman governor of Judea. See the notes at Mat 27:2.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Luk 13:1-5

The Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled

Teachings from tragedies

We shall miss the very point of Christs teaching if we suppose that he meant to lessen our sense of the inseparable connection between sin and punishment.

What, then, did He mean? He meant this: That every personal visitation, whether by violence or by accident, is not to be regarded as a retribution for a personal sin; that we are too short-sighted to judge, and that we are too sin-stricken ourselves to overlook, in our condemnation of others, our own need of repentance. The main purpose of such startling events is to arouse individuals and society at large to a recognition and to a repentance of their own sins. He appears to me to have opposed on the one hand the levity of those who ignore the connection between natural and moral evil: and, on the other hand, He rebuked the narrowness of those who connected individual sorrows befalling others with individual sins. In all ages and in all lands this hydro-headed fallacy has asserted its power. The ordeal in mediaeval times was based on it (the noble having the ordeal of fire and the bondman the ordeal of water), and the wage of battle has not yet lost its hold on the nations, and even Christians regard war as a decisive appeal to the Lord of hosts, to show on which side right lies, though history abundantly shows that often might has won and right has lost. This is the principle on which people have constantly based their judgments, and do so still, though in different form. If you clamber the hills at the back of Penmaenmaur you will see the stones which are said by the people to be quiet players, who were petrified by the judgment of God for playing the game on Sunday. You smile at that; but there are multitudes now who, hearing of a disaster on the railway, will call it a judgment if it happens on Sunday, an accident if it happens on Monday.

I. THINK OF THE FOLLY OF THIS SHORT-SIGHTED JUDGMENT.

1. It presupposes that this is the world of punishment, whereas Scripture and experience alike testify that it is the world of probation.

2. The folly of these hasty judgments of ours also appears from their constant contradiction by unmistakable facts. It was of the wicked, not of the righteous, that the Psalmist said: They are not plagued as other men. Indeed, we should lose faith in a righteous God altogether if this world were the only stage on which His purposes are worked out. There is a good story told of John Milton which will illustrate this point, though-I do not vouch for its accuracy. It is said that when the great poet was living in Bunhill-fields, forsaken and blind, old and poor, one of the despicable sons of Charles I. paid him a visit, and said: Do you not see, Mr. Milton, that your blindness is a judgment of God for the part you took against my father, King Charles. Nay, said the poet of the Commonwealth, If I have lost my sight through Gods judgment, what can you say of your father, who lost his head? Well, that is a fair example of the confusions and contradictions which arise from endeavours to interpret, by our shortsighted notions, the far-reaching purposes of God.

3. And what will be the result if men are taught to look for Divine decisions now, before the appointed revelation of the righteous judgment of God? Why this that wicked men will be emboldened in wickedness so long as they seem to escape all rebuke and disaster–and they often do. They are profligate, but not punished: prayerless, yet crowned with blessings; dishonest, yet succeed all the better in their ventures; cruel and hard, yet make money faster because they are so; and soon they will call darkness light and light darkness; and will go on recklessly, amid the sunshine of prosperity, to a hell they do not believe in! Well might our Lord rebuke the hasty judgments of men on account of their folly.

II. But, apart from its folly, THERE IS SIN IN THIS HABIT TOO OFTEN, IF NOT ALWAYS.

1. It leads even religious people to a kind of untruthfulness which the King of truth always and everywhere condemns. They cannot help seeing the contradictions and anomalies I have alluded to, and they naturally shut their eyes to those which do not fit in with their theory. If, for example, helpless people are crushed in a theatre, it is a judgment, but if in a church, it is an accident. If an evil happens to themselves, it is a trial; but if it comes to another, it is a warning. But all this is untrue and unreal, and, therefore, it is abhorrent to our Lord. Yes, and it is detected by a sharp-eyed world, which adduces it as a proof of the unreality and unfairness of religious people, and so our testimony for the King of truth is weakened. Jesus meant what He said when He uttered those memorable words: He that is of the truth heareth My words.

2. Besides, there is often harshness in those judgments of ours on other people. We think and say that they are sinners above all others because they suffer such things. This hard condemnation of others was one of the chief sins of the Pharisees, and it called forth some of the sternest words our Lord ever uttered.

3. I am not sure but what the thought of other peoples sins is comforting and pleasant to us; presenting a contrast by which we may throw up into relief our own virtues. And such self-complacency was a third sin Jesus saw in His hearers. (A. Rowland, LL. B.)

A direct application

I. OCCURRING INCIDENTS SHOULD TEACH US SPIRITUAL TRUTHS (Luk 13:1; Luk 13:4).

II. IT IS THE TENDENCY OF THE HUMAN MIND TO JUDGE RASHLY (Luk 13:2).

III. THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY RESTRAINS THE RASHNESS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT. I tell you, Nay.

IV. WE SHOULD AT ALL TIMES LOOK AT HOME. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. (A. F. Barfield.)

Judgments and repentance

I. We are to speak on the common, but erroneous idea, that THE SINFULNESS OF AN INDIVIDUAL MAY BE CONCLUDED FROM THE JUDGMENTS BY WHICH HE IS OVERTAKES. We can affirm it to be an axiom received by the men of every generation, that punishment and sin are so near relatives, that to perform the one is to incur the other. And the axiom is a true axiom, though in certain instances it may be wrongly applied. It is a truth, a truth to which hereafter the unrolled history of the universe shall bear witness, that human guilt provokes Gods wrath; and that the greater a mans offences the sterner shall be the penalties with which he is visited. And we think it altogether a surprising thing that this truth should have retained its hold on the human mind; so that in the worst scenes of moral and intellectual degeneracy it hath never been completely cashiered. We think it a mighty testimony to the character of God as the hater and avenger of sin that even the savage, removed far away from all the advantages of Revelation, is unable to get rid of the conviction that guilt is the parent to wretchedness, and that, let him but see a fellow-man crushed by an accumulation of disaster, and he will instantly show forth this conviction by pointing to him so branded with flagrant iniquities. But whilst the common mode of arguing thus leads to the establishment of certain truths, it is in itself an erroneous mode. This is the next thing which we go on to observe. The Jews concluded that the Galileans must have been peculiarly sinful, since God had allowed them to be butchered by the Romans. They showed, therefore, that they believed in an awful connection between sinfulness and suffering, and so far they were witnesses to one of the fundamental truths of Revelation. But, nevertheless, we gather unquestionably from Christs address, that it did not follow that because these Galileans were massacred they were sinners above all the Galileans. Now, if we would attend to the course and order of Gods judgments, we should presently see, that although wherever there is suffering there must have been sin, still nothing can be more faulty than the supposition that he who suffers most must have sinned most. There is no proportion whatsoever kept up in Gods dealings with His creatures between mens allotments in this life, and their actions. On the contrary, the very same conduct which is allowed to prosper in one case entails a long line of calamities in another.

II. Now this brings us to our second topic of discourse. We have shown you the erroneousness of the inference drawn by the Jews; AND WE DO ON TO THE REPROOF WHICH THEY MET WITH FROM THE REDEEMER. We bid you, first of all, observe that Jesus, in no degree, denies the actual sinfulness of the murdered Galileans. He only sets himself against the idea which had been formed of their relative sinfulness. What they had suffered was, undoubtedly, a consequence of sin in the general–for if there were no sin, there could be no suffering. But the calamity which overtook them was no more necessarily the produce of particular sin, than was the blindness of the man concerning whom the disciples asked, Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Sinful, then, the Galileans were, and, because sinful, they also suffered. But of their sinfulness we all partake, and, what then is to exempt us from partaking of their suffering? We are taught by our text that if we repent we shall be delivered; if we repent not, we must perish. And I just wish to set before you, with all plainness and simplicity, THE EXACT PLACE WHICH REPENTANCE OCCUPIES IN THE BUSINESS OF OUR RECONCILIATION TO GOD. There has been much mistake abroad on this matter, and both repentance and faith have been wrongly exhibited by a diseased theology. A man is not pardoned because he is sorry for his sins. A man is not saved because he believes upon Christ. If you once say that it is because we do this or that, that we are accepted of God, you make the acceptance a thing of works, and not one of grace. If we say to an individual, Repent and believe and thou shalt be saved, the saying is a true saying, and has the whole of Gods Word on its side. But if we say, Repent, and because penitent, thou shalt be forgiven, we represent repentance as the procuring cause of forgiveness, and thus do fatal violence to every line of the gospel. Repentance is a condition, and faith is a condition, but neither the one or the other is anything more than a condition. In itself there is no virtue in repentance–in itself there is no virtue in faith. That repentance must precede pardon is clear from every line of the scheme of salvation; but that repentance must precede coming to Christ is a notion fraught with the total upset of this scheme. We deny not that a legal repentance, as it may be termed, is often beforehand with our turning to the Mediator; but an evangelical repentance is not to be gotten except from it. It is a change of heart–it is a renewal of spirit–it is the being translated from darkness to light, the being turned-from dead works to serve the living and true God. And if all this mighty renovation is to pass upon man, ere it can be said of him that he has truly repented, then he must have betaken himself to the Redeemers fulness in order to obtain the very elements of repentance, and this is distinctly opposed to his possessing those elements as qualifications for his drawing from that fulness. Of all things, let us avoid the throwing up ramparts between the sinner and the Saviour. I am bold to say that, if the gospel be conditional, the only condition is a look. Look unto Me, and be ye saved. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The judgments of God

–This story is often used, it seems to me, for a purpose exactly opposite to that for which it is told. It is said that because these Galileans, whom Pilate slew, and these eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell, were no worse than the people round them, that therefore similar calamities must not be considered judgments and punishments of God; that it is an offence against Christian charity to say that such sufferers are the objects of Gods anger; that it is an offence against good manners to introduce the name of God, or the theory of a Divine Providence, in speaking of historical events. They must be ascribed to certain brute forces of nature; to certain inevitable laws of history; to the passions of men, to chance, to fate, to anything and everything, rather than to the will of God. No man disagrees more utterly than I do with the latter part of this language. For as surely as there is a God, so surely does that God judge the earth; and every individual, family, institution, and nation on the face thereof; and judge them all in righteousness by His Son Jesus Christ, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, and given Him all power in heaven and earth; who reigns, and will reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. Our Lord does not say–Those Galileans were not sinners at all. Their sins had nothing to do with their death. Those on whom the tower fell were innocent men. He rather implies the very opposite. We know nothing of the circumstances of either calamity; but this we known that our Lord warned the rest of the Jews, that unless they repented–that is, changed their mind, and therefore their conduct, they would all perish in the same way. And we know that that warning was fulfilled, within forty years, so hideously and so awfully, that the destruction of Jerusalem remains as one of the most terrible cases of wholesale ruin and horror recorded in history; and–as I believe–a key to many a calamity before and since. Like the taking of Babylon, the fall of Rome, and the French Revolution, it stands out in lurid splendour, as of the nether pit itself, forcing all who believe to say in fear and trembling–Verily there is a God that judgeth the earth–and a warning to every man, class, institution, and nation on earth, to set their houses in order betimes, and bear fruit meet for repentance, lest the day come when they too shall be weighed in the balance of Gods eternal justice, and found wanting. But another lesson we may learn from the text, which I wish to impress earnestly on your minds; These Galileans, it seems, were no worse than the other Galileans; yet they were singled out as examples, as warnings to the rest. It is as if they were punished, not for being who they were, but for being what they were. History is full of such instances; instances of which we say and cannot help saying–What have they done above all others, that on them above all others the thunderbolt should fall? Was Charles the First, for example, the worst, or the best, of the Stuarts; and Louis the Sixteenth, of the Bourbons? Look, again, at the fate of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the hapless monks of the Charterhouse. Were they sinners above all who upheld the Romish system in England? Were they not rather among the righteous men who ought to have saved it, if it could have been saved? And yet on them–the purest and the holiest of their party–and not on the hypocrites and profligates, fell the thunderbolt. What is the meaning of these things?–for a meaning there must be; and we, I dare to believe, must be meant to discover it; for we are the children of God, into whose hearts, because we are human beings and not mere animals, He has implanted the inextinguishable longing to ascertain final causes–to seek not merely the means of things, but the reason of things; to ask not merely How? but Why? May not the reason be–I speak with all timidity and reverence, as one who shrinks frompretending to thrust himself into the counsels of the Almighty–but may not the reason be that God has wished thereby to condemn not the persons, but the systems? That He has punished them not for their private, but for their public faults? Looking at history in this light, we may justify God for many a heavy blow, and fearful judgment, which seems to the unbeliever a wanton cruelty of chance or fate; while at the same time we may feel deep sympathy with–often deep admiration for–many a noble spirit, who has been defeated, and justly defeated, by those irreversible taws of Gods kingdom, of which it is written–On whomsoever that stone shall fall, it will grind him to powder. We may look with reverence, as well as pity, on many figures in history, such as Sir Thomas Mores; on persons who, placed by no fault of their own in some unnatural and unrighteous position; involved in some decaying and unworkable system; conscious more or less of their false position; conscious, too, of coming danger, have done their best, according to their light, to work like men, before the night came in which no man could work; to do what of their duty seemed still plain and possible; and to set right that which would never come right more: forgetting that, alas, the crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered; till the flood came and swept them away, standing bravely to the last at a post long since untenable, but still–all honour to them–standing at their post. When we consider such sad figures on the page of history, we may have, I say, all respect for their private virtues. We may accept every excuse for their public mistakes. And yet we may feel a solemn satisfaction at their downfall, when we see it to have been necessary for the progress of mankind, and according to those laws and that will of God and of Christ, by which alone the human race is ruled. And we shall believe, too, that these things were written for our example, that we may see, add fear, and be turned to the Lord. (C. Kingsley, M. A.)

Accidents, not punishments

I. First, LET US TAKE HEED THAT WE DO NOT DRAW THE RASH AND HASTY CONCLUSION FROM TERRIBLE ACCIDENTS, THAT THOSE WHO SUFFER BY THEM SUFFER ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR SINS. NOW, mark, I would not deny but what there have sometimes been judgments of God upon particular persons for sin; sometimes, and I think but exceedingly rarely, such things have occurred. Some of us have heard in our own experience instances of men who have blasphemed God and defied Him to destroy them, who have suddenly fallen dead; and in such cases, the punishment has so quickly followed the blasphemy that one could not help perceiving the hand of God in it. The man had wantonly asked for the judgment of God, his prayer was heard, and the judgment came. And, beyond a doubt, there are what may be called natural judgments. You see a man ragged, poor, houseless; he has been profligate, he has been a drunkard, he has lost his character, and it is but the just judgment of God upon him that he should be starving, and that he should be an outcast among men. You see in the hospitals loathsome specimens of men and women foully diseased; God forbid that we should deny that in such a case–the punishment being the natural result of the sin–there is a judgment of God upon licentiousness and ungodly lusts. And the like may be said in many instances where there is so clear a link between the sin and the punishment that the blindest men may discern that God hath made Misery the child of Sin. But in cases of accident, such as that to which I refer, and in cases of sudden and instant death, again, I say, I enter my earnest protest against the foolish and ridiculous idea that those who thus perish are sinners above all the sinners who survive unharmed. Let me just try to reason this matter out with Christian people; for there are some unenlightened Christian people who will feel horrified by what I have said. To all those who hastily look upon every calamity as a judgment I would speak in the earnest hope of setting them right.

1. Let me begin, then, by saying, do not you see that what you say is not true? and that is the best of reasons why you should not say it. Does not your own experience and observation teach you that one event happeneth both to the righteous and to the wicked? It is true, the wicked man sometimes falls dead in the street; but has not the minister fallen dead in the pulpit?

2. The idea that whenever an accident occurs we are to look upon it as a judgment from God would make the providence of God to be, instead of a great deep, a very shallow pool. Why, any child can understand the providence of God, if it be true that when there is a railway accident it is because people travel on a Sunday. I take any little child from the smallest infant-class form in the Sunday-school, and he will say, Yes, I see that. But then, if such a thing be providence, if it be a providence that can be understood, manifestly it is not the Scriptural idea of providence, for in the Scripture we are always taught that Gods providence is a great deep; and even Ezekiel, who had the wing of the cherubim and could fly aloft, when he saw the wheels which were the great picture of the providence of God, could only say the wheels were so high that they were terrible, and were full of eyes, so that he cried, O wheel! If–I repeat it to make it plain–if always a calamity were the result of some sin, providence would be as simple as that twice two made four; it would be one of the first lessons that a little child might learn.

3. And then, will you allow me to remark, that the supposition against which I am earnestly contending, is a very cruel and unkind one. For if this were the case, that all persons who thus meet with their death in an extraordinary and terrible manner, were greater sinners than the rest, would it not be a crushing blow to bereaved survivors, and is it not ungenerous on our part to indulge the idea unless we are compelled by unanswerable reasons to accept it as an awful truth? Now, I defy you to whisper it in the widows ear. And now, lastly–and then I leave this point–do you not perceive that the un-Christian and unscriptural supposition that when men suddenly meet with death it is the result of sin, robs Christianity of one of its noblest arguments for the immortality of the soul? Brethren, we assert daily, with Scripture for our warrant, that God is just; and inasmuch as He is just, He must punish sin, and reward the righteous. Manifestly He does not do it in this world. I think I have plainly shown that in this world one event happeneth to both; that the righteous man is poor as well as the wicked, and that he dies suddenly as well as the most graceless. Very well, then, the inference is natural and clear that there must be a next world in which these things must be righted. If there be a God, He must be just; and if He be just, He must punish sin; and since He does not do it in this world, there therefore must be another state in which men shall receive the due reward of their works; and they that have sown to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, while they that have sown to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Make this world the reaping place, and you have taken the sting out of sin.

II. Now to our second point. WHAT USE, THEN, OUGHT WE TO MAKE OF THIS VOICE OF GOD AS HEARD AMIDST THE SHRIEKS AND GROANS OF DYING MEN?

1. The first inquiry we should put to ourselves is this: Why may it not be my case that I may very soon and suddenly be cut off? Have I a lease of my life? Have I any special guardianship which ensures me that I shall not suddenly pass the portals of the tomb? And the next question it should suggest is this: Am not I as great a sinner as those who died? If in outward sin others have excelled me, are not the thoughts of my heart evil? Does not the same law which curses them curse me? It is as impossible that I should be saved by my works as that they should be. Am not I under the law as well as they by nature, and therefore am not I as well as they under the curse? That question should arise. Instead of thinking of their sins which would make me proud, I should think of my own which will make me humble. Instead of speculating upon their guilt, which is no business of mine, I should turn my eyes within and think upon my own transgression, for which I must personally answer before the Most High God. Then the next question is, Have I repented of my sin? I need not be inquiring whether they have or not: have I? Since I am liable to the same calamity, am I prepared to meet it? Do I hate sin? Have I learned to abhor it? For if not, I am in as great danger as they were, and may quite as suddenly be cut off, and then where am I? I will not ask where are they? And then, again, instead of prying into the future destiny of these unhappy men and women, how much better to inquire into our own destiny and our own state!

2. When we have used it thus for inquiry, let me remind you that we ought to use it also for warning. Ye shall all likewise perish. No, says one, not likewise. We shall not all be crushed; many of us will die in our beds. We shall not all be burned; many of us will tranquilly close our eyes. Ay, but the text says, Ye shall all likewise perish. And let me remind you that some of you may perish in the same identical manner. You have no reason to believe that you may not also suddenly be cut off while walking the streets. You may fall dead while eating your meals–how many have perished with the staff of life in their hands! Ye shall be in your bed, and your bed shall suddenly be made your tomb. You shall be strong, hale, hearty, and in health, and either by an accident or by the stoppage of the circulation of your blood, you shall be suddenly hurried before your God. Oh: may sudden death to you be sudden glory! But it may happen with some of us, that in the same sudden manner as others have died, so shall we. But lately, in America, a brother, while preaching the Word, laid down his body and his charge at once. You remember the death of Dr. Beaumont, who, while proclaiming the gospel of Christ, closed his eyes to earth. And I remember the death of a minister in this country, who had but just given out the verse–

Father, I long, I faint to see

The place of Thine abode;

Id leave Thine earthly courts and flee

Up to Thy house, my God,

when it pleased God to grant him the desire of his heart, and he appeared before the King in His beauty. Why, then, may not such a sudden death as that happen to you and to me? (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Lessons

1. We may hence learn to beware of rashly judging others. Let us think of the guilt which we should thus incur, and also of the retribution in kind, which we should thereby prepare for ourselves.

2. We may hence learn not to be too hasty in interpreting afflictive dispensations of Providence against ourselves. We may sometimes hear a person who is labouring under great reverses, or heavy bodily distress, express himself thus, Surely I must be a very great sinner, else such things could never have been laid on me. If his meaning, in expressing himself thus, be that he is a great sinner in himself, that he suffers less than he deserves, that he might justly be cast off altogether, and that he ought to humble himself under the rod, and consider well what ought to be amended in his feelings and character–nothing can be more proper. But if his meaning be, that such sufferings are a proof that he is a sinner beyond others, and that he is still unpardoned and unrenewed, and that God is treating him as an enemy, and probably will cast him off for ever–nothing can be more hasty. The truth of the case may be the very opposite; and, if his humility be real, probably is the very opposite. Let all afflicted souls learn to seek to God for the sanctified use of their trouble, and support under it; and let none vex themselves with dark surmises whose trust is in the God of mercy.

3. We may hence learn to be thankful for our own preservation. When we hear of the heavy calamities, and the sudden removal of others, let us bless God for our own safety. What but His kind care has preserved us? Let us be thankful for our ordinary and daily preservation, and especially for signal deliverances. Let us be thankful, too, for our quietness and safety during our solemn religious services. When we think what blindness, unbelief, wandering of thought, and varied sinfulness, mix even with our very best services, and especially with our worst, how thankful should we be that the Lord has not broken in and made a breach on us, and mingled our blood with our sacrifices.

4. We learn from this passage, that it is our duty to mark and improve calamities, and especially violent and sudden deaths. It is right to speak of them to each other, with a view to our mutual benefit. When Gods judgments are abroad in the earth, the inhabitants of the world should learn righteousness. Be ye also ready: for, in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man commeth.

5. But there is one other lesson from this passage, on which I am especially desirous of fixing your attention, namely, the necessity of genuine repentance. Our Lord Himself, here says twice, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Consider, then, what is implied in repentance unto salvation; and seek to become possessed of it. (James Foote, M. A.)

The massacre of the Galileans

There is no account in Josephus, the only Jewish contemporary historian, of this massacre of the Galileans. The oldest account of it is in Cyril of Alexandria, about four hundred years after it occurred, and runs thus: For these [Galileans] were followers of the opinions of Judas of Galilee, of whom Luke makes mention in the Acts of the Apostles, who said that we ought to call no man master. Great numbers of them refusing to acknowledge Caesar as their master were therefore punished by Pilate. They said also that men ought not to offer to God any sacrifices that were not ordained by the law of Moses, and so forbade to offer the sacrifices appointed by the people for the safety of the Emperor and the Roman people. Pilate, thus being enraged against the Galileans, ordered them to be slain in the midst of the very victims which they thought they might offer according to the custom of their law, so that the blood of the offerers was mingled with that of the victims offered. It is also conjectured that this interference of Pilate in slaying these Galileans was the cause of his quarrel with Herod, who resented his interference until a reconciliation took place by his sending Christ to him as one under his own jurisdiction. (M. F. Sadler.)

An accident wrongly described

I remember that terrible accident which occurred on the Thames–the sinking of the Princess Alice steamboat. It appalled everybody, and we called it a mysterious providence. I remember reading in the newspapers that when the collision occurred the boat cracked and crumbled like a matchbox–that was the sentence used. Why did it do so? Not by a special providence, but because it was built like a matchbox–as slim and as flimsy: and the providence that ended so fatally was, as usual, not the providence of God, but the reckless greed of man. (J. Jackson Wray.)

Scrutable providences

Modern science has brought the world a fifth gospel. In it we read that God commands us to give Him our whole heads as well as our whole hearts, for that we cannot know Him nor obey Him till we discern Him in every minutest fact, and every immutable law of the physical universe, as in every fact and law of the moral. It is barely two hundred years since the great Cotton Mather preached a famous sermon called Burnings Bewailed, wherein he attributed a terrible conflagration to the wrath of God kindled against Sabbathbreaking and the accursed fashion of monstrous periwigs! For years after his time the Puritan colonies held fasts for mildew, for small-pox, for caterpillars, for grasshoppers, for loss of cattle by cold and visitation of God. They saw an Inscrutable Providence in all these things. But when their children had learned a better husbandry and better sanitary conditions the visitations ceased. When, in Chicago, a nights fire undid a generations toil, spreading misery and death broadcast, was that horror in the least degree inexplicable? Every man who, within thirty years, had put up a wooden house in a city whose familiar breezes were gales, and whose gales were hurricanes, solicited that rain of fire. They who, hasting to be rich, fell into the snare of cheap and dangerous building, digged, every man, a pit for his neighbours feet as well as for his own. The inscrutable aspect of the calamity was that it had not come years before. And the Providential lesson would seem to be that laws of matter are laws of God, and cannot be violated with impunity. When the earthquake well-nigh swallowed up Peru, five or six years ago, men stood aghast at the mysterious dispensation. But heaven has not only always declared that tropical countries are liable to earthquakes, but had taught the Peruviaus through hundreds of years to expect two earthquakes in a century, travelling in cycles from forty to sixty years apart. The citizens of Arica have not only this general instruction, but that special warning which nature always gives. A great light appeared to the south-east. Hollow sounds were heard. The dogs, the goats, even the swine foresaw the evil and hid themselves. But the simple men passed on and were punished. Before the Alpine freshets come the streams are coffee-coloured. Even the tornadoes of the tropics, which are instantaneous in their swoop, so plainly announce themselves to old sailors that they reef sails and save ship and life, while only the heedless perish. The simoon gives such certain and invariable warnings that the caravan is safe if it be wary. Herculaneum and Pompeii were built too far up the mountain. And that the builders knew quite as well as the excavators of the splendid ruins know it now. But they chose to take the risk. And to-day their cheerful compatriots gather their heedless vintage and sit beneath their perilous vines still nearer to the deadly crater. St. Petersburg has been three times inundated, and after each most fatal calamity processions filled the streets and masses were said to propitiate the mysterious anger of God. Peter the Great, who built the city, was the successor of Canute. He ordered the Gulf of Cronstadt to retire, and then set down his capital in the swamps of the verge of the Neva. Whenever the river breaks up with the spring floods, the trembling citizens are at sea in a bowl. Only three times has the bowl broken, so much money and skill have been expended upon it. But when a March gale shall drive the tide back upon the river, swollen and terrible with drifting ice, drowned St. Petersburg will be the pendant for burned Chicago. (J. JacksonWray.)

Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish

True repentance

True repentance is a change of mind, accompanied by a sincere renunciation of sin. Its evidences are–

1. A consciousness of the evil of sin.

2. Self-condemnation.

3. A sense of unworthiness.

4. Great grief on account of the sin committed.

5. A truthful confession before God.

6. Prayer for power to resist temptation.

7. A mind open to good impressions.

8. Its emblem among plants is a bruised reed.

9. Its model among men is Christian weeping before the Cross, but afterwards Christian rejoicing in hope.

This is repentance that needeth not to be repented of I desire to die, said Philip Henry, preaching repentance; if out of the pulpit, I desire to die repenting. (Van Doren.)

A faithful warning

A young woman, being requested to join a Christian Society, stated that she had a tract given her when a scholar in a Sunday-school, in which tract an account was given of a young woman who died happy. This girl in her illness called her sister to her, and affectionately said, Sister, if you do not repent of your sins, and turn to Jesus Christ, where God is you can never come. This so impressed the young woman that she never forgot it. She added, Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, this was always on my mind, where God is you can never come. I was very much distressed at-my situation, and could find no peace. She eventually, came to Jesus, became happy in the enjoyments of the pardon of her sins, through faith in the atonement of Christ Jesus, and lived in the expectation of realizing what her faith anticipated.

All sin must be repented of

If seven robbers were to get into a mans house, even though six of them were discovered and made prisoners, and sent off to jail, yet, as long as the seventh was known to be concealed in some secret corner, the master of the house could not well feel himself out of danger. Or, if a bird has fallen into a snare, and is only caught by a single claw; or, if any animal has been caught in a trap, though it should be only by the leg, yet they are both in as much danger as if their whole bodies were entrapped. Thus it is that certain destruction awaits us, unless all sin, even the very least, be repented of. Pharaoh, after having been smitten with many plagues, at last consented to let the people go, provided they left their sheep and cattle behind them. But this would not satisfy Moses. He, acting for God, says, All the flocks and herds must go along with us; not a hoof shall be left. So Satan, like Pharaoh, would keep some sin in us as a pledge of our returning to him again; and even though sin be taken away, he would wish the occasion of sin to remain. For instance, he might say, Leave off gaming; but still there is no occasion to burn the cards and throw away the dice. You must not do your enemy any injury, but there is no occasion for you to love him. But Gods language is of a different sort. He says that the occasion of sin, though it be dear as a right hand, must be cut off; if we retain an eye for Satan to put his hook into, he will be sure to insinuate himself, and the latter end may be worse than the beginning. (F. F. Trench.)

What repentance cannot do

Suppose I should preach the gospel in some gambling-saloon of New York, and suppose a man should come out convicted of his wickedness, and confess it before God, and pray that he might be forgiven. Forgiveness might be granted to him, so far as he individually was concerned. But suppose he should say, O God, not only restore to me the joys of salvation, but give me back the mischief that I have done, that I may roll it out. Why, there was one man that shot himself; what are you going to do for him? A young man came to Indianapolis, when I was pastor there, on his way to settle in the West. He was young, callow, and very self-confident. While there he was robbed, in a gambling-saloon, of fifteen hundred dollars–all that he had. He begged to be allowed to keep enough to take him home to his fathers house, and he was kicked out into the street. It led to his suicide. I know the man that committed the foul deed. He used to walk up and down the street. Oh, how my soul felt thunder when I met him 1 If anything lifts me up to the top of Mount Sinai, it is to see one man wrong another. Now suppose this man should repent? Can he ever call back that suicide? Can he ever carry balm to the hearts of the father and mother and brothers and sisters of his unfortunate victim? Can he ever wipe off the taint and disgrace that he has brought on the escutcheon of that family? No repentance can spread over that. And yet how many men there are that are heaping up such transgressions! (H. W. Beecher.)

Repentance

I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED TO THIS IMPORTANT TEACHING ABOUT REPENTANCE.

II. THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE.

1. The relation of repentance to faith. In order of time they spring up together in the soul. In order of nature faith must precede repentance. We cannot turn from sin without Christ, and we cannot come to Christ without faith.

2. Repentance consists of three elements.

(1) Godly sorrow for sin.

1. Not mere sorrow for sin, for there is much sorrow because sin is an evil and brings punishment, yet no godly element in it.

2. It is the sorrow of a man more concerned for his guilt than his misery, whereas worldly sorrow is more concerned for the misery than the guilt, and would plunge into deeper guilt to escape the misery.

3. Illustrations of worldly sorrow (Pharaoh, Ahab, Judas).

4. The true spirit of godly sorrow is that of the prodigal–I have sinned before heaven, and in Thy sight. Also Davids sorrow Psa 51:1-4).

(2) Confession of sin.

1. This is an essential part of repentance. (Often a relief to guilty men to confess their crime.)

2. It must be very thorough and humbling and heart-searching.

3. It is connected with the continuous forgiveness of believers

1Jn 1:7).

(3) Turning from sin to God.

1. The godly sorrow must have a practical result, in the way of proving its genuineness and attesting itself by fruits.

2. Necessity of reparation recognized by civil law (cases of libel). But there are injuries in which no reparation can be made (murder).

3. In cases of Pharaoh, Ahab, Judas, no turning from sin to God, though there may have been sorrow and confession of sin.

4. There must be a turning from all sin–from the love and the practice of that which is sinful.

III. THE NECESSITY OF REPENTANCE.

1. Jesus spoke-the words of the text in a spirit of prophecy. (Forty years after, at siege of Jerusalem, the Jews felt the meaning of the likewise of the text.)

2. Preachers cannot now say that, but they can say that if you do not repent you will perish everlastingly. (T. Croskery, D. D.)

The necessity of repentance

1. That those who meet with more signal strokes than others, are not, therefore, to be accounted greater sinners than others. The Lord spares some as great sinners, as He signally punisheth. I tell you, nay. Reasons of this dispensation of Providence:

1. Because of Gods sovereign power and absolute dominion, which He will have the world to understand–Is it not lawful for Me to do what I will with Mine own? (Mat 20:15.)

2. Because we are now under the mixed dispensation of Providence; not the unmixed, reserved to another world, when all men shall be put into their unalterable state.

3. Because the mercy of God to some is magnified by His severity on others.

4. Because in very signal strokes very signal mercies may be wrapped up.

5. Because this dispensation is in some sort necessary to confirm us in the belief of the judgment of the great day.

USE 1. Then learn that unordinary strokes may befall those that are not unordinary sinners; and therefore be not rash in your judgment concerning the strokes that others meet with.

2. Then adore the mercy of God to you, and wonder at His sparing you, when ye see others smart under the hand of God.

3. That the strokes which any meet with, are pledges of ruin to impenitent sinners. But Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Reasons of this are–

1. Because they show how hateful to God sin is, in whomsoever it is Isa 42:24).

2. Because they show how just God is. He is the Judge of all the earth, and cannot but do right.

3. Because whatever any meet with in the way of sin is really designed for warning to others, as is clear from the text (see 1Co 10:11-12).

4. Because all those strokes which sinners meet with in this life are the spittings of the shower of wrath that abides the impenitent world, after which the full shower may certainly be looked for.

USE 1. Be not unconcerned spectators of all the effects of Gods anger for sin going abroad in the world; for your part and mine is deep in them. There is none of them but says to us, as in the same condemnation, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

2. Consider, O impenitent sinners, how can ye escape, when your ruin is insured by so many pledges thereof from the Lords hand, while ye go on in sin?

3. The strokes that others meet with are loud calls to us to repent. That is the language of all the afflicting providences which we see going on in the world.

To confirm this, consider–

1. God does not strike one for sin with a visible stroke, but with an eye to all.

2. Thereby we may see how dangerous a thing sin is to be harboured; and if we will look inward, we may ever see that there is sin in us also against the God of Israel.

3. How much more do strokes from the hand of the Lord on ourselves call us to repent? (Hos 2:6-7).

USE 1. We may see that none go on impenitently in a sinful course, but over the belly of thousands of calls from Providence to repent, besides all those they have from the Word.

2. Impenitency under the gospel cannot have the least shadow of excuse. The calls of Providence common to the whole world, are sufficient to leave the very heathens without excuse (Rom 1:20); how much more shall the calls of the Word and Providence, too, make us inexcusable if we do not repent? I come now to the principal doctrine of the text.

I. EXPLAIN THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE.

1. What it is in its general nature.

2. How it is wrought in the soul.

3. The subject of true repentance.

4. The parts of repentance.

I come now to the application of the whole. And here I would sound the alarm in the ears of impenitent sinners, to repent, and turn from their sins unto God. O sinners, repent, repent; ye are gone away to your lusts and idols, turn from them; ye have turned your back on God, turn to Him again. In prose curing this call to repentance, I shall–

1. Endeavour to convince you of the need you have to repent.

2. Lay before you a train of motives to repentance.

3. Show you the great hindrances of repentance. And–

4. Give directions in order to your obtaining repentance.

(1) Labour to see sin in its own colours, what an evil thing it is Jer 2:19). What makes us to cleave to sin is false apprehensions we have about it.

To see it in itself would be a means to make us fly from it. For this end consider–

1. The majesty of God offended by sin. Ignorance of God is the mother of impenitency (Act 17:30).

2. The obligations we lie under to serve Him, which by sin we trample upon.

3. The wrath of God that abides impenitent sinners.

4. The good things our unrepented-of sins deprive us of.

5. The many evils which are bred by our sin against the honour of God, our own and our neighhours true interest.

(1) Be much in the thoughts of death. Consider how short and uncertain your time is.

(2) Dwell on the thoughts of a judgment to come, where ye shall be made to give an account of yourselves.

(3) Meditate on the sufferings of Christ.

(4) Pray for repentance, and believingly seek and long for the Lords giving the new heart, according to His promise (Eze 36:26). (T. Boston, D. D.)

Nature and necessity of repentance

I. NATURE.

1. Repentance implies godly sorrow for sin.

2. Repentance involves hatred of sin.

3. Repentance includes reformation. This, as it respects both the affections of the heart and the conduct of the life, is the crowning excellence of this evangelical virtue.

II. NECESSITY. Except perish.

1. This is the decision of God respecting all men.

2. The facts point this way. Sinners have perished–sinners distinguished by no peculiarity of guilt–sinners, therefore, in whose case there was no more reason to anticipate the righteous judgments of heaven than there is to anticipate it in other cases. What God has done in these instances, there is every reason to believe He will do in others like them. This is the argument of our Lord, and it comes to us in unabated force.

3. The moral government of God requires it.

4. Also the moral character of God. Sin is abhorrent to His nature. As a holy God, He must regard it with absolute abhorrence and ceaseless displeasure. To suppose otherwise is to suppose God either to approve or to be indifferent to what is directly opposite to Himself, and worthy of His eternal rebuke. It is to suppose God to hate, or wholly disregard His own perfections and glory. But can a spotless God hate Himself? Can His own infinite perfection become an object of indifference to Himself? Can He fail to abhor sin with a measure of indignation proportioned to the purity and infinitude of His nature? (N. W. Taylor, D. D.)

Of repentance

We should labour to make good use to ourselves of Gods judgments on others. Why? God expects it; this is the way to prevent the execution on ourselves. How?

1. Learning righteousness (Isa 26:9); faith, seeing Him execute threatenings; fear, beholding His severity; obedience, sure want of that is the cause; love, whilst we escape.

2. Forsaking sin: Sin no more (Joh 5:14). All sin, because every sin is pregnant with judgment; therefore it summons to search and try, etc., especially those sins which brought wrath on others. Observe providences; use means to discover what is the Achan, &c. We have great occasion to practise this. Wrath is kindled and burns, &c.; the cup of indignation goes round; the sword has had a commission, &c.; the scars and smarting impressions continue in bodies, estates, liberties. Let us learn to believe, to tremble, to love. Let us forsake sin, our own; the sins that have unsheathed the sword, mixed this bitter cup. Make not this warning ineffectual with the Jews supposition. Rather hear, believe, apply what Christ says, Except I repent, &c.

I. FROM THE ADMONISHER, CHRIST, IN THAT HE TEACHES REPENTANCE. Repentance is an evangelical duty; a gospel, a new-covenant duty. This should not be questioned by those who either believe what the gospel delivers, or understand what it is to be evangelical; but since it is denied, let us prove it. And first from this ground.

1. Christ taught repentance. But He taught nothing but what was evangelical.

2. It is excluded by the covenant of works. No room for repentance there.

3. It is required in the gospel (Act 17:30).

4. It was preached by the apostles (Luk 24:47; Act 2:28; Act 3:19).

5. It was the end of Christs coming (Mat 9:13) to call sinners.

6. It was purchased by Christs death (Act 5:31).

7. It has evangelical promises.

8. It is urged upon evangelical grounds (Mat 3:2; Mar 1:14-15).

9. It is the condition of the prime evangelical mercy. God offers, gives remission of sins, upon condition of repentance. What Christ commands us, Himself does practise (Luk 17:3). If he repent, forgive him. So Act 3:19, and Act 2:38.

10. It is confirmed by the seal of the covenant of grace. Baptism is the seal of repentance.

11. It is a fundamental of Christianity (Heb 6:1).

12. It is the way to life (Act 11:18).

1. It reproves those who reject this duty as legal. Certainly those who find not this in the gospel, have found another gospel besides that which Christ and His disciples preached.

2. Exhort. To practise this duty evangelically, that is most congruous. Directions:

(1) Undertake it for evangelical ends. The end gives nature and name to the action. If your aims be legal, mercenary, the act will be so. Go not about it only to escape hell, avoid wrath, satisfy justice, remove judgments, pacify conscience. Ahab and Pharaoh can repent thus, those who are strangers to the covenant of grace. How then? Endeavour that you may give God honour, that ye may please Him, that you may comply with His will, that you may never more return to folly. Confess, to give honour, as Jos 7:19, get hearts broken, that you may offer sacrifice well pleasing.

(2) Let evangelical motives lead you to the practice of it. Act as drawn by the cords of love. The goodness of God should lead you to it (Rom 2:1-29.).

(3) In an evangelical manner, freely, cheerfully, with joy and delight; not as constrained, but willingly.

(4) Repent that ye can repent no more. This is an evangelical temper, to be sensible of the defects and failings of spiritual duties.

(5) Think not your repentance is the cause of any blessing: it is neither the meritorious nor impulsive cause; it neither deserves any mercy, nor moves the Lord to bestow any.

(6) Think not that your repentance can satisfy God, or make amends for the wrongs sin has done Him.

(7) Ye must depend upon Christ for strength, ability to repent; all evangelical works are done in His strength.

(8) Ye must expect the acceptance of your repentance from Christ.

(9) Think not your repentance obliges God to the performance of any promise, as though He were thereby bound, and could not justly refuse to bestow what He has promised to the penitent; for He is not obliged to fulfil it till the condition be perfectly performed. Imperfect repentance is not the condition; God requires nothing imperfect. If He accomplishes His promise upon our weak detective endeavours, it is not because He is by them engaged, but from some other engaging consideration. Now our repentance is defective, both in quantity and quality, measure and manner, neither so great nor so good as is required. Why, then, does God perform? How is He obliged? Why, it is Christ that has obliged Him; He makes good the condition. When we cannot bring so much as is required, He makes up the sum; He adds grains to that which wants weight. He has satisfied for our defects, and they are for His sake pardoned, and therefore are accepted, as though they were not defective.

(10) Expect a reward, not from justice, but mercy.

II. Thus much for the admonisher, I tell you. PROCEED WE TO THE ADMONITION. And in it–

1. The correction, nay. Hereby He corrects two mistakes of the Jews:

(1) Concerning their innocency. They thought themselves innocent, compared with the Galileans, not so great sinners (verse 2).

(2) Concerning their impunity, grounded on the former. Because not so great sinners, they should not be so great sufferers, nor perish as they in the text.

From the first. 1.

(1) Impenitent sinners are apt to think themselves not so great sinners as others; to justify themselves, as Pharisees in reference to others; like crows, fly over flowers and fruit, to pitch upon carrion; say as Isa 65:5, Stand by thyself, &c.

(a) Because never illuminated to see the number, nature, aggravations of their own sins, how many, how sinful; examine not their hearts and lives; judge of sins according to outward appearance, not secret heinousness.

(b) Self-love. They cover, extenuate, excuse their own; multiply, magnify others.

(c) Ignorance of their natural sinfulness. In which respect they are equally sinful as others. Seed-plots of sin; have a root of bitterness, an evil treasure of heart; a disposition to the most abominable sins that ever were committed, such as they never thought of, nor will ever believe they should yield to (2Ki 8:11-12); want nothing but temptation, a fit occasion.

Take heed of this. It is a sign of impenitency. Paul counts himself the chief of sinners: If you judge yourselves, etc. (1Co 11:31).

(2) From their conceit of impunity. Sinners are apt to flatter themselves with the hopes they shall escape judgments. If they can believe they are not so great sinners, they are apt to conclude they shall not perish: Put far from them the evil day (Amo 6:3), threatened (verse 7); cry Peace, &c. Satan has blinded them. Beware of this. It has been the ruin of millions. Those perish soonest who think they shall longest escape (Amo 6:7; 1Th 5:3; Be not deceived, God is not mocked, &c. Believe the Lord threatening rather than Satan promising.

2. The direction–Repent. Repentance has such a relation to, such a connection with, life and salvation, as this cannot be expected without that; for though it be neither merit nor motive, yet consider it as it is, an antecedent and sign, qualification, condition, or means of life and salvation, and the truth will appear.

(1) An antecedent. So there must be no salvation till first there be repentance. Sown in tears before reap in joy.

(2) Sign. A symptom of one being an heir to salvation.

(3) Qualification. To fit for life. He that is in love with sin is not fit for heaven. No unclean thing enters there. Neither will God Himself endure him to be there.

(4) Condition. For that is, without it, never see God: Except ye, &c. This is the condition, without which ye shall not escape.

(5) Means and way to life: Christs highway. Repentance to life (Act 11:18). Peter directs them to this (Act 2:38). What is it to repent? Why must they perish that do not?

To repent, is to turn; to return from former evil ways (Eze 14:6).

1. Sorrow for sin. To repent, is to mourn for sin (2Co 7:9-10).

(1) Hearty, such as greatly affects the heart. Not that of the tongue, which is usual, I am sorry, &c.; nor that of the eyes neither, if tears spring not from a broken heart; not verbal, slight, outward, superficial, but great, bitter, cordial humbling; such sorrow as will afflict the soul.

(2) Godly sorrow (2Co 7:9-10), sorrow for sin, as it is against God; not as it is against yourselves, prejudicial to you; as it brings judgments, exposes to wrath, makes you obnoxious to justice, brings within the compass of curses, and in danger of hell.

2. Hatred of sin. This is an act of repentance, and that indeed which is principally essential to it. This hatred is

(1) well-grounded;

(2) universal;

(3) irreconcileable.

3. Forsaking sin. Terror to impenitent sinners. Hear the doom in the text: Except ye repent, etc. Those that do not, will not repent, must perish, shall perish. There is no way without repentance to avoid perishing, and these will not repent, mourn, hate, forsake sin.

What will become of them? Christ, the righteous Judge, gives sentence, they shall perish, certainly, universally, eternally.

1. Certainly. For Christ has said it. He speaks peremptorily; not they may, but they shall.

2. Universally. All, and every one, without exception, whatever he be, have, do, or can do, Except, &c. Christ speaks to the Jews, and to all without exception–all perish. If any people in the world had any ground to plead exemption, sure it was the Jews; no people ever in greater favour, none ever had greater privileges. Whatever you can plead why this should not concern you, they had as much ground to plead.

3. Eternally. Soul and body, here and hereafter, now and for ever, must perish without redemption: For who shall redeem from it but Christ? and Christ cannot do it except He will act against His own Word, except He will deny Himself. The sentence is passed, and none in heaven will, none in earth can, recall it. Exhortation: To the practice of this duty. Christ urges it, and under such a penalty. These should be sufficient enforcements. But there are many more considerations to stir up to this duty.

I shall reduce them to three heads: some concerning–

1. Sin to be repented of.

2. Christ that urges repentance.

3. Repentance itself, the duty urged.

1. Concerning sin.

(1) No creature ever got, nor can get, any advantage by sin.

(2) The least sin is infinitely evil. When I say infinite, I say there is more evil in it than the tongue of men or angels can express, than their largest apprehensions can conceive. When I say infinite evil, I understand it is a greater evil than the greatest in the world besides it.

(3) The least sin deserves infinite punishment, i.e., greater than any can endure, express, or imagine.

(4) The least sin cannot be expiated without infinite satisfaction.

(5) It is the cause of all the evils that we count miseries in the world. Whatsoever is fearful, or grievous, or hateful, owes its birth to sin. Were it not for sin, either no evil would be in the world, or that which is now evil would be good.

(6) It is the souls greatest misery. Those evils which sin has brought into the world are lamentable, but the miseries wherein it has involved the soul are much more grievous.

(7) It is Gods greatest adversary; it has done much against the world, more against mans soul; aye, but that which it does against God is most considerable, as that which should move us to hate, bewail, abandon it, above all considerations. It has filled the world with fearful evils, the soul with woeful miseries; but the injuries it does to God are most horrible.

(8) Consider the multitude of your sins. If any one sin be so infinitely evil in itself and in its effects, oh how evil is he, what need to repent, who is guilty of a multitude of sins

2. Considerations from Christ, who enjoins repentance. If our sins were occasion of sorrow to Him, great reason have we to mourn for them. But so it is; our sins made Him a man of sorrows. The cup which He gives to us, He drank Himself; He drank out the dregs and bitterness, the wormwood and gall, wherewith this sorrow was mixed. That which He left to us is pleasant. The cup which Christ gives us, shall we not drink it? Nay, the cup which Christ drank, shall we refuse to taste? Our sins made Him weep and sigh, and cry out in the anguish of His spirit; and shall we make a sport of sin?

3. Considerations from repentance, the duty enjoined. That is the time when all happiness begins, when misery ends, the period of evils; the time from whence ye must date all mercies. Till then, never expect to receive the least mercy, or have the least judgment, evil, removed without repentance. (D. Clarkson, B. D.)

Take heed to thyself

There is a peculiar point and pregnancy of import in these words, which may be wholly overlooked in making them a simple basis for the general affirmation that all sinners must repent or perish. This, true and awful as it is, is rather presupposed than positively stated. To confine ourselves to this, as the whole meaning, is to lose sight of two emphatic words–ye and likewise. Assuming, as a truth already known, that all men must repent or perish, the text affirms that they whom it addresses must repent or perish likewise, that is, like those particularly mentioned in the context. Another feature of the passage which is apt to be neglected is, that it not only teaches the necessity of repentance to salvation, but presents a specific motive for its exercise, or rather teaches us to seek occasions of repentance in a quarter where most of us are naturally least disposed to seek them; nay, where most of us are naturally and habitually prone to find excuses for indulging sentiments as far removed from those of penitence as possible; uncharitable rigour and censorious pride.

1. That suffering is a penal consequence of sin seems to be a dictate of reason and conscience no less than of revelation. At all events, it is a doctrine of religion which, above most others, seems to command the prompt assent of the human understanding. They who acknowledge the existence of a God at all, have probably no impressions of His power or His justice stronger than those which are associated with His providential strokes, and more especially with death as the universal penalty. War, pestilence, and famine are regarded by the common sense of men not merely as misfortunes, but as punishments, and nothing more effectually rouses in the multitude the recollection of their sins than the report or the approach of those providential scourges. In all this the popular judgment is according to the truth.

2. What is thus true in the aggregate must needs be true in detail. If all the suffering in the world proceeds from sin, then every Divine judgment in particular must flow from the same source. Wherever we see suffering we see a proof not only that there is sin somewhere to account for and to justify that suffering, but that the individual sufferer is a sinner.

3. And yet it cannot be denied that there is something in this doctrine thus presented, against which even the better feelings of our nature are disposed to revolt. This is especially the case when we contemplate instances of aggravated suffering endured by those who are comparatively innocent, and still more when the sufferings of such are immediately occasioned by the wickedness of others. Can it be that the dying agonies of one who falls a victim to the murderous revenge or the reckless cupidity of others are to be regarded as the punishment of sin? Against this representation all our human sympathies and charities appear to cry aloud, and so intense is the reaction in some minds that they will not even listen to the explanation.

4. This feeling of repugnance, though it springs from a native sense of justice, is mistaken in its application because founded upon two misapprehensions. In the first place it assumes that the sufferings, in the case supposed, are said to be the penal fruits of sin committed against man, and more especially against the author of the sufferings endured. Hence we are all accustomed to enhance the guilt of murder, in some cases, by contrasting the virtues of the victim with the crimes of the destroyer. And in such a state of mind not one of us, perhaps, would be prepared to hear with patience that the murder was a righteous recompense of sin. But why? Because at such a moment we can look no further than the proximate immediate agent, and to think of him as having any claim or right of punishment is certainly preposterous. But when the excitement is allayed, and we have lost sight of the worthless and justly abhorred instrument, we may perhaps be able to perceive that, in the presence of an infinitely holy God, the most innocent victim of mans cruelty is, in himself, deserving only of displeasure; or, at least, that no difficulties hang about that supposition, except such as belong to the whole subject of sin and punishment.

5. If any does remain, it probably has reference to the seeming disproportion of the punishment to that of others, or to any particular offence with which the sufferer seems chargeable in comparison with others. But there is no authority for holding that every providential stroke is a specific punishment of some specific sin, or that the measure of mens sufferings here is in exact proportion to their guilt, so that they upon whom extraordinary judgment seem to fall are thereby proved to be extraordinary sinners.

6. The effect of this last error is the more pernicious, and the cure of it more difficult, because the doctrine which it falsely imputes to Christianity is really maintained by many Christians as well as by many who make no such professions. It often unexpectedly betrays itself in a censorious attempt to trace the sufferings of others back to certain causes, often more offensive in the sight of human censors and inquisitors than in that of a heart-searching God. But even where the sin charged is indeed a sin, its existence is hastily inferred from the supposed judgment, without any other evidence whatever. This uncharitable tendency can be cured only by the correction of the error which produces it.

7. But in attempting this correction there is need of extreme caution, as in all other cases where an error has arisen, not from sheer invention or denial of the truth, but from exaggeration, or perversion, or abuse of truth itself. Let us not, e.g., attempt to vindicate the ways of God to man by denying the doctrine of a particular providence. No distinction can be drawn between the great and small as objects of Gods notice and His care, without infringing on the absolute perfection of His nature by restricting His omniscience.

8. Nor must we deny any penal or judicial connection between particular providential strokes and the sins of the individual sufferer. To deny that the bloated countenance, the trembling limbs, the decaying mind, the wasted fortune, and the blasted fame of the drunkard or the libertine, are penally consequences of sin, of his own sin, of his own besetting, reigning, darling sin, would be ridiculous, and all men would regard it in that light. And the same thing is true of some extraordinary providences. When a bold blasphemer, in the act of imprecating vengeance on his own head, falls down dead before us, it would argue an extreme of philosophical caution or of sceptical reserve to hesitate to say, as the magicians said to Pharaoh when they found them selves confronted with effects beyond the capacity of any human or created power, This is the finger of God. What, then, it may be asked, is the error, theoretical or practical, which Christ condemns, and against which we are warned to be for ever on our guard?

If it be true, not only that suffering in general is the fruit of sin, and that every individual sufferer is a sinner, but that particular sufferings may be recognized as penal retributions of particular sins, where is the harm in tracing the connection for our edification or for that of others?

1. Even if the general rule be granted the exceptions are so many and notorious as to render it inapplicable as a standard or criterion of character.

2. This is a matter which God has not subjected to our scrutiny.

3. The tendency of such inquisitions, as shown by all experience, is not so much to edify as to subject–not so much to wean from sin as to harden in self-righteousness, by letting the censorship of other mens sins and other mens punishment divert our thoughts entirely from those which we commit, or those which we are to experience. Here, then, is the use which this instructive passage teaches us to make of the calamities of others, whether those which fall on individuals in private life, or those which strike whole classes and communities. The whole secret may be told in one short word–Repent. As the goodness of God to ourselves ought to lead us to repentance, so ought His judgments upon others to produce the same effect. Every such judgment should remind us that our own escape is but a respite–that if they who perish in our sight were guilty, we are guilty too, and that unless we repent we must all likewise perish. The words are full of solemn warning and instruction to us all. They give a tongue and an articulate utterance to every signal providence, to every sudden death, to every open grave, to every darkened house, to every scattered fortune, to every blighted reputation, to every broken heart in society around us. They command us, they entreat us to withdraw our view from the calamities of others as proofs of their iniquity, and to view them rather as memorials of our own, of that common guilt to which these manifold distresses owe their origin, and in which we, alas! are so profoundly and so ruinously implicated. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.)

The naturalness of Gods judgments

Now the principle that every judgment of God is connected, in the way of ordinary cause and effect, with the sin or error therein condemned, destroys at once the notion that plague or famine are judgments upon us for infidelity, or rationalism, or sabbath-breaking, or our private sins, for there is plainly no natural connection between the alleged sin and the alleged punishment. For example, the town which takes due sanitary precautions may refuse to give one penny to missions, but it will not be visited by a virulent outbreak of cholera. The town which takes no sanitary precautions, but gives 10,000 a-year to missions, will, in spite of its Christian generosity, become a victim to the epidemic. The lightning will strike the ship of the good man who chooses to sail without a lightning-conductor, it will spare the ship of the atheist and the blasphemer who provides himself with the protecting rod. There is, then, always a natural connection between the sin and the punishment, and the punishment points out its own cause. It is my intention this morning to show the truth of this principle in other spheres than that of epidemic disease. If we can manifest its universality, we go far to prove its truth. Take as the first illustration the case of the moral law. The commandments have force, therefore, not because they are commanded by a God of power, but because they are either needful for, or natural to, human nature. Nor is the judgment which follows on their violation any more arbitrary than the laws themselves. As they have their root in our nature so they have their punishment in our nature. Violate a moral law and our constitution protests through our conscience. Sorrow awakes, remorse follows, and remorse is felt in itself to be the mark of separation from God. The punishment is not arbitrary, but natural. Moreover, each particular violation of the moral law has its own proper judgment. The man who is dishonest in one branch of his life soon feels dishonesty–not impurity, not anything else but dishonesty–creep through his whole life and enter into all his actions. Impurity has its own punishment, and that is increasing corruption of heart. Take, again, the intellectual part of man. The necessities for intellectual progress are attention, perseverance, practice. Refuse to submit to these laws and you are punished by loss of memory or inactivity of memory, by failure in your work or by inability to think and act quickly at the proper moment. Again, take what may be called national laws. These have been, as it were, codified by the Jewish prophets. They were men whose holiness brought them near to God and gave them insight into the diseases of nations. They saw clearly the natural result of these diseases and they proclaimed it to the world. They looked on Samaria, and saw there a corrupt aristocracy, failing patriotism, oppress/on of the poor, falsification of justice, and they said, God will judge this city, and it shall be overthrown by Assyria. Well, was that an arbitrary judgment? It was of God; but given a powerful neighbour, and a divided people in which the real fighting and working class has been crushed, enslaved, and unjustly treated–and an enervated, lazy, pleasure-consumed upper class, and what is the natural result? Why, that very thing which the prophets called Gods judgment. Gods judgment was the natural result of the violation of the first of national laws–even-handed justice to all parties in the State. The same principle is true in a thousand instances in-history; the national judgments of war, revolution, pestilence, famine, are the direct results of the violation by nations of certain plain laws which have become clear by experience. For these judgments come to teach nations what is wrong in them, and the judgments must come again and again while the wrong thing is there. We find them out by punishment, as a child finds out that he must not touch fire by being burnt. The conclusion I draw from this is, that all national judgments of God come about naturally. But there are certain judgments mentioned in the Bible which seem to be supernatural–the destruction of Sodom, of Sennacheribs army, of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, the plagues sent upon the Israelites, and others. These are the difficulty. How shall we explain them? or shall we seek to explain them at all? First, we must remember that the writers had not the knowledge capable of explaining them; that nature to them was an insoluble mystery. They naturally, then, referred these things to a direct action of God, or rather, because they were out of the common, to an interference of God with nature. They were right in referring them to God, but it is possible that, owing to their ignorance of nature, they were wrong in their way of explaining them. Secondly. There is a thought which goes far, if it be true, to explain these things–it is that the course of human history may be so arranged, that, at times, healing or destructive natural occurrences coincide with crises in the history of a nation. For example, we might say that the sins of Sodom had reached their height at the very period when the elastic forces which were swelling beneath the plain of the Dead Sea had reached their last possible expansion. Or that the army of Senncherib lay encamped in the way of the pestilential wind, which would have blown over the spot whether they had been there or not. Thirdly. Whatever difficulty these things present to us in the Bible, the same difficulty occurs in what is profanely called profane history. There is not the slightest doubt, were our English history written by a Hebrew of the time of the kings, that the eclipse and the thunderstorm at Creci, and that the storms which broke the Armada on the rocks of England and Scotland, would have been imputed to a miraculous interference by God with the course of nature. We do not believe these to have been miraculous; but we do believe them, with the Jew, to be of God. But we must also believe that they are contained in the order of the world–not disorderly elements arbitrarily introduced. That is, while believing in God as the Director and Ruler of human affairs, we must also believe in Him as the Director and Ruler of the course of nature. We see in all things this law holding good–that Gods judgments are natural. There is another class of occurrences which have been called judgments of God, but to which the term judgment is inapplicable. There are even now some who say that the sufferers under these blows of nature suffer because they are under the special wrath of God. What does Christ say to that? He bluntly contradicts it! I tell you nay–it is not so. There are not a few who still blindly think that suffering proves Gods anger. Has the Cross taught us nothing better than that, revealed to us no hidden secret? There is no pain, mental or physical, which is not a part of Gods continual self-sacrifice in us, and which, were we united to life and not to death, we should not see as joy. But, say others, God is cruel to permit such loss. Three thousand souls have perished in this hurricane. Is this your God of love? But look at the history of the hurricane. Could not God arrange to have a uniform climate over all the earth? We are spiritually puzzled, and, to arrange our doubts, God must make another world l We know not what we ask. A uniform climate over all the earth means simply the death of all living beings. It is the tropic heat and the polar cold which cause the currents of the ocean and the air and keep them fresh and pure. A stagnant atmosphere, a rotting sea, that is what we ask for. It is well God does not take us at our word, When we wish the hurricane away, we wish away the tropic heats in the West Indies and along the whole equator. What do we do then? We wish away the Gulf Stream and annihilate England. How long would our national greatness last if we had here the climate of Labrador? Because a few perish, is God to throw the whole world into confusion? The few must be sometimes sacrificed to the many. But they are not sacrificed without due warning. In this case God tells us plainly in His book of nature, that He wants to keep His air and His seas fresh and clean for His children to breathe and sail upon. The West Indies is the place where this work is done for the North Atlantic and its borders, and unless the whole constitution of the world be entirely changed, that work must be done by tornadoes. God has made that plain to us; and to all sailing and living about warm currents like the Gulf Stream it is as if God said, Expect my hurricanes; they must come. You will have to face danger and death, and it is My law that you should face it everywhere in spiritual as well as physical life; and to call Me unloving because I impose this on you, is to mistake the true ideal of your humanity. I mean to make you active men, not slothful dreamers. I will not make the world too easy for My children. I want veteran men, not untried soldiers; men of endurance, foresight, strength and skill for My work, and I set before you the battle. You must face manfully those forces which you call destructive, but which are in reality reparative. Brethren, we cannot complain of the destructive forces of nature. We should have been still savages had we not to contend against them. (S. A. Brooke, M. A.)

The case of passing judgment concerning calamities examined: What kind of judgment on such occasions is innocent and just ascertained; and the culpable extremes noted and censured

I. I shall observe WHAT KIND OF REFLECTIONS OR CONCLUSIONS WE MAY JUSTLY RAISE UPON ANY CALAMITIES WHICH BEFALL OTHER MEN.

1. In the first place, we need not be scrupulous of thinking or saying that the persons so visited are visited for their sins. Our blessed Lord finds no fault with the Jews for suggesting or supposing that the Galileans were sinners, and were punished by God for their sins. All mere men are sinners, and all afflictions whatever have a retrospect to sins committed, and are, in strictness of speech, punishments of sin.

2. That all calamities whatever are to be understood as coming from the hand of God. The Jews looked upwards to a higher hand than his, supposing Pilate to be the minister or executioner only of the Divine vengeance; and in this they judged right.

II. To TAKE NOTICE OF THOSE EXTREMES WHICH MANY SO RUN INTO, BUT WHICH WE OUGHT ABOVE ALL THINGS CAREFULLY TO AVOID. There are two noted excesses in this matter: one the text expressly mentions, the other is omitted, or only tacitly pointed to. That which is mentioned, is, the drawing rash and uncharitable conclusions from greater sufferings to greater sins; as if they who have suffered most must of consequence have been the worst of sinners. The other, which is not mentioned, but yet is tacitly condemned, is, the being positive and peremptory as to the particular sin, or kind of sin, that draws down Gods judgments upon any particular person or persons. That which I now intend to treat of, is the pointing out, or specifying the particular sin or sins, for which we suppose Gods judgments to have fallen upon any particular person or persons. The motives for doing this are many and various, as circumstances vary, though all centering in self-flattery, or partial fondness to ourselves. Sometimes it is vanity and ostentation, while we affect to make a show of more than common sagacity in discovering the hidden springs of events, and in interpreting the secrets of Divine providence. Sometimes party prejudices and passions have the greatest hand in it; while we are willing to measure God by ourselves, and to fancy that He takes the same side that we do. If our opposers or adversaries fall into troubles or disasters, how agreeable a thought is it to imagine that it was a judgment upon them for their opposition to us. But the most common and prevailing motive of all for censuring others in this manner on account of their afflictions, is to ward off the apprehension of the like from our own doors, and to speak peace to ourselves. Observe it carefully, and you will scarce find a man charging a judgment of God upon others for any particular sin, and at the same time acknowledging himself guilty in the like kind. No, he will be particularly careful to pitch upon some vice, which he himself, in imagination at least, stands clear of, and is the farthest from. The designs of providence are vast and large; Gods thoughts are very deep, His judgments unsearchable, His ways past finding out.

1. Sometimes the primary reasons, or moving causes of the Divine judgments, lie remote and distant in place or in time; several years, perhaps, or even gererations, backwards. God may visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him. He has at any time full power and right to take away the life which He gives, or any worldly comforts which Himself bestows; and if He sometimes chooses to exercise this right and power on account of things done several years or ages upwards, there can be no injustice in so doing; but it may more fully answer the ends of discipline, and God may show forth His wisdom in it. This I hint, by the way, as to the reason of the thing: the facts are evident from the sacred history. When King Ahab had sinned, God denounced His judgments against him, but suspended the execution, in part, to another time; assigning also the reason for deferring it: Because he humbleth himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but in his sons days will I bring the evil upon his house: which was accordingly executed, in the days of him son Jehoram, about fifteen years after.

2. It may further be considered that sometimes the best sort of men are permitted to fall a sacrifice to the rage and violence of the worst; and this either because the world is not worthy of them, or because God gives them up, that their malicious persecutors may fill up the measure of their iniquities. In either view the thing is rather a judgment of God upon the wicked who remain, than upon the righteous so taken away.

3. Supposing we were ever so certain that any person is visited for his own sins only, without any respect to the sins of his ancestors, or of any man else; yet great mistakes may be committed in conjectures made about the particular sins. We have a very remarkable instance of it in Shimeis censure upon King David.

III. To POINT OUT THE PRACTICAL USE AND APPLICATION OF THE WHOLE.

1. Let it be observed that religious and righteous men are often grievously afflicted. In which case it is most evident that, though they may and do deserve as great temporal afflictions as can be laid upon them, yet they do not deserve them more, nor so much as those worse men that escape. God, for many wise reasons, may sometimes punish good men in this life, and spare the ungodly. The sins of the former, being of a smaller size, may be purged away by temporal calamities; while the greater transgressions of the latter are reserved for an after-reckoning, a more solemn and dismal account. Good men may retain some blemishes, which want to be washed away in the baptism of afflictions. Or, God may sometimes serve the interest of His Church, and set forth the power of His grace, and the efficacy of the true religion, by the sufferings of good men; which is the case of martyrs or confessors who have been persecuted for righteousness sake.

2. Suppose we certainly knew that any person who is under trouble, or who has remarkably suffered, and died by the hand of God, had been a wicked and ungodly man; yet we cannot justly conclude, that he was at all worse than many who had not so suffered. For in some cases it may be an argument rather in his favour, to prove that he was not so bad as others. First, I observe, that in some cases the afflictions which a bad man suffers may be an argument in his favour, as affording a probable presumption that he is not so bad, but rather better, than those who escape. Now, I say, when God punishes a sinner in such a way as affects not his life, with a view to his amendment (whether it be by extreme poverty or disgrace, or bodily hurts or diseases, or whatever else it be), in these cases it may serve for an argument in his favour, to prove that he is somewhat better than many others that are spared. For God, who sees into the hearts of all men, may know what effect His visitation will have upon him; and may therefore mercifully mark him out for sufferings, as foreseeing of what use they will be towards the bringing him to a sense of his sins and to be a serious repentance: whereas others, who are more hardened in their vices and follies, He may totally reject as past cure; and so may let them go on and prosper for a time, until death comes and brings them a summons to a higher and more dreadful visitation. But here, perhaps, you might ask, Why should such or such sinners be singled out for examples rather than others, and refused the privilege of a longer time to repent in, if they were not greater and more grievous sinners than the rest? To which I answer: First, supposing them to have been all equally guilty (which was indeed the supposition I have proceeded upon), yet it might be necessary to cut off some, and some rather than all; and, in such a case, God might choose to single out such as He saw proper to animadvert upon, while His mercy is free to pass by others. But further, it should be considered that those who are spared, except they repent, are in a worse condition than those who have already suffered; their judgment is respited only, and deferred for a time, to fall the heavier at the last. So that, though they have some favour shown them, in being spared so long, they have the more to account for; and, without repentance, will at length pay dear for their privilege. But, I must add thirdly, that, supposing the offenders not to be equally guilty, yet God may, if He pleases, and very justly too, cut off the best first, and spare the worst, for two very plain reasons: one, because the best may sufficiently deserve it, and God may do as He pleases. The other, because that, if it were His constant method always to take vengeance upon the worst first, many would be thereby encouraged to go on in their sins, as long as they should imagine there were yet any men left alive more wicked than themselves. (D. Waterland, D. D.)

Thorpes repentance

In the days of Whitfield, Thorpe, one of his most violent opponents, and three others, laid a wager who could best imitate and ridicule Whitfields preaching. Each was to open the Bible at random, and preach an extempore sermon from the first verse that presented itself. Thorpes three competitors each went through the game with impious buffoonery. Then, stepping upon the table, Thorpe exclaimed, I shall beat you all. They gave him the Bible, and by Gods inscrutable providence, his eye fell first upon this verse, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. He read the words, but the sword of the Spirit went through his soul in a moment, and he preached as one who scarce knew what he said. The hand of God laid hold upon him, and, intending to mock, he could only fear and tremble. When he descended from the table a profound silence reigned in the company, and not one word was said concerning the wager. Thorpe instantly withdrew; and after a season of the deepest distress, passed into the full light of the gospel, and became a most successful preacher of its grace.

Love in warning

That father who sees his son tottering toward the brink of a precipice, and, as he sees him, cries out sharply, Stop, stop!–does not that father love his son? That tender mother who sees her infant on the point of eating some poisonous berry, and cries out sharply, Stop, stop I put it down!–does not that mother love that child? It is indifference that lets people alone, and allows them to go on every one in his own way. It is love, tender love, that warns and raises the cry of alarm. The cry of Fire! fire! at midnight, may sometimes startle a man out of his sleep, rudely, harshly, unpleasantly. But who would complain if that cry was the means of saving his life? The words, Except ye repent, ye shall all perish, may seem at first sight stern and severe. But they are words of love, and may be the means of delivering precious souls from hell. (Bishop Ryle.)

Terror not necessary to repentance

There are those who will not come into Gods kingdom unless they can come as Dante went into paradise–by going through hell. They wish to walk over the burning marl, and to snuff the sulphurous air. If a man has done wrong, his own thoughts should turn him to reparation; but if they do not, the first intimation from the injured friend should suffice. (H. W. Beecher.)

Repentance

1. Repentance is a difficult work, God must work it. It is not in mans 2Ti 2:25). And He peradventure will give it, no man is certain of it. It is a supernatural grace not only above nature corrupted, but nature created; for man in innocency had no need of it.

2. It is a necessary work. Our Saviour before showed the necessity of it–Except you repent, you shall all perish (verses 3, 5). So Mat 3:10. Turn or burn, there is no remedy.

3. And it is a most excellent grace. A fair daughter of a foul mother. She looks backward, and moves forward; is herself a dark cloud, yet brings a fair sunshine. Is this a riddle to you? I will read it. Sin is the mother, repentance is the daughter, the mother is black and ugly, the daughter fair and lovely: God is the Father of repentance, and He could never endure the mother sin, but hates her society; being born, she slew her mother, for by repentance sin is slain, and in so doing God doth bless her; she no sooner receives breath, but she cries for pardon and forgiveness. Miracles she works. The blind eyes are by her made to see the filthiness of sin; the deaf ear she causeth to hear the word of truth, the dumb lips to cry out for grace, and the heart that was dead, becomes now alive to God, and the devil that ruled in it is now expelled. She looks backward to sins past, and is humbled for them, yet she moves forward to holiness and perfection. In short, repentance is herself cloudy, and made up of sadness, yet everlasting joy and happiness doth attend it. (N. Rogers.)

Or those eighteen

Errors respecting the providence of God

It is probably in part the cause, and partly the effect, of the idea of gloom and sadness that we are far too apt to associate with religion, that we regard God so much as if He were only the sender of evil and not of good, as if He indeed sent the dark cloud that occasionally casts its shadow across our path, but had no concern with the bright and gladsome sunshine that habitually enlivens it. Judge for yourselves. Suppose that some being that knew nothing of God were to become an inmate of one of our dwellings, and were to derive all his knowledge of Him from our conversation, is not the probability that he would first and oftenest hear His name mentioned in connection with some calamity, and that he would form the idea that we regarded Him as some mysterious power who had to do only with sickness, and death, and funerals? Now, it is doubtless well that we should recognize the hand of God in the evils that befal us; and a most blessed thing it is that we can resort to Him in the day of sore distress, when our hearts are ready to sink within us, and we feel that all others than He are miserable comforters; but surely it is not well that we should shut Him out from our thoughts when all goes well with us. We treat God very much as an unkind husband treats his wife, giving her the blame of all that goes amiss in the domestic affairs, forgetting that it is to her prudence and good management that he is indebted for innumerable and often unthought of comforts. Another misconception into which we habitually fall respecting the Divine Providence is to think of it as only having to do with the great and striking events of our lives, and not with the daily and hourly occurrences, which are individually small and scarcely thought of, but which, in the aggregate, make up very nearly the whole of our lives. It may have happened to some of us to be delivered from great and imminent danger, in circumstances in which it was almost impossible to avoid recognizing the finger of God; and it is well if we have felt due gratitude for such a deliverance. But if we viewed the matter aright, ought we Hot constantly to be filled with gratitude to Him for keeping us from falling into danger? Is the continuance of health not as great and as special a blessing as the recovery from sickness? When some harrowing calamity occurs in our neighbourhood, we feel that those who have been in the midst of it, and who have escaped unscathed, have a laud call addressed to them for thankfulness and praise; but does it ever occur to us, that if there be any difference, the call is still louder to us for gratitude, because we have been kept out of the danger itself? Depend upon it, that for one great event in our lives in which we see the hand of Gods providence visibly at work, there are ten thousand small events in which it is not less really, though less manifestly, at work. It was a received maxim amongst a particular sect of the old heathen philosophers, that Jupiter had no leisure to attend to small affairs; but it is our blessed privilege to know regarding Jehovah, that, whilst He counts the number of the stars, and calls them all by their names, He superintends the fall of every raindrop, and directs the course of every sun-ray, and clothes the lilies of the field with glory, and feeds the young ravens when they cry to Him; that, whilst He rules over the destinies of states and empires, He watches over the flight of every sparrow, and numbers the very hairs on the heads of His people. (T. Smith, D. D.)

The bad and good use of Gods signal judgments upon others

I. THE WRONG USE WHICH MEN ARE APT TO MAKE OF THE EXTRAORDINARY AND SIGNAL JUDGMENTS OF GOD UPON OTHERS; AND THAT IS, TO BE UNCHARITABLE AND CENSORIOUS TOWARDS OTHERS, WHICH IS COMMONLY CONSEQUENT UPON A GROSS AND STUPID NEGLECT OF OURSELVES. For men do not usually entertain and cherish this censorious humour for its own sake, but in order to some farther end; they are not so uncharitable merely out of spite and malice to others, but out of self-flattery and a fond affection to themselves. This makes them forward to represent others to all the disadvantage that may be, and to render them as bad as they can, that they themselves may appear less evil in their own eyes, and may have a colour to set off themselves by the comparison. It is the nature of guilt to flee from itself, and to use all possible art to hide and lessen it.

II. MORE PARTICULARLY CONSIDER SOME OF THE RASH CONCLUSIONS WHICH MEN ARE APT TO DRAW FROM THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD UPON OTHERS, WHETHER UPON PUBLIC SOCIETIES AND COMMUNITIES OF MEN, OR UPON PARTICULAR PERSONS.

1. It is rash, where there is no Divine revelation in the case, to be peremptory as to the particular sin or kind of it; so as to say, that for such a sin God sent such a judgment upon a particular person, or upon a company of men, unless the judgment be a natural effect and consequent of such a sin; as, if a drunken man die of a surfeit, or a lewd person of a disease that is the proper effect of such a vice, or if the punishment ordained by law for such a crime overtake the offender; in these and such-like cases, it is neither rash nor uncharitable to say, such a mischief befel a man for such a fault; because such an evil is evidently the effect of such a sin: but in other cases, peremptorily to conclude is great rashness. Thus the heathens of old laid all those fearful judgments of God, which fell upon the Roman empire in the first ages of Christianity, upon the Christians, as if they had been sent by God on purpose to testify His displeasure against that new sect of religion. And thus every party deals with those that are opposite to them, out of a fond persuasion that God is like themselves, and that He cannot but hate those whom they hate, and punish those whom they would punish, if the sway and government of things were permitted to them.

2. It is rash, likewise, for any man, without revelation, to conclude peremptorily, that God must needs in His judgments only have respect to some late and fresh sins, which were newly committed; and that all His arrows are only levelled against those impieties of men which are now upon the stage, and in present view. This is rash and groundless; and men herein take a measure of God by themselves, and because they are mightily affected with the present, and sensible of a fresh provocation, and want to revenge themselves while the heat is upon them, therefore they think God must do so too. But there is nothing occasions more mistakes in the world about God and His providence than to bring Him to our standard, and to measure His thoughts by our thoughts, and the ways and methods of His providence by our ways. Justice in God is a wise, and calm, and steady principle, which, as to the time and circumstances of its exercise, is regulated by His wisdom.

3. It is rash to conclude from little circumstances of judgments, or some fanciful parallel betwixt the sin and the punishment, what sinners, and what persons in particular, God designed to punish by such a calamity. There is scarce anything betrays men more to rash and ungrounded censures and determinations concerning the judgments of God, than a superstitious observation of some little circumstances belonging to them, and a conceit of a seeming parallel between such a sin and such a judgment. In the beginning of the Reformation, when Zuinglius was slain in a battle by the papists, and his body burnt, his heart was found entire in the ashes; from whence (saith the historian) his enemies concluded the obdurateness of his heart; but his friends, the firmness and sincerity of it in the true religion. Both these censures seem to be built upon the same ground of fancy and imagination: but it is a wise and well-grounded observation which Thuanus, the historian (who was himself of the Roman communion), makes upon it–Thus (says he) mens minds being prejudiced beforehand by love or hatred (as it commonly falls out in differences of religion), each party superstitiously interprets the little circumstances of every event in favour of itself. Everything hath two handles; and a good wit and a strong imagination may find something in every judgment, whereby he may, with some appearance of reason, turn the cause of the judgment upon his adversary. Fancy is an endless thing; and if we will go this way to work, then he that hath the best wit is like to be the best interpreter of Gods judgments.

4. It is rash, likewise, to determine anything concerning the end and consequence of Gods judgments.

5. And lastly, It is rashness to determine that those persons, or that part of the community upon which the judgments of God do particularly fall, are greater sinners than the rest who are untouched by it. And this is the very case our Saviour instanceth here in the text. And this brings me to the–

III. Third particular I proposed, which was to show HOW UNREASONABLE IT IS FOR MEN TO DRAW ANY SUCH UNCHARITABLE CONCLUSIONS FROM THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD UPON OTHERS, THAT THEY ARE GREATER SINNERS THAN OTHERS; AND LIKEWISE, HOW FOOLISH IT IS FROM HENCE TO TAKE ANY COMFORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT TO OURSELVES THAT BECAUSE WE ESCAPE THOSE CALAMITIES WHICH HAVE BEFALLEN OTHERS, THEREFORE WE ARE BETTER THAN THEY. Our Saviour vehemently denies that either of these conclusions can justly be made from the remarkable judgments of God which befall others and pass by us–I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

1. It is very unreasonable for men to draw any such uncharitable conclusions concerning others, that because the judgments of God fall upon them, that therefore they are greater sinners than others. For–

(1) What do we know but that God may inflict those evils upon those particular persons for secret ends and reasons, only known to His own infinite wisdom, and fit to be concealed from us? What do we know but He may afflict such a person in a remarkable manner, purely in the use of His sovereignty, without any special respect to the sins of such a person as being greater than the sins of other men; but yet for some great end, very worthy of His wisdom and goodness?

(2) What do we know but that God may send these calamities upon some particular persons in mercy to the generality; and upon some particular places in a nation out of kindness to the whole? It is foolish likewise to take any comfort and encouragement to ourselves that, because we have escaped those sore judgments which have befallen others, therefore we are better than they are; for (as I have shown) these judgments do not necessarily import that those upon whom they fall are greater sinners, and that those who escape them are not so: but suppose it true, that they were greater sinners than we are, for any man from hence to take encouragement to himself to continue in sin, is as if, from the severe punishment which is inflicted upon a traitor, a man should encourage himself in felony; both these sorts of criminals are by the law in danger of death, only the circumstances of death are in one case more severe and terrible than in the other; but he that from hence encourageth himself in felony, reasons very ill, because he argues against his own life. The only prudent inference that can be made, is, not to come within the danger of the law, which punisheth all crimes, though not with equal severity. Thus I have done with the filet thing I propounded to speak to from these words, viz.: The wrong use which too many are apt to make of the signal and extraordinary judgments of God upon others. I proceed to the second thing I observed in the text, viz.: The right use we should make of the judgments of God upon others; and that is, to reflect upon our own sins, and to repent of them, lest a like or greater judgment overtake us. This our Saviour tells us in the next words, But except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. I shall only draw an inference or two from what I have already discoursed upon these two heads.

1. Let us adore the judgments of God, and instead of searching into the particular reasons and ends of them, let us say with St. Paul (Rom 11:33).

2. Let us not be rash in our censures and determinations concerning the judgments of God upon others; let us not wade beyond our depth into the secrets of God: for who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor? (Archbishop Tillotson.)

Lessons from accidents

I. THE CONTRADICTION OF A GREAT ERROR IN JUDGMENT. Our blessed Redeemer here teaches us by example to seize upon the events which transpire around us, and to turn them to the improvement of those who hear of them. Some ungenerous Jews informed Him of the barbarous and impious way in which Pilate had taken vengeance upon some Galileans, mingling their blood with their sacrifices; in reply to whom Jesus referred them to another case, not of Galileans, but of dwellers at Jerusalem, not by the hands of man, but by the hand of God; that from these two together He might draw two very important lessons.

1. The accident which befell those eighteen. They were buried alive beneath the ruins of a falling tower. A melancholy end! Death, come at what time and in what form it may, is dreadful, except to those who by grace are raised above the fear of it–a very few. The approach of it is most appalling to human nature. It is not natural to man to die; it is no part of the original constitution of his being; and nothing can reconcile most men to it. And it becomes still more revolting as it is aggravated by circumstances not common.

2. The inference drawn from this accident. The Jews argued that their sufferings were the proof of their sins; that their rare doom was evidence of their rare guilt. This was a common notion among them; and there was some reason in it, for if left to argue out our own principles, without information or experience, we should conclude that God would always reward men according to their deserts, and that, as all suffering is the offspring of sin, the one would be proportioned to the other, so that the amount of one would indicate the amount of the other. This notion was greatly confirmed in the mind of the Jew by the peculiar government which God exercised as the King of Israel, under which His providence did often indicate His pleasure or displeasure, dispensing present blessings and curses according to His promises and threatenings by Moses. And though this was with the nation rather than with individuals, there were on record in their Scriptures particular instances of evident reward both of evil and good which led them to make the general rule. We, in the same way, knowing that the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked, but He blesseth the habitation of the just, are apt to come to their conclusion, and to regard the death of those who perish miserably as a marked punishment. Therefore we must ponder the third thought in the text–

3. The denial which our Lord gives to this inference. We are Dot expressly told what was the intention of those who related to Jesus the cruel assault of Pilate upon the Galileans at the very altar of God. But we can gather it from the answer of the Great Teacher, which is evidently not the answer that they desired. He plainly showed their supposition to be that which I have assumed, by His direct contradiction of it. Suppose ye, He said (meaning Ye suppose ) that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay –which He confirmed by the parallel question and answer in our text. And if there were any triumph of party spirit in these bearers of evil tidings, Jesus took it away well by thus turning their attention from the despised Galileans to their fellow-citizens–teaching them that if the inference were just in the one case it would be so in the other, yet with Divine impartiality denying it in both. And this forbids all to draw such an inference, even in thought. Which prohibition let me strengthen by a fourth consideration–

4. The reasons which there are against such conclusions. It ought to be enough to know that the principle upon which they are founded is often false, and that it is not in our power to ascertain whether it be true or false in most cases. Yet I would deepen the impression by reminding you that such inferences are apt to harden our feelings and take away our pity–a great evil for us. We cannot but have more sympathy with an innocent sufferer than with one who is guilty; yet should human misery in every form and in any man at once awaken our unfeigned and generous compassion, and keep this alive as long as it lasts.

II. THE SUGGESTION OF A MOST IMPORTANT PERSONAL THOUGHT. Some might suppose from the line of argument which I have now followed that I do not believe in the special providence of God (though I have really asserted it), and ask, Is there evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it? or if not, does He act without reason? Then I reply, that my unwavering faith is, that whether there be good or evil done in this way, it is the Lords doing; but persuaded that every event which transpires is the appointment of His providence, I perceive also that He does not make His appointments known to us to gratify our curiosity or to justify our censures; for He giveth not account of any of His matters, not willing that we should judge His servants in the present state of our ignorance. Moreover, I have followed, not the dictate of my own mind, but the course indicated in the text, the great object of which is to teach us to consider ourselves rather that to censure ethers; for in it Jesus says, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Awful as was their end, such an end awaits you if you avert it not. In which saying there are three things worthy of notice.

1. The solemnity of this warning. The catastrophe to which our Lord referred was both instant and terrible; and it was the type of that which befel the hapless multitudes dwelling in Jerusalem at the time of its utter destruction. We tremble at the tale, and should have grown sick and faint at the sight, like so many stout men who witnessed it. And does any such doom await any among us? Many, ay, all, but for the grace of God.

2. The reasonableness of this warning. Whether we see it or not, there is reason in everything that God does, and in everything that Christ says. In the last great day, however, the reason shall be evident why some perish and others are preserved; all men shall discern it. It is intimated in our text; they will perish who would not repent, though space was given them for repentance. But where is the necessity for this? One short word is the answer–Sin.

3. The universality of this warning. (J. Williams.)

Sudden and signal calamity improved

I. Now, first, let us inquire what are those FALSE CONCLUSIONS which men are apt to draw from the stirring and startling events of providence.

1. The first feeling in the mind of man, when God sends afflictive dispensations, is to lose sight of Divine providence altogether. This is to drive God out of His own world–to refer the thing altogether to second causes. Oh! it was an accident; it was some chance event; it was some unfortunate circumstance; or it was something which occurred from carelessness, want of watchfulness, want of circumspection, want of foresight and provision; forgetting a Divine hand, losing sight of an almighty Providence.

2. And this is the second remark I have to make–that when the event which occurs is so marked and peculiar that man cannot altogether lose sight of Divine providence or of the Divine hand, he then is disposed to attribute some special guilt or some special misfortune to the sufferers themselves. He tries to find out some particular circumstances in the case which has occurred that may apply peculiarly and expressly to the parties concerned.

II. But now I come, in the second place, to inquire into those SOLID AND IMPORTANT LESSONS which these events are really designed to teach us.

1. Now, of the lessons which this solemn event is intended to teach, the first is this–that we are all standing on the brink of an eternal world. Beloved brethren, it does not require any mighty effort of Jehovah, any vast convulsion of nature, to destroy us or to carry us out of the world. A single spark will do it; a little smouldering spark getting amongst combustible matter, or thrown into any other circumstances in which these accidents by fire occur, is a sufficient agent in the hand of your God to destroy life. A little disorder in any part of the animal frame can do the same. The air you breathe is impregnated with disease. The very ground on which you walk may prove your death. A fall, a stumble–a thousand minute accidents–may kill you.

2. This event reminds us of the punishment due to sin.

3. A loud and most solemn call to repentance. (D. Wilson, M. A.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

CHAPTER XIII.

Christ preaches the necessity of repentance, from the

punishment of the Galileans massacred by Pilate, 1-3.

And by the death of those on whom the tower in Siloam fell,

4, 5.

The parable of the barren fig tree, 6-29.

Christ cures a woman who had been afflicted eighteen years,

10-13.

The ruler of the synagogue is incensed and is reproved by our

Lord, 14-17.

The parable of the mustard seed, 18, 19;

of the leaven, 20-21.

He journeys towards Jerusalem, and preaches, 22.

The question, Are there few saved? and our Lords answer, with

the discourse thereon, 23-30.

He is informed that Herod purposes to kill him, 31, 32.

Predicts his own death at Jerusalem, and denounces judgments on

that impenitent city, 33-35.

NOTES ON CHAP. XIII.

Verse 1. At that season] At what time this happened is not easy to determine; but it appears that it was now a piece of news which was told to Christ and his disciples for the first time.

Whose blood Pilate had mingled] This piece of history is not recorded (as far as I can find) by Josephus: however, he states that the Galileans were the most seditious people in the land: they belonged properly to Herod’s jurisdiction; but, as they kept the great feasts at Jerusalem, they probably, by their tumultuous behaviour at some one of them, gave Pilate, who was a mortal enemy to Herod, a pretext to fall upon and slay many of them; and thus, perhaps, sacrifice the people to the resentment he had against the prince. Archelaus is represented by Josephus as sending his soldiers into the temple, and slaying 3000 men while they were employed in offering sacrifices. Josephus, War, b. ii. c. 1, s. 3, and ii. c. 5. Some suppose that this refers to the followers of Judas Gaulonites, (see Ac 5:37,) who would not acknowledge the Roman government, a number of whom Pilate. surrounded and slew, while they were sacrificing in the temple. See Josephus, Antiq. lib. 18: but this is not very certain.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

The Holy Scriptures giving us no account of these two stories to which our Saviour doth here refer, and those who have wrote the history of the Jews having given us no account of them, interpreters are at a great loss to determine any thing about them. We read of one Judas of Galilee, who drew away much people after him, and perished, Act 5:37. It is said that he seduced people from their obedience to the Roman emperor, persuading them not to acknowledge him as their governor, nor to pay tribute to the Romans. It is guessed by interpreters, that some of this faction coming up to the passover, (for they were Jews), Pilate fell upon them, and slew them while they were sacrificing. Others think that these were some remnant of Judass faction, but Samaritans, and slain while they were sacrificing at their temple in Mount Gerizim, and that (though Samaritans) they were called Galilaeans, because Judas, the head of their faction, was such. The reader is at liberty to choose which of these he thinks most probable, for I find no other account given by any. The latter is prejudiced by our Saviours calling them Galilaeans, and advantaged by the desperate hatred which the Jews had to the Samaritans, which might make them more prone to censure any passages of Divine providence severe towards them. But what the certain crime or provocation was we cannot say; we are sure that de facto the thing was true, Pilate did mingle the blood of some Galilaeans with their sacrifices, of which a report was brought to Christ. We are at the same loss for those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell. Siloe, or Siloa, was the name of a small fountain at the foot of Mount Zion, which, as we are told, did not constantly, but at certain times, send out waters, which running through hollow places of the earth, and mines and quarries of stone, made a great noise. Isaiah mentions it, Isa 8:6. There was also a pool in Jerusalem which had that name, and had a wall built by it, Neh 3:15. Christ sent the blind man to go and wash there, Joh 9:7. Turrets are (as we know) very usual upon walls. It seems one of these towers fell, and slew eighteen persons, come thither either to wash themselves, or by reason of some healing virtue in those waters, upon what occasion we cannot determine; but there they perished. This story seems to have been something older than the other. Our Saviour either had heard what some people had said, or at least knew what they would say upon those accidents, for we are mightily prone to pass uncharitable judgments upon persons perishing suddenly, especially if they die by a violent death. As he therefore took all occasions to press upon them repentance, so he doth not think fit to omit one so fair; and though he doth not, by what he saith, forbid us to observe such extraordinary providences, and to whom they happen, but willeth us to hear and fear; yet he tells them, there were many Galilaeans as bad as they, who unless they repented, that is, being sensible of, heartily turned from, the wickedness of their ways, would perish also: thereby teaching us,

1. That punishments come upon people for their sins, and more signal punishments for more signal sinnings.

2. That although God sometimes by his providence signally punishes some for notorious sinnings, yet he spareth more such sinners than he so signally punishes.

3. That therefore none can conclude from such signal punishments, that such persons punished were greater sinners than they.

4. That the best use we can make of such reports, and spectacles of notorious sinners, more than ordinarily punished, is to examine ourselves, and to repent, lest we also perish.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

1-3. Galileanspossibly thefollowers of Judas of Galilee, who, some twenty years before this,taught that Jews should not pay tribute to the Romans, and of whom welearn, from Ac 5:37, that hedrew after him a multitude of followers, who on his being slain wereall dispersed. About this time that party would be at its height, andif Pilate caused this detachment of them to be waylaid and put todeath as they were offering their sacrifices at one of the festivals,that would be “mingling their blood with their sacrifices”[GROTIUS, WEBSTERand WILKINSON, but doubtedby DE WETTE,MEYER, ALFORD,c.]. News of this being brought to our Lord, to draw out His views ofsuch, and whether it was not a judgment of Heaven, He simply pointsthem to the practical view of the matter: “These men are notsignal examples of divine vengeance, as ye suppose but everyimpenitent sinnerye yourselves, except ye repentshall belike monuments of the judgment of Heaven, and in a more awful sense.”The reference here to the impending destruction of Jerusalem is farfrom exhausting our Lord’s weighty words; they manifestly point to a”perdition” of a more awful kindfuture, personal,remediless.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

There were present at that season,…. Among the innumerable multitude of people, Lu 12:1 that were then hearing the above discourses and sayings of Christ:

some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. These Galileans were very likely some of the followers of Judas Gaulonitis, or Judas of Galilee; see Ac 5:37 who endeavoured to draw off the Jews from the Roman government, and affirmed it was not lawful to give tribute to Caesar; at which Pilate being enraged, sent a band of soldiers, and slew these his followers; who were come up to the feast of the passover, as they were offering their sacrifices in the temple, and so mixed their blood with the blood of the passover lambs: this being lately done, some of the company spoke of it to Christ; very likely some of the Scribes and Pharisees, whom he had just now taxed as hypocrites; either to know his sense of Pilate’s conduct, that should he condemn it as brutish and barbarous, they might accuse him to him; or should he approve of it, might traduce him, and bring him into contempt among the people; or to know his sentiments concerning the persons slain, whether or no they were not very wicked persons; and whether this was not a judgment upon them, to be put to death in such a manner, and at such a time and place, and which sense seems to be confirmed by Christ’s answer. Josephus z relating a slaughter of the Samaritans by Pilate, which bears some likeness to this, has led some, though without any just reason, to conclude, that these were Samaritans, who are here called Galileans. This history is neither related nor hinted at, by any other writer but Luke. The phrase of mingling blood with blood, is Jewish; it is said of one Trogianus the wicked (perhaps the Emperor Trajan), that he slaughtered the Jews,

, “and mingled their blood with their blood”; and their blood ran into the sea, unto Cyprus a. The Jews b have a notion, that

“in the age in which the son of David comes, Galilee shall be destroyed.”

Here was a great slaughter of the Galileans now, see Ac 5:37 but there was a greater afterwards by the Romans: it may be that the Pharisees made mention of this case to Christ, to reproach him and his followers, who were called Galileans, as his disciples chiefly were.

z Antiqu. l. 18. c. 5. a T. Hieros. Succa, fol. 55. 2. Vid. Lightfoot Hor. in loc. b T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 97. 1.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The Murdered Galileans.

1 There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilans were sinners above all the Galilans, because they suffered such things? 3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. 4 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? 5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

We have here, I. Tidings brought to Christ of the death of some Galileans lately, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, v. 1. Let us consider,

1. What this tragical story was. It is briefly related here, and is not met with in any of the historians of those times. Josephus indeed mentions Pilate’s killing some Samaritans, who, under the conduct of a factious leader, were going in a tumultuous manner to mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans’ temple was; but we can by no means allow that story to be the same with this. Some think that these Galileans were of the faction of Judas Gaulonita, called also Judas of Galilee (Acts v. 37), who disowned Csar’s authority and refused to pay tribute to him: or perhaps these, being Galileans, were only suspected by Pilate to be of that faction, and barbarously murdered, because those who were in league with that pretender were out of his reach. The Galileans being Herod’s subjects, it is probable that this outrage committed upon them by Pilate occasioned the quarrel that was between Herod and Pilate, which we read of in ch. xxiii. 12. We are not told what number they were, perhaps but a few, whom Pilate had some particular pique against (and therefore the story is overlooked by Josephus); but the circumstance remarked is that he mingled their blood with their sacrifices in the court of the temple. Though perhaps they had reason to fear Pilate’s malice, yet they would not, under pretence of that fear, keep away from Jerusalem, whither the law obliged them to go up with their sacrifices. Dr Lightfoot thinks it probable that they were themselves killing their sacrifices (which was allowed, for the priest’s work, they said, began with the sprinkling of the blood), and that Pilate’s officers came upon them by surprise, just at the time when they were off their guard (for otherwise the Galileans were mettled men, and generally went well-armed), and mingled the blood of the sacrificers with the blood of the sacrifices, as if it had been equally acceptable to God. Neither the holiness of the place nor of the work would be a protection to them from the fury of an unjust judge, who neither feared God nor regarded man. The altar, which used to be a sanctuary and place of shelter, is now become a snare and a trap, a place of danger and slaughter.

2. Why it was related at this season to our Lord Jesus. (1.) Perhaps merely as a matter of news, which they supposed he had not heard before, and as a thing which they lamented, and believed he would do so too; for the Galileans were their countrymen. Note, Sad providences ought to be observed by us, and the knowledge of them communicated to others, that they and we may be suitably affected with them, and make a good use of them. (2.) Perhaps it was intended as a confirmation of what Christ had said in the close of the foregoing chapter, concerning the necessity of making our peace with God in time, before we be delivered to the officer, that is, to death, and so cast into prison, and then it will be too late to make agreements: “Now,” say they, “Master, here is a fresh instance of some that were very suddenly delivered to the officer, that were taken away by death when they little expected it; and therefore we have all need to be ready.” Note, It will be of good use to us both to explain the word of God and to enforce it upon ourselves by observing the providences of God. (3.) Perhaps they would stir him up, being himself of Galilee, and a prophet, and one that had a great interest in that country, to find out a way to revenge the death of these Galileans upon Herod. If they had any thoughts of this kind, they were quite mistaken; for Christ was now going up to Jerusalem, to be delivered into the hands of Pilate, and to have his blood, not mingled with his sacrifice, but itself made a sacrifice. (4.) Perhaps this was told Christ to deter him from going up to Jerusalem, to worship (v. 22), lest Pilate should serve him as he had served those Galileans, and should suggest against him, as probably he had insinuated against those Galileans, in vindication of his cruelty, that they came to sacrifice as Absalom did, with a seditious design, under colour of sacrificing, to raise rebellion. Now, lest Pilate, when his hand was in, should proceed further, they think it advisable that Christ should for the present keep out of the way. (5.) Christ’s answer intimates that they told him this with a spiteful innuendo, that, though Pilate was unjust in killing them, yet without doubt they were secretly bad men, else God would not have permitted Pilate thus barbarously to cut them off. It was very invidious; rather than they would allow them to be martyrs, though they died sacrificing, and perhaps suffered for their devotion, they would, without any colour of proof, suppose them to be malefactors; and it may be for no other reason than because they were not of their party and denomination, differed from them, or had difference with them. This fate of theirs, which was capable not only of a favourable, but an honourable construction, shall be called a just judgment of God upon them, though they know not for what.

II. Christ’s reply to this report, in which,

1. He seconded it with another story, which, like it, gave an instance of people’s being taken away by sudden death. It is not long since the tower of Siloam fell, and there were eighteen persons killed and buried in the ruins of it. Dr Lightfoot’s conjecture is that this tower adjoined to the pool of Siloam, which was the same with the pool of Bethesda, and that it belonged to those porches which were by the pool, in which the impotent folks lay, that waited for the stirring of the water (John v. 3), and that they who were killed were some of them, or some of those who in this pool used to purify themselves for the temple-service, for it was near the temple. Whoever they were, it was a sad story; yet such melancholy accidents we often hear of: for as the birds are caught in a snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them, Eccl. ix. 12. Towers, that were built for safety, often prove men’s destruction.

2. He cautioned his hearers not to make an ill use of these and similar events, nor take occasion thence to censure great sufferers, as if they were therefore to be accounted great sinners: Suppose ye that these Galileans, who were slain as they were sacrificing, were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you nay,Luk 13:2; Luk 13:3. Perhaps they that told him the story of the Galileans were Jews, and were glad of any thing that furnished them with matter of reflection upon the Galileans, and therefore Christ retorted upon them the story of the men of Jerusalem, that came to an untimely end; for, with what measure of that kind we mete, it shall be measured to us again. “Now suppose ye that those eighteen who met with their death from the tower of Siloam, while perhaps they were expecting their cure from the pool of Siloam, were debtors to divine justice above all men that dwelt at Jerusalem? I tell you nay.” Whether it make for us or against us, we must abide by this rule, that we cannot judge of men’s sins by their sufferings in this world; for many are thrown into the furnace as gold to be purified, not as dross and chaff to be consumed. We must therefore not be harsh in our censures of those that are afflicted more than their neighbours, as Job’s friends were in their censures of him, lest we condemn the generation of the righteous, Ps. lxxii. 14. If we will be judging, we have enough to do to judge ourselves; nor indeed can we know love or hatred by all that is before us, because all things come alike to all,Ecc 9:1; Ecc 9:2. And we might as justly conclude that the oppressors, and Pilate among the rest, on whose side are power and success, are the greatest saints, as that the oppressed, and those Galileans among the rest, who are all in tears and have no comforter, no, not the priests and Levites that attended the altar, are the greatest sinners. Let us, in our censures of others, do as we would be done by; for as we do we shall be done by: Judge not, that ye be not judged, Matt. vii. 1.

3. On these stories he founded a call to repentance, adding to each of them this awakening word, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish, v. 3-5. (1.) This intimates that we all deserve to perish as much as they did, and had we been dealt with according to our sins, according to the iniquity of our holy things, our blood had been long ere this mingled with our sacrifices by the justice of God. It must moderate our censure, not only that we are sinners, but that we are as great sinners as they, have as much sin to repent of as they had to suffer for. (2.) That therefore we are all concerned to repent, to be sorry for what we have done amiss, and to do so no more. The judgments of God upon others are loud calls to us to repent. See how Christ improved every thing for the pressing of that great duty which he came not only to gain room for, and give hopes to, but to enjoin upon us–and that is, to repent. (3.) That repentance is the way to escape perishing, and it is a sure way: so iniquity shall not be your ruin, but upon no other terms. (4.) That, if we repent not, we shall certainly perish, as others have done before us. Some lay an emphasis upon the word likewise, and apply it to the destruction that was coming upon the people of the Jews, and particularly upon Jerusalem, who were destroyed by the Romans at the time of their passover, and so, like the Galileans, they had their blood mingled with their sacrifices; and many of them, both in Jerusalem and in other places, were destroyed by the fall of walls and buildings which were battered down about their ears, as those that died by the fall of the tower of Siloam. But certainly it looks further; except we repent, we shall perish eternally, as they perished out of this world. The same Jesus that calls us to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand, bids us repent because otherwise we shall perish; so that he has set before us life and death, good and evil, and put us to our choice. (5.) The perishing of those in their impenitency who have been most harsh and severe in judging others will be in a particular manner aggravated.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

At that very season ( ). Luke’s frequent idiom, “at the season itself.” Apparently in close connexion with the preceding discourses. Probably “were present” (, imperfect of ) means “came,” “stepped to his side,” as often (Matt 26:50; Acts 12:20; John 11:28). These people had a piece of news for Jesus.

Whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices ( ). The verb is first aorist active (not past perfect) of , a common verb. The incident is recorded nowhere else, but is in entire harmony with Pilate’s record for outrages. These Galileans at a feast in Jerusalem may have been involved in some insurrection against the Roman government, the leaders of whom Pilate had slain right in the temple courts where the sacrifices were going on. Jesus comments on the incident, but not as the reporters had expected. Instead of denunciation of Pilate he turned it into a parable for their own conduct in the uncertainty of life.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

MEN ARE TO REPENT, NOT JUDGE V. 1-5

1) “There were present at that season some that told him,” (paresan de tines en auto kairo apangellontes auto) “Then there were present certain ones who reported to him at that season,” or there arrived, perhaps to bring him a report of this outrage by Caesar Augustus, Luk 2:1. What season or period is not definitely known.

2) “Of the Galileeans,” (peri ton Galilaion) “Concerning the Galileeans,” certain ones who had been slain in an uprising against the Roman garrison in Jerusalem, whom Pilate had cruelly put down, suppressed, slaying many, Act 5:36.

3) “Whose blood Pilate had mingled,” (hon to hima Pilatos emiksen) “Some of whose blood Pilate mixed,” with animal blood. This particular event was not recorded in history, but Josephus relates numerous similar events. See also Act 5:36-37. This is likely why Herod and Pilate were at enmity, Luk 23:12; Luk 23:19.

4) “With their sacrifices.” (meta ton thusion auton) “With human sacrifices,” at the Jewish temple, where human blood or human sacrifices were not to be offered.

Judas of Galilee had led a tax rebellion against paying Roman tribute some twenty years earlier, was slain and his rebellion put down. This perhaps alludes to that event, Act 5:37.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

CRITICAL NOTES

Luk. 13:1. There were present.The phrase is a peculiar one, and might be translated, then there came up or arrived, perhaps to bring tidings of this outrage. Whose blood.The phrase is highly dramatic: the persons had been slain in the Temple, and their blood had been mingled with that of the sacrifices they were offering. Pilate.This incident is not recorded in history. But similar events are known to have happened: Josephus tells of murders and massacres in the Temple, and of Pilates cruelty in repressing outbreaks. As these persons were Galilans, we have, perhaps, here an explanation of the enmity between Pilate and Herod (Luk. 23:12). Pilate had, we know, about this time put down an insurrection in Jerusalem with great severity (see Luk. 23:19).

Luk. 13:2. Suppose ye.This thought was in their minds, though apparently they did not express it. What they regarded as a judgment upon others Christ advised them to take as a warning to themselves. Great public calamities may be signs of Gods displeasure, but it is a superstitious abuse of the doctrine to hold that the particular sufferers are greater sinners than other men.

Luk. 13:3. Ye shall all likewise perish.It is not for those who, by their sins, are liable to like judgments of God to pass sentence on others and to infer their exceptional guilt. The words are doubtless prophetic of the manner in which myriads perished in the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans.

Luk. 13:4. Those eighteen.An incident well known at the time, but of which we have no further information than is here given. Tower in Siloam is evidently a tower on the city walls near the Pool of Siloam, at the south-east corner. It is an ingenious, but of course uncertain, conjecture of Ewald that the death of these workmen was connected with the notion of retribution, because they were engaged in building part of the aqueduct to the Pool of Siloam, for the construction of which Pilate had seized some of the sacred Corban-money (Jos. B.J, II., Luk. 9:4) (Farrar). It is noticeable that these two incidents are of a different character: the first was death inflicted by the cruelty of man; the second, death by accident. Sinners.Lit. debtors, a different word from that in Luk. 13:2.

Luk. 13:5. Likewise.Prophetic also of deaths by falling buildings in the siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Romans.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Luk. 13:1-5

Accidents not Judgments.Whenever any great public calamity happens, there are never wanting persons who are ready to point out the special sin which has provoked it; and it is noticeable that they are, as a rule, more indignant at those who suffer wrong than at those who do wrong. They are eager to utter their harsh censures, while other men sit silent with dismay; they interpret the Divine Providence according to their private prejudices and theories, and, therefore, often contradict each other; and they carefully exclude themselves from the operation of the vengeanceWhatever happens to them is a trial, while whatever happens to their neighbour is a judgment.

I. The false inference.To affirm that, by an invariable and most merciful law, sin entails punishmentnational sins national punishment, personal sins personal punishmentsis the duty of every Christian teacher; but to fix the times and assort punishments to sins, to affect to stand midway between heaven and earth and interpret the mysteries of Providence, is simply stark presumption in any uninspired man. It is not given to the sons of men to comprehend the goings of the Inhabitant of Eternity. The sweep of eternity is large, and gives scope and verge for the play of retribution beyond the reach of mortal eye. To play the interpreter, and say, This punishment is a judgment on that sin, is to play the fool. The Holy Scriptures affirm the mystery and delay of retribution; that it is not measured in mortal scales; that the sweep and fall of its scourge are not traceable by mortal eyes. They teach us that those whose feet are swift to shed blood often outrun the pursuing vengeance for a time, and for a long timenay, beyond all bounds of time. They teach that many offences escape whipping here, though, sooner or later, the impartial lash falls on all.

II. The true lesson to be drawn from calamities.The gospel teaches us a more excellent way of interpreting the facts of life than that of these presumptuous discoverers of judgments. Instead of dwelling on the mysterious fate of our neighbours, it bids us come quite home, and repent, lest we ourselves should likewise perish. It teaches us in effect that no evil is so evil as the spurious goodness which, separating us from our fellows, cries to its neighbours, as from a superior platform, Stand down there, for I am holier than thou. It teaches us that the accidents by which we suffer, so far from being personal judgments on personal sins, are parts of that great mystery of evil which is now suffered to task our thoughts and try our faith, in order that, by-and-by, it may lead in a complete beatitude, a profounder rest, an eternal good and joy. The only safe moral we can draw from the judgments of God, or what seem to us His judgments, is the warning, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Let us take the warning, and not judge one another any more. We are too apt, when we see any forlorn and solitary brother sitting, like Job, among the potsherds, to sit down beside him, like Jobs comforters, and hand him the very sharpest and roughest of the sherds that he may scrape himself withal. We are too apt, when any calamity befalls our neighbours, to assume that they must be sinners above all other men, and to speculatesometimes in their hearingon the crimson and scarlet dyes of their guilt. We need, therefore, to remember that accidents are not judgments, that accidents are not even accidents, since they are all ordered of God, and form part of that gracious discipline by which He lifts us through the graduated and rising circles of His service. They are sent for our sakes, who only stand and witness them, as well as for the sake of those who suffer them; not that we may judge others, but that we may examine ourselves.Cox.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luk. 13:1-9

Luk. 13:1-9. Three Motives to Repentance.We need to remember the spiritual tension, the awful feeling of urgency, if we would do justice to our Lords threefold summons to repentance.

I. The story of the Galilans was probably carried to Jesus as a person who made Messianic claims of some sort, and who might be expected to show a practical interest in the honour of the country. Jesus startles His informants by the abrupt diversion of interest. He saw in the death of these Galilans, with all its atrocity of circumstance, a picture and prophecy of the doom, which, within a single generation, should overtake the whole of the Jewish people. The moral motive to repentance is plain here. A tragic ending, a life cut short, is not to be a mere nine days wonder. It is a voice from heaven, an emphatic voice, to stagger and shock the careless, and to make them think seriously of God.
II. The next case is different. It was an accident. Has an accident a moral? If not, why did our Lord utilise this pure accident in a moral interest? In the lips of an unfeeling man such language would be unpardonably offensive. It is the use of it by such men that has brought it to discredit. But Christs interest in repentance was an absorbing passion. Such accidents ought, if we take Christs example here as a law, to help in the conversion of all who are awed and startled by them. Such emotions of pity, awe, sympathy, are not to be wasted. To see men moved, moved deeply, and yet not permanently, not to the point of changing their life to the bottom, and putting it right with Godthis was what straitened Christs spirit, and moved Him to speak with such startling vehemence.
III. The insertion of the parable of the fig-tree at this point, even though it were spoken on another occasion, rounds off the lesson on repentance, it presents the same appeal, with the same importunity, on what seems to be at first totally different ground. The urgency of massacres and accidents, which do not happen every day, or at every door, can easily be evaded by most men. These things are not likely to happen to us. It is absurd to make the bare supposition of them a motive in life. Christs answer to this sceptical mood is the parable of the fig-tree. He seems to side with the mood, but does not allow it to evade His earnestness. Massacre and accident are extraordinary resources of which God avails Himself; but His goodness alsowhich is so unbroken in your lifeis also designed to lead you to repentance. God tries every way, because men seek to evade Him by every way. He tries exceptional severity, because men take His goodness for granted; He tries uniform, ever-renewed, patient goodness, because He is good, and severity is His strange work. But it would be a fatal error to presume on His goodness. The parable ends with the same inexorable refrain as the verses about the Galilans and the fall of the tower. Not to repent is perditionif neither severity nor goodness startle men, they are lost. These stern, passionate utterances are the expression of the intense love of Christ. No one has ever loved like Jesus Christ, so no one has ever spoken with such awful severity and urgency. No one has been so pained with soul-travail for the conversion of men.Denney.

Luk. 13:1-5. The Lesson of Evil Tidings.

I. How men use evil tidings.Jesus was from Galilee. Men are always too ready to gossip about the misfortunes of others. Christ had just been speaking about Gods judgments on men who knew His will and did it not. The bystanders at once named the destruction of the Galilans by Pilate. Why? Because they thought the sudden death of these men was a mark of Gods displeasure at some grievous sin.

II. How Christ would have them used.How quickly Christ saw the thoughts which had led the speakers to utter their evil tidings! He saw in them a fault which we are all too apt to fall intothe fault of always forming unkind judgments about people in misfortune; of always thinking, and even sometimes saying, the worst we can of people. Christ rebukes them for their want of charity, and cautions them for the future. Gods judgments will fall upon all unrepentant sinners.W. Taylor.

Rash Judgments.We are taught here

1. To beware of rashly judging others.
2. Not to be too hasty in interpreting afflictive dispensations of Providence against ourselves.
3. To be thankful for our own preservation.
4. That it is our duty to mark and improve calamities, and especially violent and sudden deaths.
5. The necessity of genuine repentance.Foote.

Sin and Punishment.

I. Punishment does follow upon sin.
II. Yet God spares more than He signally punishes.
III. Therefore no one can conclude from such instances that those who are punished are worse than their neighbours.
IV. The best use we can make of remarkable examples of this kind is to examine ourselves and to repent of our sins.

Luk. 13:1. Blood mingled with their sacrifices.The suggestion is: God must have been specially angry with these Galilans, who were cut off by a heathen, in Gods house, at His altar, and when engaged in the act of worshipping God. The argument is similar to that of Jobs friends (Job. 4:7; Job. 8:20; Job. 22:5).

Vers. 29. Punishment and Long-Suffering.Christs answer consists of two parts.

I. A plain and literal threatening of general destruction to all who do not repent.
II. A new challenge to the repentance which alone can save, in a parable which exhibits long-suffering as an argument to repentance, and which passes from the people as a whole to each individual.

Luk. 13:2-3. Sinners above all the Galilans.Our Saviour does not say that the calamity which had overtaken these Galilans was not a punishment for sin. He contests not about that, but rather seems to agree to them so far, and draws that warning out of it. He only corrects the misconceit it seems they were in, in thrusting it too far off from themselves, and throwing it too heavily upon them that sacrificed.Leighton.

Luk. 13:3. Ye shall all likewise perish.Jesus, with prophetic insight, immediately discerns the significance of this fact. In this carnage, wrought by the sword of Pilate, He sees the prelude of that which the Roman army would accomplish soon in every part of the Holy Land, and especially in the Templethe last refuge of the nation. In fact, forty years later, all that remained of the Galilan people was gathered in the Temple, and suffered, under the Roman sword, the penalty incurred by their present impenitence.Godet.

Signal Chastisements

1. Signal chastisements inflicted upon sinners by God warn us of His righteous anger against sin, and should lead us to examine ourselves and consider what we deserve.
2. His kindness and forbearance in sparing others who are equally guilty should be regarded by us as an invitation to repentance.

Repent.Repentance implies.

1. A change of mind.
2. Conviction of sin.
3. Grief on account of sin.
4. Hatred of sin.
5. Actual reformation.
6. Faith in the Redeemer.

Our Inability to Trace the Connection between Suffering and Sin.Christ affirms, and all Scripture affirms, that the sum total of the calamity which oppresses the human race is the consequence of the sum total of its sin; nor does He deny the relation in which a mans actual sins may stand to his sufferings. What He does deny is the power of other men to trace the connection, and thus their right, in any particular case, to assert it.Trench.

Likewise.The correspondence between what had happened to these Galilans and what was to happen to the Jewish people is very striking.

1. In both cases the punishment was inflicted by the heathen.
2. The time was that of the Passover, when sacrifices were being offered.
3. They were slain with the sword.

Luk. 13:4-5. Upon whom the tower fell.Our Lord introduces this incident as showing that whether the hand of man or (so called) accidents, lead to inflictions of this kind, it is in fact but one Hand that doeth it all (cf. Amo. 3:6). There is also a transference from the Galilansa despised peopleto the inhabitants of Jerusalem, on whom the fulness of Gods wrath was to be poured out in case of impenitence.Alford.

Luk. 13:5. True and False Ways of Regarding Calamities.

I. Light-minded persons are inclined to deny the intimate connection between natural and moral evil.
II. Narrow-minded persons are disposed to interpret all such calamities as judgments upon exceptional guilt.
III. The true way to regard them is as a call to repentance.
Likewise perish.In like manner with the former instance, this prophetic word of Jesus was literally fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem; houses and public buildings were burned and overthrown, and multitudes perished in the ruins.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Butlers Comments

SECTION 1

Repentance Defined (Luk. 13:1-9)

13 There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2And he answered them, Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? 3I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. 4Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? 5I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.

6 And he told this parable: A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7And he said to the vinedresser, Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground? 8And he answered him, Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. 9And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.

Luk. 13:1-5 Importuned: The Lords discourse on preparation for being called to judgment reminded some of those present of the great calamity that probably had recently occurred. Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, had ordered some Galileans slain as they worshiped in the Temple and their blood was mingled with that of the animals they had just sacrificed. This event is extant in no other historical record than Lukes. Pilate was the son of Marcus Pontius (according to tradition), a Roman general. Pilate was a friend of the famous Germanicus, and his wife was a granddaughter of Caesar Augustus. The Pilate we know from the Gospels and from secular history was a typical pragmatic Roman politician. He was not excessively wicked or cruel, but he was weak and vacillating and would sacrifice principle and honor for his own ends. He was assigned the most unrewarding and difficult post that existed in the Roman provincesJudea. He went there in 26 A.D. and remained about ten years. He was not particularly adept at administering his post because of the intransigent nature of the Jews and his own fear of displeasing the emperor Tiberius. Once he put shields of war which were used in worship of the emperor and a portrait of the emperor into the Temple by night. This nearly precipitated a revolution. On another occasion when he needed money to build an aqueduct into Jerusalem, he took it from the Temples treasury. This started a demonstration by the Jews that had to be put down by Roman force. About six years after the death of Christ he got involved in a confrontation that ended his career. A self-made prophet appeared in Samaria and claimed that the ancient Tabernacle of the Jews and its vessels were buried on the top of Mt. Gerizim. He gathered a crowd and they ascended the mountain, singing psalms and shouting patriotic slogans. Pilate sent his troops to stop the crowd but the confrontation turned into a not and a massacre. Pilate was reported to his superiors, called back to Rome, banished by Caligula to Gaul where, it is reported, he killed himself.

The Jews had the idea that any great physical calamity upon a nation or an individual must be considered a direct result of extraordinary sinfulness by the persons or person upon whom the disaster had fallen. Jobs friends attributed his calamities to Jobs sinfulness (cf. Job. 22:5 ff.). Jesus disciples just knew that the man born blind was a terrible sinneror his parents were (cf. Joh. 9:1-2). This view was also held by many Gentiles (cf. Act. 28:4). Generally speaking, the understanding that physical calamity in the form of war, pestilence, flood, famine, drought, disease and death are Gods portents that this material order has been judged is correct! The Bible teaches very plainly that whirlwinds, earthquakes and other natural disasters are Gods constant warnings to this world that it is doomed and that mankind must repent in order to be saved (cf. Joe. 1:1-20; Joe. 2:30 to Joe. 3:3; Amo. 3:6; Amo. 4:1-13; Rom. 1:18-20; Rev. 8:1-13; Rev. 16:8-11, etc.). Even the diseases and maladies men bring on themselves as a consequence of sinful living are Gods signals for repentance (cf. Rom. 1:26-27), The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against mans sin in the dissolution and disorder of nature. Of course, the goodness and patience of God is also generally revealed in the natural order (cf. Act. 14:16-18; Act. 17:24-31; Mat. 6:25-30; Rom. 4:2). But these are all general announcements from God to the world that it must repent. When people are killed by riots or accidents or natural disasters it does not mean they are all greater sinners than those who might not be killed in such calamities. Nor does it mean that the locale of any calamity signifies its recipients are worse sinners than those in a neighboring locale which might have been spared the disaster. In the book of Revelation, John predicts a great holocaust of judgment upon the Roman empire in the form of natural disasters, wars, and internal disintegration. While millions will die during those years of tribulation to come upon Rome, including many Christians, the Christians will go through the great tribulation to heaven to be with the Lamb. The impenitent will die and go to eternal torments. When Gods judgments fall upon the earth to call the world to repentance, both righteous and wicked diebut their eternal destiny is what is important.

Notice how Jesus corrected the view of His questioners without denying the fundamental truth that was already there in their minds. Yes, the two events, one deliberately brought about by Pilates orders and the other an accident, do mean God is calling the whole world to repentance. No, neither of the events give any justifiable reason to judge that certain people (those suffering extraordinary disasters) are more wicked than others. The Siloam Tower accident is recorded in no other historical document than Lukeshowever, accidents like this occur every day. No, violent death does not mean the victim was unquestionably some specially wicked person. But all death and all dissolution of nature means God has cursed this created universe and its destruction is inevitable! Unless every man repents, he will likewise perish in eternal death. God has promised to create a new heaven and earth which shall be eternal. He has also promised that any person who repents and enters into covenant relationship with His Son will be regenerated at that moment and will continue to be recreated, so long as repentance is continued, into the image of His Son and saved forever. All the frailties of man and nature in this present world order are focused on leading man to glorify God, if man will only repent and believe (cf. Joh. 9:1-38; 2Co. 1:8-10; 2Co. 12:1-10; Heb. 12:1-17).

Repentancewhat is it? Perhaps to see what it is not would be the place to begin. Repentance is not:

Just being blue or sorry or regretful. Criminals regret getting caught but they do not repent. Judas was sorry he betrayed Christ but he committed suicidehe didnt repent. King Saul was sorry the kingdom was being taken from him but he didnt repent (cf. Mat. 27:3-10; I Samuel; 2Co. 7:10, etc.).

Just being hyperactive in church-work. The legalistic Pharisees were hyper-active but impenitent. Paul was more zealous than all his brethren, but needed to repent (cf. Act. 22:3-5; Php. 3:4-11, etc.).

Just reformation of outward actions; not just changing of bad habits to good habits; not just enrolling in self-improvement or image-building programs. Impenitence is deeper than the outward appearance (cf. Heb. 4:11-13).

Just penance or doing assigned acts of contrition, trying to payoff God or make atonement for ones own sins by severity to the body (cf. Col. 2:20 to Col. 3:4). Going into a monastery or becoming an ascetic will not suffice for repentance.

The Greek word metanoia is translated repentance and means literally, to have another or different mind. Repentance is a change of mind. The word was used by the Greeks as a military command, about face, or reverse your march. Repentance is to go in a different direction. Biblical repentance is redirecting the mind and heart constantly toward the revealed will of God and away from worldly-mindedness. One cannot become a Christian without repentance and he cannot remain a Christian unless he continues it. Repentance is the mental, emotional and volitional metamorphosis (transformation) that changes a person from a son of darkness to a son of light. William Chamberlain in his book, The Meaning of Repentance, wrote, Repentance is a pilgrimage from the mind of the flesh to the mind of Christ. Repentance is a journey, a life long journey. A person never reaches in this life the point where he needs no more changing in his mind to that of Christs will.

Repentance involves a change of mentality. New direction, new knowledge is sought and gainedthe knowledge of Gods revealed will (the Bible). Scripture places great importance upon the place of the mind in a persons relationship to God (cf. Rom. 12:1-2; Col. 3:1-4; Mat. 22:37; 1Pe. 1:13; Eph. 4:23; Rom. 8:5; Php. 2:5 ff., etc.). The impenitent are those who are hostile in mind (Col. 1:21; Php. 3:16-19; Jas. 1:8; Eph. 4:17). If we are to truly repent, we must mind the things of God and not the things of men (cf. Mat. 16:23; Mar. 8:33). Repentance means to think the thoughts of God. The thoughts of God are communicated to man only in the divinely inspired scriptures (cf. 1Co. 2:9-13). The mind of man can be directed, changed, renewedit is up to man. Jesus taught that men must change their minds (repent) about what the nature of Gods kingdom iswho the Messiah isand what the right covenant relationship of men and women to God is (faith).

Repentance involves a change of values. God wants men to love what He loves and hate what He hates. What we treasure determines the formation of our character (Hos. 9:10; Mat. 6:19-21; Pro. 23:7). Whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, graciousvalue these things (Php. 4:8 ff.). Joy, appreciation, and satisfaction are found in fellowship with Gods revelation of what is availableand that revelation is in the Bible. Man must repent and change his values to those of God. Jesus taught men that they must treasure right relationship with Him more than all other relationships. He said men must treasure Gods word above all human opinions and traditionstreasure true and pure character above worldlinesstreasure the welfare of people above rituals and ceremonies. He insisted that men must treasure discipline above indulgence and right motives above religious play-acting.

Above all, men must value the approval of God more than the applause of men. The repentance that demands a change of values is not easy!
Repentance involves a change of choice or will. The power to choose and decide is deliberately redirected in true repentance toward the expressed choices and purposes revealed as Gods will. Surrendering the autonomy of our will to the rule of God is the epitome of repentance! We are free to choose or refuse His will. Truth and the evidences for it are not, of themselves, irresistible. Man may choose either truth or falsehood. With the choice comes the responsibility to accept the divinely-decreed consequences. God is going to give us what we choose! Jesus taught that men should surrender their wills to the will of God and put self-rule to death. The peace (will) of Christ should rule (Gr. brabeueto, arbitrate or umpire) in our hearts (Col. 3:15). Man must change his own self-determined righteousness and accept imputed righteousness from God. A kingdom with its citizens in revolt could not have peace. Men must surrender to Gods rule in order for the kingdom of God to be a reality. Unless they do, they are subversives, enemies of God.

Repentance involves a change of conduct. The logical result of a truly changed spiritual nature is godly conduct. Repentance must be effected in deeds and actions because man is body and behavior as well as thoughts and feelings. Repentance is wholistic (Rom. 6:1-23). Man should conform his life to the image of Gods dear Son (cf. Rom. 8:29). There are deeds worthy of repentance which the believer must do (cf. Mat. 3:8; Luk. 3:8; Act. 26:20, etc.). Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord . . . but the one who does the will of the Father in heaven is the one who repents, (cf. Mat. 7:21).

The Bible is the story of clashing viewpoints. Therein is recorded the clash between the will of God for man, and mans volitional rebellion against Gods will. This clash occurs along the entire front of human life. The classic example of the clashing viewpoints is shown in Mar. 8:31-33 and Php. 3:4-11, When mans thinking centers in himself he is always antagonistic toward God. When Gods will is made the center of a mans purpose then man finds peace. Satan assumes that even in religion mans primary objective is to feather his own nest. Satan thinks when religion ceases to yield physical dividends man will cease to worship God (cf. Job. 1:9-11). This is the mind of the flesh personified in the devil. The change represented by the transition of mind from this Satanic philosophy to that of Christ, who, in the flesh, lived as a Perfect Man, is repentance.

Luk. 13:6-9 Illustrated: Jesus brushed aside the demand for theological argument about the relationship of disasters to human wickedness and focused on the need of all men to repentespecially the Jewish nation. While the whole world needs to repent, the primary target of the Lords teaching here is the Jewish people of His day, They must repent of their rejection of His messiahship lest the destruction predicted by their prophets come upon them (Deu. 28:58 ff.; Dan. 9:24-27, etc.). Jesus illustrates His warning to them with this short but succinct parable.

A man planted a fig tree in his vineyard. He came seeking fruit but found none. He said to his vinedresser, I have come three years seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none. Cut it down. The vinedresser begged for more time to cultivate it, then if it bears no fruit, he will cut it down. Whom do the characters in this story symbolize? God is the owner, Israel is the fig tree, and Jesus is the vinedresser. God has given Israel centuries to produce the fruits of repentance, but all that time (for the most part) she produced nothing in true repentance. She had been planted in a very fertile land. She had promised to produce (cf. Exo. 19:1-25) a kingdom of priests (servants of God). But through the centuries she had defaulted on her purpose. Now God is ready to cut it down but by His grace He gives Israel additional time to repent while the Messiah preaches to her. He even gives Israel forty years of grace beyond the preaching of the Messiah before He cuts her down in 70 A.D. Because she would not repent and serve her purpose, she became of no more use to God in His redemptive work, so He destroyed her.

What Jesus is saying to His audience is that repentance is something to donot just talk about. Repentance is to produce in ones nature and life that for which he was created. Repentance is to fulfill ones God-ordained purpose. What is applicable to the nation of Israel is applicable to the whole world and to every individual in the world.
How shall such a transformation be wrought in men? First, it will be done gradually. Repentance, because it is a lifetime journey, cannot be accomplished all at one time. There is no instant repentance. Repentance is not produced by:

Intimidation. Mankind cannot be frightened or forced into repentance (cf. Rev. 9:20-21).

Indulgence. God makes His rain to fall on the just and unjust alike and yet all men do not repent. We cannot expect to produce repentance in peoples lives by indulging them in their self-centeredness.

Intuition. Man cannot find motivation within himself to repent. The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt . . . (Jer. 17:9).

Intoxications, Emotional, experiental excitation does not produce lasting repentanceit does not produce stability and steadfastness. Saul did not repent though he became emotional (1Sa. 24:16-22 and 1Sa. 26:1 ff.).

Inventions. Organized programming of people, entertaining people, or inventing new human philosophies or ideologies does not produce godly repentance.

Impressiveness, Our testimony or our example is not sufficient alone to produce repentance in others. God is the only absolutely faithful Person existing (Rom. 3:4) and His Life, manifested in His Son, is the only sufficient example to produce repentance.

Repentance is produced by the transforming of the human mind through the word of God (cf. Rom. 12:1-2). Repentance is produced by the infusion of the will (nature) of God into the mind and nature (will) of man. This is done when the word of God is preached and men believe it (cf. Rom. 10:14-17; Luk. 24:47; 2Pe. 1:3-11; Joh. 6:63). Although some of the character or will of God is revealed in nature (cf. Rom. 1:18 ff; Rom. 2:4; Act. 14:16-17; Act. 17:24-29), Gods will for mans salvation is found in only one placethe Bible.

The mission of every follower of Christ is to proclaim repentance and remission of sins in Christs name (Luk. 24:47; Act. 17:30-31, etc.). Repentance is begun when through the gospel we capture the minds of men for obedience to Christ (cf. 2Co. 10:3-6). Bringing men to repentance is evangelism. The classic example of the opposite of the mind of Christ is a quotation from H. L. Mencken (18801956): I have done, in the main, exactly what I wanted to do. Its possible effects on other people have interested me very little. I have not written and published to please other people, but to satisfy myself, just as a cow gives milk, not to profit the dairyman, but to satisfy herself. I like to think that most of my ideas have been sound ones, but I really dont care.

The mission of the Christian is not to eliminate the will of man, but to conform it to the will of Christ. Alexander Campbell in The Christian System defined it as impressing the moral image of God upon the moral nature of man. It is significant that even the church of Christ itself must carry on a constant program of repentance (cf. Revelation, chapters 2 and 3). In any program of repentance for the world or the church, preaching the word of God is primary. There is no true repentance unless men hear and obey the word of God.

Appleburys Comments

Repent or Perish
Scripture

Luk. 13:1-9 Now there were some present at that very season who told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered and said unto them, Think ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they have suffered these things? 3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all in like manner perish. 4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and killed them, think ye that they were offenders above all the men that dwell in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

6 And he spake this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. 7 And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? 8 And he answering saith unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: 9 and if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou shalt cut it down.

Comments

Now there were some present.This section continues the lesson which Jesus had been giving the people while meeting the complaints of the Pharisees (Luk. 11:53; Luk. 12:54). Care must be exercised to keep the chapter divisions from letting us assume that a new subject begins with the new chapter. Sometimes this is true, but there are timesas in this casewhen the thought runs over into the new chapter.

Jesus had been speaking of judgment from which there is no escape. Apparently, in answer to His remarks, the people told about those Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices as an example of the kind of punishment He had described. But they had missed the point. Jesus said, Do you think that these Galileans were worse than other sinners? He had just told them about the necessity of settling cases out of court before it was too late to escape punishment. He had also spoken of the sin of failing to acknowledge Him before men (Luk. 12:8-9). Those who wait until He comes again will find that it is too late. The case of the Galileans seems to suggest that it was not that they were worse sinners, but that they had reached a point where repentance was impossible, since repentance must be observed before death, not after.

whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.No details are given about how this happened. It is well known that the Roman soldiers were used to put down riots. They were none too careful about how they did it. It is possible that some disturbance had occurred while the people were offering their sacrifices. The soldiers may have killed the trouble makers on the spot. Their blood could have mingled easily with the blood of the animals which they were sacrificing.

sinners above all Galileans.It seems to be admitted that those Galileans were sinners; what they had done that was wrong is not stated. The point is: they were not worse than other Galileans who were sinners. While others might not share the fate of those whom Pilate destroyed, they, nevertheless, were facing certain destruction that called for immediate action if they were to avoid it.

except ye repent.Repentance is the change of the will that leads to changed conduct. In this case, the thing that should have led to that change of mind was the threat of punishment which would be worse than that which Pilate had inflicted.

The Scriptures point out at least three motivating forces that are designed to lead men to repentance, that is, change their minds and decide to do something about their situation. They are (1) the goodness of God (Rom. 2:4), (2) godly sorrow for sin (2Co. 7:10), and (3) the judgment to come (Act. 17:30-31).

To those who had failed to acknowledge Him, Jesus said, Repent or perish. It was an urgent matter; there was no time for delay.

the tower of Siloam fell.This is a case of accidental death; there was no apparent connection between it and any particular thing they had done. Were they worse sinners than others? No. But they did face the future that involved eternal punishment if they failed to acknowledge Christ before men.

And he spake this parable.This parable illustrates the fact that God does give men time to repent. We are reminded of the long-suffering of God in the days of Noah (1Pe. 3:20). He is long-suffering, for He does not wish that any should perish but that they should repent (2Pe. 3:9). The church at Ephesus was warned to repent or have their candlestick removed (Rev. 2:5). The history of Israel suggests that God will not tolerate the sinful conduct of men forever (Heb. 3:7 to Heb. 4:13; 1Co. 10:5-10).

these three years I come seeking fruit.There is no lesson to be drawn from this time reference. It was probably the normal time to wait for the tree to produce, or it could suggest that the tree should have been producing all that time but hadnt done so, The tree represents the nation of Israel that was not producing the fruits of righteousness. They had been given ample time, for prophet after prophet had tried to bring them to repentance. The time of judgment was at hand; all that was left for the tree was expressed by the owner of the tree, Cut it down.

Lord, let it alone this year also.This is a plea for longsuffering toward a sinful people. One more year, and then if there is no fruit let it be cut down. Special care was given the tree. The year of unusual care may be the unusual privilege of the Israel to have the Lord in their midst to teach them what they should do to be pleasing to God and encourage them in every way to do it. He taught them; He healed their sick; He warned them of judgment to come; He revealed the loving Father to them; He even told them that He was to offer Himself for the sins of the people. What more could be done? And if they failed to respond, their fate would be worse than that of the Galileans or the eighteen on whom the tower fell.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

XIII.

(1) The Galileeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.The incident is not related by Josephus or any other historian, but it was quite in harmony with Pilates character. (See Note on Mat. 27:2.) We may fairly infer it to have originated in some outburst of zealous fanaticism, such as still characterised the followers of Judas of Galilee (Act. 5:37), while the pilgrims from that province were offering their sacrifices in the courts of the Temple, and to have been repressed with the same ruthless severity as he had shown in other tumults. It was probably one, at least, of the causes of the enmity between Herod and Pilate of which we read in Luk. 23:12.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 13

SUFFERING AND SIN ( Luk 13:1-5 )

13:1-5 At this time some men came and told Jesus about the Galilaeans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. “Do you think,” he answered, “that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans because this happened to them? I ten you, No! But unless you repent you will all perish in like manner. Or, as for the eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell–do you think they were debtors to God beyond all those who dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you, No! But unless you repent you will perish in the same way .”

We have here references to two disasters about which we have no definite information and can only speculate.

First, there is the reference to the Galilaeans whom Pilate murdered in the middle of their sacrifices. As we have seen, Galilaeans were always liable to get involved in political trouble because they were a highly inflammable people. Just about this time Pilate had been involved in serious trouble. He had decided rightly that Jerusalem needed a new and improved water supply. He proposed to build it and, to finance it with certain Temple monies. It was a laudable object and a more than justifiable expenditure. But at the very idea of spending Temple monies like that, the Jews were up in arms. When the mobs gathered, Pilate instructed his soldiers to mingle with them, wearing cloaks over their battle dress for disguise. They were instructed to carry cudgels rather than swords. At a given signal they were to fall on the mob and disperse them. This was done, but the soldiers dealt with the mob with a violence far beyond their instructions and a considerable number of people lost their lives. Almost certainly Galilaeans would be involved in that. We know that Pilate and Herod were at enmity, and only became reconciled after Pilate had sent Jesus to Herod for trial ( Luk 23:6-12). It may well be that it was this very incident which provoked that enmity.

As for the eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell, they are still more obscure. The King James Version uses the word sinners of them also; but, as the margin shows, it should be not sinners but debtors. Maybe we have a clue here. It has been suggested that they had actually taken work on Pilate’s hated aqueducts. If so, any money they earned was due to God and should have been voluntarily handed over, because it had already been stolen from him; and it may well be that popular talk had declared that the tower had fallen on them because of the work they had consented to do.

But there is far more than an historical problem in this passage. The Jews rigidly connected sin and suffering. Eliphaz had long ago said to Job, “Who that was innocent ever perished?” ( Job 4:7). This was a cruel and a heartbreaking doctrine, as Job knew well. And Jesus utterly denied it in the case of the individual. As we all know very well, it is often the greatest saints who have to suffer most.

But Jesus went on to say that if his hearers did not repent they too would perish. What did he mean? One thing is clear–he foresaw and foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened in A.D. 70 (compare Luk 21:21-24). He knew well that if the Jews went on with their intrigues, their rebellions, their plottings, their political ambitions, they were simply going to commit national suicide; he knew that in the end Rome would step in and obliterate the nation; and that is precisely what happened. So what Jesus meant was that if the Jewish nation kept on seeking an earthly kingdom and rejecting the kingdom of God they could come to only one end.

To put the matter like that leaves, at first sight, a paradoxical situation. It means that we cannot say that individual suffering and sin are inevitably connected but we can say that national sin and suffering are so connected. The nation which chooses the wrong ways will in the end suffer for it. But the individual is in very different case. He is not an isolated unit. He is bound up in the bundle of life. Often he may object, and object violently, to the course his nation is taking; but when the consequence of that course comes, he cannot escape being involved in it. The individual is often caught up in a situation which he did not make; his suffering is often not his fault; but the nation is a unit and chooses its own policy and reaps the fruit of it. It is always dangerous to attribute human suffering to human sin; but always safe to say that the nation which rebels against God is on the way to disaster.

GOSPEL OF THE OTHER CHANCE AND THREAT OF THE LAST CHANCE ( Luk 13:6-9 )

13:6-9 Jesus spoke this parable, “A man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and did not find it. He said to the keeper of the vineyard, ‘Look you–for the last three years I have been coming and looking for fruit on this fig-tree, and I still am not finding any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the ground’ ‘Lord,’ he answered him, ‘let it be this year too, until I dig round about it and manure it, and if it bears fruit in the coming year, well and good; but if not, you will cut it down.'”

Here is a parable at one and the same time lit by grace and close packed with warnings.

(i) The fig-tree occupied a specially favoured position. It was not unusual to see fig-trees, thorn-trees and apple-trees in vineyards. The soil was so shallow and poor that trees were grown wherever there was soil to grow them; but the fig-tree had a more than average chance; and it had not proved worthy of it. Repeatedly, directly and by implication, Jesus reminded men that they would be judged according to the opportunities they had. C. E. M. Joad once said, “We have the powers of gods and we use them like irresponsible schoolboys.” Never was a generation entrusted with so much as ours and, therefore, never was a generation so answerable to God.

(ii) The parable teaches that uselessness invites disaster. It has been claimed that the whole process of evolution in this world is to produce useful things, and that what is useful will go on from strength to strength, while what is useless will be eliminated. The most searching question we can be asked is, “Of what use were you in this world?”

(iii) Further, the parable teaches that nothing which only takes out can survive. The fig-tree was drawing strength and sustenance from the soil; and in return was producing nothing. That was precisely its sin. In the last analysis, there are two kinds of people in this world–those who take out more than they put in, and those who put in more than they take out.

In one sense we are all in debt to life. We came into it at the peril of someone else’s life; and we would never have survived without the care of those who loved us. We have inherited a Christian civilization and a freedom which we did not create. There is laid on us the duty of handing things on better than we found them.

“Die when I may,” said Abraham Lincoln, “I want it said of me that I plucked a weed and planted a flower wherever I thought a flower would grow.” Once a student was being shown bacteria under the microscope. He could actually see one generation of these microscopic living things being born and dying and another being born to take its place. He saw, as he had never seen before, how one generation succeeds another. “After what I have seen,” he said, “I pledge myself never to be a weak link.”

If we take that pledge we will fulfil the obligation of putting into life at least as much as we take out.

(iv) The parable tells us of the gospel of the second chance. A fig-tree normally takes three years to reach maturity. If it is not fruiting by that time it is not likely to fruit at all. But this fig-tree was given another chance.

It is always Jesus’ way to give a man chance after chance. Peter and Mark and Paul would all gladly have witnessed to that. God is infinitely kind to the man who falls and rises again.

(v) But the parable also makes it quite clear that there is a final chance. If we refuse chance after chance, if God’s appeal and challenge come again and again in vain, the day finally comes, not when God has shut us out, but when we by deliberate choice have shut ourselves out. God save us from that!

MERCY MORE THAN LAW ( Luk 13:10-17 )

13:10-17 Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath; and–look you–there was a woman there who had a spirit of weakness for eighteen years. She was bent together and could not straighten up properly. When Jesus saw her he called her to him. “Woman,” he said, “you are set free from your weakness”; and he laid his hands upon her; and immediately she was straightened. The president of the synagogue was vexed that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. “Are there not six days,” he said to the crowd, “in which work ought to be done? Come and be healed on them and not on the Sabbath day.” “Hypocrites!” the Lord answered. “Does each one of you not loose his ox or his ass from the manger on the Sabbath, and lead him out and give him drink? And as for this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom–look you–Satan bound for eighteen years, should she not have been loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” And, as he said this, his opponents were put to shame, and all the crowd rejoiced at the glorious things that were done by him.

This is the last time we ever hear of Jesus being in a synagogue. It is clear that by this time the authorities were watching his every action and waiting to pounce upon him whenever they got the chance. Jesus healed a woman who for eighteen years had not been able to straighten her bent body; and then the president of the synagogue intervened. He had not even the courage to speak directly to Jesus. He addressed his protest to the waiting people, although it was meant for Jesus. Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; technically healing was work; and, therefore he had broken the Sabbath. But he answered his opponents out of their own law. The Rabbis abhorred cruelty to dumb animals and, even on the Sabbath, it was perfectly legal to loose beasts from their stalls and water them. Jesus demanded, “If you can loose a beast from a stall and water him on the Sabbath day, surely it is right in the sight of God to loose this poor woman from her infirmity.”

(i) The president of the synagogue and those like him were people who loved systems more than people. They were more concerned that their own petty little laws should be observed than that a woman should be helped.

One of the great problems of a developed civilization is the relationship of the individual to the system. In times of war the individual vanishes. A man ceases to be a person and becomes a member of such and such an age group or the like. A number of men are lumped together, not as individuals, but as living ammunition that is, in that terrible word, expendable. A man becomes no more than an item in a statistical list. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, afterwards Lord and Lady Passfield, were two great economists and statistical experts; but H. G. Wells said of Beatrice Webb that her trouble was that “she saw men as specimens walking.”

In Christianity the individual comes before the system. It is true to say that without Christianity there can be no such thing as democracy, because Christianity alone guarantees and defends the value of the ordinary, individual man. If ever Christian principles are banished from political and economic life there is nothing left to keep at bay the totalitarian state where the individual is lost in the system, and exists, not for his own sake, but only for the sake of the system.

Strangely enough, this worship of systems commonly invades the Church. There are many church people–it would be a mistake to call them Christian people–who are more concerned with the method of church government than they are with the worship of God and the service of men. It is all too tragically true that more trouble and strife arise in Churches over legalistic details of procedure than over any other thing.

In the world and in the church we are constantly in peril of loving systems more than we love God and more than we love men.

(ii) Jesus’ action in this matter makes it clear that it is not God’s will that any human being should suffer one moment longer than is absolutely necessary. The Jewish law was that it was perfectly legal to help someone on the Sabbath who was in actual danger of his life. If Jesus had postponed the healing of this woman until the morrow no one could have criticized him; but he insisted that suffering must not be allowed to continue until tomorrow if it could be helped today. Over and over again in life some good and kindly scheme is held up until this or that regulation is satisfied, or this or that technical detail worked out. He gives twice who gives quickly, as the Latin proverb has it. No helpful deed that we can do today should be postponed until tomorrow.

THE EMPIRE OF CHRIST ( Luk 13:18-19 )

13:18-19 So Jesus said to them, “To what is the kingdom of God like, and to what will I compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and cast into his garden; and it grew until it became a tree, and the birds of the air found a lodging in its branches.”

This is an illustration which Jesus used more than once, and for different purposes. In the east mustard is not a garden herb but a field plant. It does literally grow to be a tree. A height of seven or eight feet is common, and a traveller tells how once he came across a mustard plant which was twelve feet high, and which overtopped a horse and its rider. It is common to see a cloud of birds around such trees, for they love the little black mustard seeds.

Matthew ( Mat 13:31-32) also relates this parable but with a different emphasis. His version is,

Jesus put another parable before them, saying. “The kingdom of

heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and

sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but, when it

has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs, and becomes a tree, so

that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

The point of the parable in Matthew and in Luke is quite different. Matthew stresses the smallness of the seed which Luke never even mentions; and Matthew’s point is that the greatest things can start from the smallest beginnings and so does the kingdom of heaven. Luke’s version leads up to the birds making nests in the branches. In the east the regular symbol of a great empire was a mighty tree; and the subject nations who found shelter and protection within it were typified by birds in the branches (compare Eze 31:6; Eze 17:23). As we have seen more than once, Luke is the universalist who dreamed of a world for Christ; and his point is that the kingdom of God will grow into a vast empire in which all kinds of men and nations will come together and will find the shelter and the protection of God. There is much in Luke’s conception that we would do well to learn.

(i) There is room in the kingdom for a wide variety of beliefs. No man and no church has a monopoly of all truth. To think ourselves right and everyone else wrong can lead to nothing but trouble and bitterness and strife. So long as all men’s beliefs are stemmed in Christ they are all facets of God’s truth.

(ii) There is room in the kingdom for a wide variety of experiences. We do infinite harm when we try to standardize Christian experience and insist that all men must come to Christ in the same way. One man may have a sudden shattering experience and be able to point to the day and the hour, even the very minute, when God invaded his life. Another man’s heart may open to Christ naturally and without crisis, as the petal of the lint-bell opens to the sun. Both experiences come from God and both men belong to God.

(iii) There is room in the kingdom for a wide variety of ways of worship. One man finds touch with God in an elaborate ritual and a splendid liturgy; another finds him in the bare simplicities. There is no right or wrong here. It is the glory of the church that within its fellowship somewhere a man will find the worship that brings him to God. Let him find it, but let him not think his way the only way and criticize another’s.

(iv) There is room in the kingdom for all kinds of people. The world has its labels and its distinctions and its barriers. But in the kingdom there is no distinction between rich and poor, small and great, famous and unknown. The church is the only place in the world where distinctions have no legitimate place.

(v) There is room in the kingdom for all nations. In the world today are many national barriers; but none of them has any standing with God. In Rev 21:16 we are given the dimensions of the Holy City. It is a square each of whose sides is 12,000 furlongs. 12,000 furlongs is 1,500 miles; and the area of a square whose sides are 1,500 miles is 2,250,000 square miles! There is room in the city of God for all the world and more.

THE LEAVEN OF THE KINGDOM ( Luk 13:20-21 )

13:20-21 Again Jesus said, “To what will I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened.”

This is an illustration which Jesus took from his own home. In those days bread was baked at home. Leaven was a little piece of dough which had been kept over from the last baking and had fermented in the keeping. Leaven is regularly used in Jewish thought for influence, usually for bad influence, because the Jews identified fermentation with putrefaction. Jesus had seen Mary put a little bit of leaven in the dough and had seen the whole character of the dough changed because of it. “That,” he said, “is how my kingdom comes.”

There are two interpretations of this parable. From the first the following points emerge.

(i) The kingdom of heaven starts from the smallest beginnings. The leaven was very small but it changed the whole character of the dough. We well know how in any court, or committee, or board, one person can be a focus of trouble or a centre of peace. The kingdom of heaven starts from the dedicated lives of individual men and women. In the place where we work or live we may be the only professing Christians; if that be so, it is our task to be the leaven of the kingdom there.

(ii) The kingdom of heaven works unseen. We do not see the leaven working but all the time it is fulfilling its function. The kingdom is on the way. Anyone who knows a little history will be bound to see that. Seneca, than whom the Romans had no higher thinker, could write, “We strangle a mad dog; we slaughter a fierce ox; we plunge the knife into sickly cattle lest they taint the herd; children who are born weakly and deformed we drown.” In A.D. 60 that was the normal thing. Things like that cannot happen today because slowly, but inevitably, the kingdom is on the way.

(iii) The kingdom of heaven works from inside. As long as the leaven was outside the dough it was powerless to help; it had to get right inside. We will never change men from the outside. New houses, new conditions, better material things change only the surface. It is the task of Christianity to make new men; and once the new men are created a new world will surely follow. That is why the church is the most important institution in the world; it is the factory where men are produced.

(iv) The power of the kingdom comes from outside. The dough had no power to change itself. Neither have we. We have tried and failed. To change life we need a power outside and beyond us. We need the master of life, and he is forever waiting to give us the secret of victorious living.

The second interpretation of this parable insists that so far from working unseen the work of the leaven is manifest to all because it turns the dough into a bubbling, seething mass. On this basis, the leaven stands for the disturbing power of Christianity. In Thessalonica it was said of the Christians, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also” ( Act 17:6). True religion is never dope; never sends people comfortably to sleep; never makes them placidly accept the evils that should be striven against. Real Christianity is the most revolutionary thing in the world; it works revolution in the individual life and in society. “May God,” said Unamuno the great Spanish mystic, “deny you peace and give you glory.” The kingdom of heaven is the leaven which fills a man at one and the same time with the peace of God and with the divine discontent which will not rest until the evils of earth are swept away by the changing, revolutionizing power of God.

THE RISK OF BEING SHUT OUT ( Luk 13:22-30 )

13:22-30 Jesus continued to go through towns and villages, teaching and making his way to Jerusalem. “Lord,” someone said to him, “are those who are to be saved few in number?” He said to them, “Keep on striving to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will seek to enter in and will not be able to. Once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and when you begin to stand outside and knock, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We have eaten and drunk in your presence and you taught in our streets.’ He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me all you who are workers of iniquity.’ There wig be weeping and gnashing of teeth there, when you will see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God and yourselves cast out. And they will come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and take their places at table in the kingdom of God. And–look you–there are those who are last who will be first, and there are those first who will be last.”

When this questioner asked his question it would certainly be on the assumption that the kingdom of God was for the Jews and that gentiles would all be shut out. Jesus’ answer must have come as a shock to him.

(i) He declared that entry to the kingdom can never be automatic but is the result and the reward of a struggle. “Keep on striving to enter,” he said. The word for striving is the word from which the English word agony is derived. The struggle to enter in must be so intense that it can be described as an agony of soul and spirit.

We run a certain danger. It is easy to think that, once we have made a commitment of ourselves to Jesus Christ, we have reached the end of the road and can, as it were, sit back as if we had achieved our goal. There is no such finality in the Christian life. A man must ever be going forward or necessarily he goes backward.

The Christian way is like a climb up a mountain pathway towards a peak which will never be reached in this world. It was said of two gallant climbers who died on Mount Everest, “When last seen they were going strong for the top.” It was inscribed on the grave of an Alpine guide who had died on the mountain-side, “He died climbing.” For the Christian, life is ever an upward and an onward way.

(ii) The defence of these people was, “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.” There are those who think that just because they are members of a Christian civilization all is well. They differentiate between themselves and the heathen in their ignorance and blindness. But the man who lives in a Christian civilization is not necessarily a Christian. He may be enjoying all its benefits; he certainly is living on the Christian capital which others before him have built up; but that is no reason for sitting back content that all is well. Rather it challenges us, “What did you do to initiate all this? What have you done to preserve and develop it?” We cannot live on borrowed goodness.

(iii) There will be surprises in the kingdom of God. Those who are very prominent in this world may have to be very humble in the next; those whom no one notices here may be the princes of the world to come. There is a story of a woman who had been used to every luxury and to all respect. She died, and when she arrived in heaven, an angel was sent to conduct her to her house. They passed many a lovely mansion and the woman thought that each one, as they came to it, must be the one allotted to her. When they had passed through the main streets they came to the outskirts where the houses were much smaller; and on the very fringe they came to a house which was little more than a hut. “That is your house,” said the conducting angel. “What,” said the woman, “that! I cannot live in that.” “I am sorry,” said the angel, “but that is all we could build for you with the materials you sent up.”

The standards of heaven are not the standards of earth. Earth’s first will often be last, and its last will often be first.

COURAGE AND TENDERNESS ( Luk 13:31-35 )

13:31-35 At that hour some Pharisees came to Jesus. “Depart,” they said to him, “and get on your way from this place, because Herod is out to kill you.” “Go,” he said, “and tell that fox, look you, I cast out demons and I work cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day my work is perfected. I must be on my way today, and tomorrow and the next day, because it is not possible for a prophet to perish out of Jerusalem. Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Killer of the prophets! Stoner of those who were sent to you! How often I wanted to gather together your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings–and you would not! Look you, your house is desolate. I tell you, you will not see me until you shall say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

Because of the behind-the-scenes insight that it gives into the life of Jesus, this is one of the most interesting passages in Luke’s gospel.

(i) It gives us the, at first sight, surprising information that not all the Pharisees were hostile to Jesus. Here we have some of them actually warning him that he was in danger, and advising him to seek safety. It is true that from the gospels we do get a one-sided picture of the Pharisees. The Jews themselves knew very well that there were good and bad Pharisees. They divided them into seven different classes.

(a) The Shoulder Pharisees. These wore their good deeds on their shoulder and performed them to be seen of men.

(b) The Wait-a-little Pharisees. They could always find a good excuse for putting off a good deed until tomorrow.

(c) The Bruised or Bleeding Pharisees. No Jewish Rabbi could be seen talking to any woman on the street, not even his wife or mother or sister. But certain of the Pharisees went further. They would not even look at a woman on the street; they even shut their eyes to avoid seeing a woman; they, therefore, knocked into walls and houses and bruised themselves; and then exhibited their bruises as special badges of extraordinary piety.

(d) The Pestle-and-Mortar or Hump-backed Pharisees. They walked bent double in a false and cringing humility; they were the Uriah Heeps of Jewish religion.

(e) The Ever-reckoning Pharisees. They were ever reckoning up their good deeds and, as it were, striking a balance-sheet of profit and loss with God.

(f) The Timid or Fearing Pharisees. They went ever in fear of the wrath of God. They were, as it was said of Burns, not helped but haunted by their religion.

(g) The God-loving Pharisees. They were copies of Abraham and lived in faith and charity.

There may have been six bad Pharisees for every good one; but this passage shows that even amongst the Pharisees there were those who admired and respected Jesus.

(ii) This passage shows us Jesus talking to Herod Antipas king of Galilee, who was out to stop him. To the Jew the fox was a symbol of three things. First it was regarded as the slyest of animals. Second, it was regarded as the most destructive of animals. Third, it was the symbol of a worthless and insignificant man.

It takes a brave man to call the reigning king a fox. Latimer was once preaching in Westminster Abbey when Henry the king was one of the congregation. In the pulpit he soliloquised, “Latimer! Latimer! Latimer! Be careful what you say. The king of England is here!” Then he went on, “Latimer! Latimer! Latimer! Be careful what you say. The King of Kings is here.”

Jesus took his orders from God, and he would not shorten his work by one day to please or to escape any earthly king.

(iii) The lament over Jerusalem is most important, because it is another of the passages which shows how little we really know of Jesus’ life. It is quite clear that Jesus could never have spoken like this, unless he had more than once gone with his offer of love to Jerusalem; but in the first three gospels there is no indication of any such visits. Once again it is made plain that in the gospels we have the merest sketch of Jesus’ life.

Nothing hurts so much as to go to someone and offer love and have that offer spurned. It is life’s bitterest tragedy to give one’s heart to someone only to have it broken. That is what happened to Jesus in Jerusalem; and still he comes to men, and still men reject him. But the fact remains that to reject God’s love is in the end to be in peril of his wrath.

-Barclay’s Daily Study Bible (NT)

Fuente: Barclay Daily Study Bible

1-10. The assembled Myriads break up their congregation at the solemn close of the discourse of the last chapter; but a lesser circle remains round our Lord, with whom a colloquy now ensues. Some persons, who, perhaps, have arrived lately from Jerusalem, narrate a cruel slaughter which has just been committed there by Pilate. This draws from Jesus a solemn admonition, which may be considered as an appendix or afterpiece to the main discourse to the Myriads just closed.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1. Were present Had come with the intelligence from the metropolis. Jesus is now in eastern Judea.

At that season So as to retail the news in the hearing of Jesus at the close of his discourse.

Told him The Greek word implies that they announced it to him as news. Galileans These importers of news from Jerusalem doubtless know that our Lord is himself a Galilean. He is “Jesus, the prophet of Galilee .” (Mat 21:11.) If they heard his discourse, they might have recognized the Galilean traits of articulation. His twelve, whom he addressed alternately with the people, are all Galileans; and their dialect, whenever they might chance to utter anything, (as Peter did, Mat 21:41,) would bewray them. Hence we see a reason why these news-men may have been ready to furnish Jesus a bad piece of information about his fellow Galileans. In the second place, there seems very fair reason to believe, with the best commentators, that these slaughtered Galileans were the fanatic partizans of Judas the Galilean or Gaulonite. This man was an ultra Jew, who took ground against paying tribute to any foreign power, as treason against Jehovah. Pilate would be very well disposed to improve the opportunity to aim a deadly blow at such a set of men upon very slight pretexts. These informants, be it farther noted, are on the side of Pilate, holding that the sinners in the case are undoubtedly the Galileans. They see, therefore, chance to taunt Jesus, as if implicating him in the fanaticism and treason of the Gaulonite’s followers, and warning him of a similar danger.

Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices From the tower of Antonia, which we have elsewhere described (see note on Mat 21:12; Mat 26:5,) as having been so built as to command the temple, for the very purpose of instantly repressing all tumults and seditions, for which its courts rendered it a favourite and advantageous place, Pilate was able to pour a destructive volley upon the occupants of any part. These Galileans were in the court of the temple, near the great altar; and probably the process of slaying their sacrificial victims was going on. The arrowy shower of death came, and the blood of the sacrificers and of their sacrifices blended in the same stream!

It was an awful omen! On the victim lies the weight of the worshipper’s sin; but here his own blood is made to mingle with the sin-atoning blood of the slain beast!

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Now there were some present at that very season who told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.’

Hot news has arrived from Jerusalem of Pilate’s latest atrocity. Galileans offering their sacrifices in the Temple (anything from two upwards) have at the very time of their bringing their sacrifices been slain in the Temple courtyard on Pilate’s orders. We have no details of this particular occurrence, but it is typical of Pilate. It may be that they had already been marked men, and that Pilate had simply been waiting for them to arrive at the Temple where he could be sure of finding them at the particular feast, or it may be that while in the Temple they were seen as having fermented trouble resulting in a quick and merciless reaction.

The vivid language may not be intended absolutely literally. If they had brought their sacrifices and were waiting for them to be offered, rather than offering them themselves, it would equally apply. Indeed had their blood actually landed on the altar the incident would probably have become even more serious, for it would have been seen as the vilest of sacrilege.

Why the informers told Jesus is not explained. It may be that they hoped to stir Jesus up to supporting retaliatory action, or to trap Him into saying something unwise against the authorities. Or it may be that they were citing them as an example of the kind of people in mind in Luk 12:57-59, who having not become reconciled with God have received their just deserts. But whatever the motive it would appear that someone had suggested that their manner of death clearly indicated their special sinfulness.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Fire Has begun To Fall. Let Them Therefore Learn Their Lesson From It (13:1-5).

Having declared that He will cast fire on earth, preliminary examples of it are now given, one an act of the civil authority, and one an ‘act of God’. But He warns that they must not see the unfortunate people involved as having been selected out by God because they were particularly sinful. Rather it should reveal to them that God’s judgments are continually in the earth and they should therefore learn righteousness from them. For next time it may be them to whom such things occur, and besides, in the end all who are unrepentant will definitely perish. Thus they should take them as a warning and repent before it is too late. They should come to Him to be ‘made straight’ (Luk 13:13). As described in the previous verses let them ensure that they are reconciled to their Accuser before it is too late.

Analysis.

a ‘Now there were some present at that very season who told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices’ (Luk 13:1).

b ‘He answered and said to them, “Do you think that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they have suffered these things?” (Luk 13:2).

c “I tell you, No. But, except you repent, you will all similarly perish” (Luk 13:3).

b “Or those eighteen, on whom the tower in Siloam fell, and killed them, do you think that they were offenders above all the men who dwell in Jerusalem?” (Luk 13:4).

a “I tell you, No. But, except you repent, you will all similarly perish” (Luk 13:5).

Note that in ‘a’ the position is declared, and in the parallel the consequence. In ‘b’ Jesus asks a question about one example, in the parallel He does the same with another example. Central to all in ‘c’ is the fact that all who do not repent will perish.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

SECTION 5 (12:1-14:35).

We commence here a new section of Luke. As we shall see this section centres around a mighty act of Jesus in delivering a woman bound by Satan, and thus doubled up and unable to straighten. By this He made clear why He had come. He had come to make the crooked straight (Luk 3:5). And here He did it openly on the Sabbath day. Indeed we are regularly told that Jesus saw the Sabbath as a day for ‘healing’ and ‘making straight’, for He had come to turn men from the power of Satan to God (Act 26:18). It may therefore be that He intended men to see by this that in Him God’s new rest had come (Heb 4:3-4; Heb 4:9). The whole of the section may therefore be seen as gaining its significance from this act of power, as He sought to make both His Apostles and those who followed Him ‘straight’.

The centrality of this incident in the section is revealed by the following analysis which indicates that the section is in the form of a chiasmus, with the incident of the straightening of the crooked woman central.

This next Section from Luk 12:1 to Luk 14:35 can be separated into its separate parts as follows:

a Instructions to disciples concerning facing up to eternity (Luk 12:1-12).

b An example is given of covetousness concerning an inheritance which is followed by the parable of the fool who decided to enjoy rich banquets, ignored the needs of the poor, and in the end suffered the unforeseen consequences of prematurely losing his wealth to others who benefited unexpectedly while the one expected to benefit lost out (Luk 12:13-21).

c We are to seek the Kingly Rule of God and not to be anxious about other things (Luk 12:22-34).

d We are to be like men serving the Lord in His house and awaiting His arrival from a wedding feast, being faithful in His service at whatever time He comes and meanwhile making use of all our time for His benefit (Luk 12:35-40).

e There are stewards both good and bad who will be called to account for He has come to send fire on earth which will cause great disruption (Luk 12:41-53).

f Men are to discern the times and not be like a debtor who realises too late that he should have compounded with the Great Creditor (Luk 12:54-59).

g Some present draw attention to the tower that fell on men. He points out that that was no proof of guilt, for all are sinful and will perish unless they repent. They would therefore be wise to repent while they can (Luk 13:1-5)

h The parable of the fig tree which is to be given its chance to bear fruit (Luk 13:6-9).

i The crooked woman is healed on the Sabbath for Jesus has come to release from Satan’s power (Luk 13:10-17).

h The parables of the grain of mustard seed which is to grow and reproduce, and of the leaven which spreads, both of which represent the growth of the Kingly Rule of God in both prospective ultimate size and method of expansion (Luk 13:18-21).

g Someone asks ‘are there few that are saved?’ The reply is that men must strive to enter the door while they can (Luk 13:22-23).

f We must not be like those who awake too late and find the door closed against them and wish they had befriended the Householder (Luk 13:24-28).

e We are to watch how we respond as His stewards for some will come from east, west, north and south, while others will awake too late, like Herod who seeks to kill Him and Jerusalem which is losing its opportunity and will be desolated and totally disrupted (Luk 13:29-35).

d Jesus is invited into the home of a Chief Pharisee. And there He eats with him at table, surrounded by many ‘fellow-servants’. There He sees a man with dropsy. As God’s Servant He knows what His responsibility is if He is to be a faithful and wise servant. It is to heal the man. For God’s works of compassion should be done at all times including the Sabbath and not just at times of man’s choosing. And yet He is surrounded by those waiting to catch Him out (Luk 14:1-6).

c None are to seek the higher place, for he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luk 14:7-11).

b An example is given of inviting the poor to dinner which is followed by the parable of a rich banquet, where those who made excuses were rejected, and the result was that due to unforeseen circumstances there a banquet for the poor, while those for whom it was intended lost out (Luk 14:12-24)

a Instructions are given to the disciples concerning facing up to the cost (Luk 14:25-35).

‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear’ (Luk 14:35).

Note that in ‘a’ the Section opens with instructions to the disciples, and in the parallel it closes with instructions to the disciples, both seeing things in the light of eternity. In ‘b’ we have a parable dealing with the use of riches, and in the parallel the use of wealth to help the poor is dealt with, in ‘c’ we are to seek the Kingly Rule of God and trust our Father over our daily living, and in the parallel we are not to seek the higher place on earth, for the one who humbles himself will be exalted. In ‘d’ we are to be like men awaiting in the Lord’s ‘house’, awaiting His arrival at whatever time He comes and meanwhile making use of all our time and serving Him faithfully, and in the parallel Jesus is in the Chief Pharisee’s house and is called on to perform an act of faithful service even though it is the Sabbath, an act which He does perform. It is an example of faithful service even in the face of difficulties, and a reminder to us that we are to use all our time, including the Sabbath, for doing God’s work. In ‘e’ there are stewards both good and bad who will be called to account, for He has come to ‘cast fire on the earth’, and in the parallel we are to watch how we respond as His stewards, for some will come into the Kingly Rule of God from east, west, north and south, while others will awake too late, like Herod who seeks to kill Him and Jerusalem which is losing its opportunity and will be desolated and will experience His ‘fire on earth’. In ‘f’ men are to discern the times, and in the parallel we are not to be like those who awake too late. In ‘g’ and its parallel the imminence of death and what our response should be to it is described. In ‘h’ the vine is to be allowed its opportunity of bearing fruit, and in the parallel the mustard seed will grow and bear fruit. Central in ‘i’ is the healing and making straight of one who is crooked, a picture of what He has come to do for Israel. This is the whole purpose of the Kingly Rule of God.

Resume.

Prior to looking at this section in detail we should remind ourselves of its context.

When Luke commences Acts he claims that in his earlier writing (this Gospel) he had dealt with ‘all that Jesus began to do and to teach’. That is an apt description of the Gospel, for its first half very much emphasises what Jesus had come to do, while the second half, commencing here, will concentrate very much on what He came to teach.

Not that it is quite as simple as that. In the first half He has certainly also given us a number of examples of the teaching of Jesus, for quite apart from the teaching which is connected with the various incidents, we find the sermon on the plain where He establishes the basis for the new Kingly Rule of God (Luk 6:20-49); the teaching concerning John, which emphasises the new situation brought about by the coming of the Kingly Rule of God (Luk 7:24-35); the parable of the sower, which stresses the coming and spreading of the Kingly Rule of God (Luk 8:4-18); and the detailed teaching concerning discipleship, which contains warning of the cost to His followers of coming under the Kingly Rule of God (Luk 9:21-27). Nevertheless on the whole the emphasis in the first part of the Gospel is on what He did.

In the second half of the Gospel the emphasis will be on what He taught. Again it is not a hard and fast rule. Luke tells us of the healing of the crooked woman and her deliverance from the power of Satan (Luk 13:10-14), the healing of a man with dropsy (Luk 14:1-4); the healing of ten lepers, the number indicating an increased abundance of healing (Luk 17:11-19 compare the one in Luk 5:12-14), and the healing of the blind man as He finally approached Jerusalem (Luk 18:35-42), and the impression is given that His healing work goes on continually, for He tells Herod, ‘I cast out demons and perform cures today, and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course’ (Luk 13:32). But the remainder of the space is then given over to teaching. Having first given the impression of Who Jesus was, emphasis is now to be placed on His words.

Also prominent from now on will be His emphasis on training His disciples by word. Prior to this He had been content to live out His life before them, teaching them by demonstration, until in the end they had recognised that He was ‘the Anointed of God’. As they went about with Him and had seen what He was and what He did, they had had clearly presented to them in some considerable depth something of His uniqueness, a presentation over which He had taken a great deal of trouble.

At the same time they had heard continually His message to the crowds, both those to whom He had taught in the synagogues, and to those who continually flocked around Him. In this they had been taught the attitude of sacrificial love that would be required of them as they established His Kingly Rule (Luk 6:20-49), even if they had not really grasped its full significance (Luk 9:54). That was in teaching given to all. And He had also given them special coaching when they sought it (Luk 8:9). They had further learned that what lay ahead of them may have a great cost in terms of turning their backs on themselves and even facing death for His sake (Luk 9:23-27). And they had been warned, with little sign of taking it in, that He must suffer. But overall this teaching had been additional to His revelation by His doings, and had not been the emphasis, and thus, while they now recognised in Jesus ‘the Messiah of God’, they were still very much imprisoned within their own ideas. For Jesus knew the importance of leading rather than forcing. He knew that simply to overwhelm them with new ideas would be fatal to their understanding. He did not want them just to learn by rote (although that was a useful beginning and many of His messages were designed to that end), but rather that His ideas might seep through gradually and take root in their hearts, until they then became a part of them.

Of course, they knew by now that they had been called to proclaim that the Kingly Rule of God was among them, and that men were now to respond to His Kingly Rule. That had been the message that they had proclaimed when they themselves went out preaching. But they had not really grasped what was involved in this Kingly Rule, and what was to be the final result of it. They still had the idea of a literal kingdom on earth in Palestine (Act 1:6). They still thought in terms of taking over the reins from the Romans in Palestine, ousting them once and for all, and then ruling in their place (as David had once done, followed by the Maccabees). They had still not realised that the Old Testament contained greater heavenly truths than were apparent on the surface, and that they themselves were involved in a greater and more exciting project than the transformation of Palestine. They were involved in something that would lead to the transformation and salvation of men and women throughout the world, through the word.

This lack of understanding comes out in a number of ways:

1). It is made quite apparent that they were still thinking in terms of which of them was to be the greatest, and which of them would hold the most important offices once the new independent kingdom was established. They would continue to jostle for, and argue about, such positions. This was something that they would continue to do right to the end until the coming of the Holy Spirit and the commands they would receive in Acts 1 changed their whole perspective (Luk 9:46; Luk 22:24-27).

2). They were still almost certainly thinking in terms of the need to raise a large number of supporters, and were seeing their future in terms of going forward with such an army when the time was ripe, in order to establish God’s Kingly Rule by this means. This was something that ‘Messianic’ claimants were constantly doing, thus raising the ire and retaliation of the Romans, and what they would continue to do once Jesus had died and risen again. Why then should they be any different? It was the popular conception (see Joh 6:15), and their thinking was little different from that of others. It was what they had been brought up to expect. And they were very much of the people. The only difference between them and the others was that they knew that their leader had extraordinary powers. He could do things that took the breath away.

This is no doubt why they were puzzled at the continuing fewness of their numbers and had to be reassured (Luk 12:32). They had seen the first increase in popularity as they moved around as preparation for what was to come, and had been encouraged. But they were puzzled as to why Jesus had not made the most of it, and why Jesus now appeared to have left the places where His influence was greatest, and was even talking morbidly about being seized by His enemies and being put to death. Was He not then concerned about the size of His army?

At first numbers had not appeared to be a problem. They had appeared to be growing rapidly, with Jesus at work training His leaders. But now many of those very leaders had dropped away (Joh 6:66) and things seemed to have come to rather a low ebb, and this in spite of the continuation of the large, but impermanent crowds which they discovered wherever they went (Luk 12:1). Jesus was still popular but why was He not turning it to advantage? As He Himself was aware they were no doubt more than a little puzzled (Luk 12:32). Yet it was clear to them that Jesus Himself did not seem to be worried. So their thoughts may well even have turned to the thought of Gideon and his few as an explanation (Jdg 7:4-8). God could save by many and by few. Perhaps it was all part of God’s plan to demonstrate His power once and for all.

But then had come the mission of the seventy. That had probably boosted all their hopes. At last He was getting everyone prepared for the coming of the Kingly Rule of God! They probably thought that by this Jesus was establishing a base in every city, with the confidence that when the time came for them to rise up, many would be there ready to rise with them. For they had still not fully taken in His teaching about loving their enemies, or the message of His lowly death, or, to the extent that they had, they saw in the promised resurrection the hope that He would arise with power from the grave to defeat all who stood in opposition to Him.

3). They were still thinking in terms of the position that was going to be theirs once they had finally firmly established God’s Kingly Rule (Mar 10:35). Now that was something to look forward to. They would enjoy positions of great prestige and authority and all would look up to them. They would enjoy being admired, and tell everyone what to do. We can see then why it was hard for them to throw aside all their old ideas and see in humble service the fulfilling of their dreams.

4). They were still thinking in terms of the future possessions that would be theirs once the good times came (Luk 18:28). At present there was hardship, but they had sufficient confidence in Jesus to be certain that there would be a golden tomorrow. And they were thinking of, and looking forward to, physical gold.

All this brings out that they did have faith in Jesus as the Messiah of God, but that their eyes were still very much on an earthly Kingdom. They were like many are today. They could not rise above the earthly.

That they were in fact wrong in what they anticipated we now know. And that was why it was now necessary for Jesus to begin His task of wooing them away from such conceptions in view of His forthcoming death. And because men’s minds, once formulated in a certain way from childhood, are very difficult to alter, and because men’s obstinacy of thought is what it is, it was inevitably going to be a slow process. It would be a matter of a slow seeping of information into their minds until in the end the truth would dawn on them (as the truth of His Messiahship had already dawned). This will be the aim of the next few chapters. They are to be times of reformulating all of their wrong ideas, until they begin to grasp more and more of the truth that what the world needed, and what they had been appointed for, was the spread of His word. In this regard no change is more marked than that between what the Apostles are now, and what they will be in Acts.

Jesus’ New Approach.

The whole process commences by His now turning their thoughts to eternity and the Judgment to come (Luk 12:1-11). The first thing that it is necessary for them to do is to begin to live in the light of eternity. So He now sets out to wake up to the fact that they must cease thinking altogether in terms of material possessions, or of prosperous living, or of what they can get out of life (Luk 12:13-31), and must recognise that all their concentration must be on establishing the Kingly Rule of God (Luk 12:31). And He wants to make them see that this will not be by means of a large army, well-armed, but that God will begin to establish His Kingly Rule through a few, with those few having no earthly resources at all (Luk 12:32-34), apart from the Holy Spirit (Luk 12:12 compare Luk 11:13).

Further He wants them to recognise that He will not be with them permanently. He will be going away from them (as He has already told them – Luk 9:21-22; Luk 9:26; Luk 9:44), but that when He is away they must live in readiness for when He returns (Luk 12:35-48), for they will have much to do, and after a while He will be coming back in order to reward them for faithful service. (He wanted them to recognise that, while they must be ready for His coming, they must not expect His return immediately).

He also wants them to know that all that is ahead is not going to be rosy (Luk 12:49-53). Let them not think that the world is soon to become a Paradise. Rather He is shortly going to cast fire down on it, something which would tie in with great suffering that He Himself would have to undergo. And as a result of this He would bring about great divisions in the world (Luk 12:52-53), and Jerusalem would be desolated and forsaken (Luk 13:34-35; Luk 21:6; Luk 21:20; Luk 21:24; compare Mat 23:37-39). So there was to be a revolution. But not quite of the kind that they were expecting. Rather than be a revolution which drives families together, it will be a revolution that splits households in two because of their attitudes towards Him and His word. These will be His next lessons. And they will not be quickly grasped.

But this new emphasis on teaching does not mean that nothing practical was now happening, for, as the chiasmus below reveals, the whole of this present section of concentrated teaching will centre around a practical demonstration of His power in the healing of a crooked woman and her deliverance from Satan’s power. Here was another powerful symbol revealing a picture of Israel in its need and how Jesus has come to meet that need. This woman was a symbol of what He had really come to do. He had come to make the crooked straight (Luk 3:5) and to deliver the oppressed (Luk 4:18). And all His teaching was to that end.

We note that Luke constructs his Gospel in such a way that this is to be the last mention of Satan and his minions in action (Luk 13:11; Luk 13:16) until we come to Jesus’ last days (Luk 22:3; Luk 22:31). And yet at the same time he makes it clear that this is not because that side of things has ceased, for in Luk 13:32 he depicts Jesus as testifying to the fact that his defeats of Satan’s forces will continue on, right up to ‘the third day’ when Jesus will finish His course and finally defeat them once and for all. Then through His crucifixion and resurrection they will become guerrillas on the run, and no longer possessors of the field. So the story of the crooked woman, coming in the middle of a whole host of teaching, is a reminder of the very real spiritual battle that is still going on, and would continue on right to the end. As we shall see, what follows is to be further teaching on the Kingly Rule of God, as He continues to reformulate their thinking, while His continuing activity towards that end is depicted by the deliverance of the crooked woman.

He does, of course, continue to preach to the crowds. That too would continue right up to the end. And yet at the same time it becomes clear that His disciples are now to go through their own intensive training course ready for the future, a future of which He is fully aware, even if they are not.

That is why from this point on attention will turn to life under the Kingly Rule of God, and we will find a series of parables which all look at the development of the Kingly Rule of God, the way life should be lived under His Kingly Rule, and the expected return of the King, all these sandwiched between instructions given by Jesus to His disciples in Luk 12:1-12 and Luk 14:25-35, and all centred around the fact of Jesus’ deliverance from Satan and the making straight of those who come to Him (Luk 13:10-17).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Jesus Teaches Concerning Greed, Stewardship and the Need For Fruitfulness Under The Kingly Rule of God Centring on the Fact That He Will Make The Crooked Straight (12:1-14:35).

As we have seen we may analyse this next Section from Luk 12:1 to Luk 14:35 into its separate parts as follows: