“Repent or Perish”
Luke 13:1-9
3/11/07
I don’t know about you, but when someone
informs me of some disaster that’s occurred, my immediate
response is usually something like, “Oh, no! That’s
terrible! How tragic! How awful! I’m so sorry
to hear that.” For me it’s a way of expressing my
empathy for those who have experienced such suffering and death, as
well as a way of sympathizing with the person who’s telling me
about it. It’s part of my way of trying to comfort him and
let him know that I’m here for him. On the other hand,
there are those times when I hear of a disaster that has befallen, say,
an enemy, and I rejoice in it. I say something like,
“Good! They deserved it! I’m glad it
happened! Finally maybe we’ll get some peace.”
But when we read today’s Gospel text and Jesus
gets the news about a couple of disasters that have occurred, we hear
Him neither rejoicing at such news, nor offering sympathy to those
who’ve brought Him such news. He isn’t glad that such
disaster has fallen upon those people, nor does He speak words of
comfort to the crowds, like, “There now! Don’t
worry! It’s all right. Peace be to you.”
Instead, He uses these tragedies to teach a lesson to His hearers, and
that is that unless they repent, they too will likewise perish.
At first glance, it sounds like Jesus isn’t concerned about those
who were killed. But in the end, we come to find out that Jesus
is not only concerned that those people have perished, but that the
people who are listening to Him will likewise perish, if they
don’t repent. And so, He uses these disasters as warnings
to His hearers, in order that they might be moved to repent and
not perish.
Jesus is dealing with a common misconception that we
all share, and that is that bad things happen to bad people. The
people who brought Jesus the news of these disasters believed that
those who were killed by Pilate and those who were killed when the
tower in Siloam fell on them all died, because they were worse sinners
than everybody else. I don’t think there’s anyone
here who doesn’t believe and confess that he’s a
sinner. We all confess this in our liturgy at the beginning of
the service. But you and I both struggle with the pietistic
belief that we are somehow less of a sinner than others. You can
always find someone you believe is a worse sinner than you, someone who
is less holy and godly in his behavior than you. Then, comparing
yourself with others, you always come out smelling like a rose.
You then conclude that when things go well for you, it’s because
you deserve it; God must be blessing you, because you’re such a
holy and godly person. At the same time, when things go bad for
“the wicked,” you conclude that they deserve it, because
God is punishing them for their wickedness. They must have done
something terribly wrong to suffer the way they are. This is what
Job’s friends concluded about him - that he must have sinned in
some way to deserve such suffering. And when something bad
happens to you, you ask God the same question Job asked, “Why am
I suffering like this? What did I do wrong? What did I do
to deserve this?” On the other hand, you might conclude
that you did indeed do something to deserve it, and that’s why
you’re suffering - because God’s getting back at you for
it; He’s punishing you for that sin.
The reason you and I do this is because we like to
classify sins (from really bad sins to not so bad sins) and rank
sinners based on which sins they commit and/or how much they sin.
But with His words here about repenting or perishing, Jesus classifies
everyone as a complete and 100% sinner. He puts all sins on the
same level as equally offensive to God, and He ranks every sinner as
the worst of sinners, all equally deserving of death, God’s
wrath, and His judgment. He says this to you, the good
church-going person that you are, sitting there in the pew. You
are the worst of sinners, the chief of sinners deserving to perish and
suffer under God’s judgment and wrath for all eternity.
Jesus says this to you, so that you might humble yourself before Him,
confess yourself to be the worst, the chief of all sinners, and beg His
mercy.
There’s no fractional repentance before
God. You cannot come to God confessing that you’re only a
partial sinner, or that you are less of a sinner than someone
else. You cannot come to God confessing that you have only a few
sins (and small ones at that) to repent of, or that you’re only
guilty of having broken a few of God’s commandments (and not the
really big ones at that). You must confess that you are guilty of
all sins, even the ones you’re not aware of, even the ones you
don’t think you’ve committed, even the ones you’ve
only committed in your heart. Now, some get the idea that you
have to list the sins you’ve committed before you can be forgiven
of them. But you can see how impossible this is, because number
one, you can’t even remember half the sins you’ve
committed, and number two, there’s not enough time in this
lifetime to list all the sins you’ve committed. When the
Apostle John writes, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness,” he’s not telling you that you have to ask
for forgiveness for each sin you commit before you can be forgiven
it. To confess your sins is to say that you are guilty of all
sins, none excluded. It is to confess that you are the fig tree
in Jesus’ parable here, who has failed to produce good fruit for
God, in spite of all the love and care that God has shown you, and that
for this you deserve to be cut down and tossed away.
But Jesus tells this parable not only to show you
that you deserve to die for your failure to produce the fruit of
repetance, but also to point you to His work for you. The
vinedresser here represents Jesus. The owner of the tree
represents God. When the owner decides to cut the tree down
because of its failure to produce, the vinedresser steps in and pleads
to the owner on the tree’s behalf. He puts Himself between
the owner’s wrath and the tree and says, “Sir, let it alone
this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if
it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut
it down.” For three and a half years, Jesus taught the
people and proclaimed the Gospel to them. But was there any
fruit? Did God find any repentance and faith among them?
Some, yes; most, no. The Jewish people for the most part rejected
Jesus. They deserved to be cut down. But Jesus, the
Vinedresser, had work to do. He was going to go to the cross to
be cut down Himself on that tree, so that all who receive the digging
and manure of this work might produce the fruit of repentance and
faith. After His death and resurrection, it was hoped that
God’s people would repent and believe in His Son, but because
they persisted in their hardness of heart, they were cut down in 70
A.D. when the Romans destroyed both their temple and the city of
Jerusalem. Now the call to repent goes out not only to the Jews,
but to all people, to you here today. And the message is the
same: Repent or perish.
Of all people, Jesus alone did not deserve to
perish. He was not a sinner like you and I are. And yet, He
put Himself in our place as if He were a sinner. He received a
sinner’s Baptism. He was tempted as sinners are. He
lived a humble life as sinners do. He suffered a trial and an
execution that criminals deserve. And He suffered the wrath that
God threatens to pour out on sinners, even though He produced the fruit
of perfect obedience to God’s commandments, perfect submission to
His will, and perfect trust in His promises. But He did all this
for you, the sinner, so that you might not perish. He stood
between you and God’s wrath, pleading with His blood on your
behalf as your Advocate, so that you might not be cut down, but be
cultivated and fertilized with the Word of God, in order to that you
might produce the fruit of repentance and faith.
In fact, this fruit is a gift to you from
Jesus. It’s not of your own doing, but it’s the
result of Jesus having His way with you through His Word, applying His
fruit to you, causing you to produce fruit yourself. Your
repentance, your faith in God’s promises, your obedience to His
commandments, your worship, your love, your works of love towards your
neighbor - all this fruit is the result of Jesus’ work of digging
around in your heart and spreading the manure of His Word around in
there. When His Word has its way with you, it leads you to
confess that you are a sinner, worthy of God’s judgment and
wrath, but it also leads you to confess that you have a Savior - Jesus
Christ. It leads you to confess that in Him you have the
forgiveness of all your sins. That’s all your sins, not
some of them. Just as the confession of your sins is never
partial, so neither is your forgiveness. God doesn’t
forgive you some of your sins. He doesn’t forgive you only
those sins which you mention. He doesn’t give you just a
little bit of forgiveness. He gives you complete forgiveness,
enough forgiveness to cover all your sins, and then even more.
Then, through your Baptism He applies all of Jesus’ fruit to you,
looking at you now in Jesus as if you had produced this fruit
yourself. And as the manure of His Word continues to have its way
in your life it causes you to produce the fruit of repentance - faith
towards God, love towards one another.
And so, the Lord’s command to repent or perish
is not an ultimatum that He gives because He does not love you, but
because He does love you and does not want you to perish. It is
the Father’s cry which goes out to all sinners to humble
themselves, confess their sins, and plead His mercy, which He gives you
freely in Jesus. He was cut down by God on the tree of the cross,
so that you might not be. Today, as you hear His words,
don’t harden your hearts against Him as His people, the
Israelites, did and were cut down, but meditate on His words and let
the Vinedresser have His way with you as He digs around in your heart
and spreads around in there the manure of His Word. Hear His
words of forgiveness and live under His grace, and as the Psalmist
writes, you will be “like a tree planted by streams of water that
yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not
wither.” Then, whatever evil befalls you and however you
die (whether it’s at the hands of man or as the result of some
disease), you will not need to be afraid of perishing, because you have
eternal life in Jesus Christ. Amen.