The Lord said, “If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did?”
These are strong, frightening words: “If you do not repent, you will all perish.” First, let us understand repentance.
A very basic truth is that the love of God for us does not come as a fruit of repentance. What do I mean by this? God loves us not because we repent of our sins. God loves us because He wants to love us. Repentance, rather, is a fruit of an experience of having been loved by God. So it is not repentance that produces love from God. Rather, it is our experience of the love of God that produces repentance. I’ll say that again. Repentance does not lead us to experience God’s love. Rather, we experience God’s love first and in having experienced it, we repent of our sins.
The second thing to remember is that it is not so much that we are being punished for our sins. It is more that we are being punished by our sins. God does not even have to punish us. When we do something wrong, that sin will boomerang on us. God does not even have to punish us. The sin itself becomes our punishment. When we do something wrong, there is trouble in our hearts; there is no peace. When we do something wrong, we feel guilty. God does not cause that. That is caused by the sin that we committed. We bring it upon ourselves. So the Lord is saying, ‘If you do not repent you will all perish, but you will perish not because of me. You will perish because you have killed yourself. You are going to die, not because I will kill you. You are going to die because you have called it upon yourself.”
God does not have to do much. We are digging our own graves, and we are preparing for our own funerals. The Lord warns us today. “If you do not repent, you are digging your own graves. You are working on your own funeral. And I do not even have to touch you, because you will explode by yourself.”
OUR SINS PUNISH US
Lk. 13:1-9
Love Like Jesus
