Who Are We To Judge? God’s Message Of Love Is For All

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” — Hebrews 11:1

I quite often have discussion about why bad things happen to good people. Jesus, in Luke 13, was asked about that same thing and has the answer we all need to hear. I encourage you to go read that scripture today.

I wish we could know all of the back story behind scripture. Some things would make a lot more sense to us if there were newspaper articles we could reference. Many times it’s a guessing game behind people’s motives in the Bible, but the thing about people is that over the last couple thousand years, we haven’t changed much.

Jesus was asked by some people to pass judgement on a group of rebels who were killed by Herod while they were giving their sacrifice at the Temple. The Temple was supposed to be a safe place for the Jewish nation and for Herod to kill several hundred while they were worshipping was a great blow to the Jewish independence.

But what’s even worse is that many of the Jewish people didn’t blame Herod. Instead they were blaming the victims. They believed in a transactional God. If you did something good, then God rewarded you. If you did something bad, then something bad happened. So of course, the reasoning went, for those rebels to be killed in the Temple, they must have had some great sin!

So when they were asking Jesus to comment on why bad things had happened to outwardly good people, they were in reality asking Jesus to commit to a political movement. Politics and religion. In response, Jesus asked them about some people who were killed when a tower fell on them. Chances are the tower that Jesus was talking about was a government works project. When it fell, it was in a sense the government killing people while they were performing a religious ceremony at Siloam and the Pool of Bethsida. Jesus’ point was the two events were similar. Because of the government, people were killed during a religious ceremony.

One was declared an accident and explained away. The other (according to the Pharisees) was the victims’ fault. All because they were trying to make a political point. (They were probably trying to get Jesus to say something bad against Herod in order to have Jesus executed. The scary thing is they were using religion in order to do it.)

Sometimes bad things just happen. And sometimes we can’t explain why good things happen to those who don’t deserve it. That’s what we call life. There’s no explanation for it. It just happens.

But what’s important is our response.

Jesus had a one word answer to their question. It was simply, “Repent!”

The problem is when we start judging who’s good and who’s bad then we forget what the Gospel message is all about. God so loved the world He gave us His Son. God loved those who died in the temple. He loved those who perished from the tower of Siloam. Who are we to limit God’s love!

Common sense tells us that things happen for a reason. Thank goodness God’s love doesn’t make any sense. Because who in their right mind would ever love a poor, pitiful sinner like me. Let us pray. Our gracious God. Sometimes we think we know the right answers. Sometimes our certainty in our own common sense gets the better of us. Today we pray that you will show us that sometimes, love just doesn’t make any sense. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

The Blessings of Our Lord Jesus Christ Be With You!