Unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish.

The then current mindset was that if something bad happens to you it is either because you had done something bad or your parents had done something bad. Jesus statement (as in the title of the post) was “No,  none of the above, but unless you repent (turn away from your sin), you are in for bad things to happen to you”.

When bad things happen to us in the here and now  we more often than not cry out “Why me?” I have in the last few posts been talking about the consequences of our “poor choices”, and the mess we are in as a society. But the pain that we suffer is not all from our poor choices, it is not all from our sin.  The saying of Jesus in the title confirms this.

I don't think I need to persuade you that life is not fair. If you are not there yet, just wait a while. This truth is of course in the Bible for “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.”  We don't need to think too deeply to see that it is true. Is death sufficient punishment for the likes of one (Hitler) who was responsible for the murder of six million men women and children? I mean we all die, the good the bad and the ugly. The point is that if God is just (and He is) then there has to be a time of reckoning, there has to be a Heaven and a Hell.   When we judge others (and who does not) we are at one level siding with God on this.  Have you ever said “He deserves everything that is coming to him”.   We need to be careful here, because “With the measure we measure, it will be measured to us”. If that does not scare the living daylights our of you, it should!  Most of us judge all the time.  But we cannot have justice for the other buddy, but mercy for ourselves. That is to want our cake and eat it too.  God's not into that, He is into righteous judgments and Mercy. He prefers Mercy, and unless we repent, we will get judgement, for none of us is perfect (see 'Caught for speeding ..' June 2010) .

Why do bad things happen to good people?  Some of it is our sin (for no one is truly good), some of it is other people's sin, and some of is it simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  There is a verse that means a lot to me, Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose".  This verse is not saying that evil is good. It is rather a promise that for those who turn to Christ,  God is actively at work to bring good out of the bad.  We don't always see it, well it is not always immediate. But that is where faith (trust comes in). We do know that when we turn to Him in repentance, He covers our sins, casts them into the sea and remembers them no more. We also know that in the end He will right every wrong,  and wipe away every tear of those who belong to Him.

But if we do not love Him, if we refuse to turn to Him in repentance, the promise does not apply. When we do not turn to Him, we are truly victims of the schemes of the devil. His plan for you is eternal death and destruction.  Hell was created for the Devil and his angels, not for you. But you have to choose sides. Its not a popular truth (see “Hell,  are you trying to scare me into Heaven?), but if there is a God and He is Just (and there is a God and He is Just) then logically there has to be a Heaven and a Hell.   And we don't get to Heaven by being good, we get to Heaven by repenting  being forgiven and following Him. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:17,18).