A word from Jesus that settles doubt

“It cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33).

If you wonder how believing in someone who lived 2,000 years ago can help you today, remember these words of Jesus.

When life squeezes till you’re empty and you cry out like the disciples in a sinking boat, “Lord, don’t you care that we perish?”, remember these words of Jesus.

If you think you have fallen out of favor with God, too far to recover, remember these words of Jesus.

By these words, Jesus showed how thoroughly He is one of us, saying He is in the same plight as we are. We are perishing. So will He. We walk in the valley of the shadow of death. So did Jesus.

We dislike thinking about perishing but our favorite memory verse reminds us we are, and that is why Jesus came—that anyone may believe in Him and, believing, should not perish (John 3:16).

The truth we dislike, Jesus deals with directly.

Before Jesus talked about His imminent death in Jerusalem, newsmongers had told Him about Galileans Pilate massacred while they worshiped. Jesus responded, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).

Then Jesus Himself brought up another recent tragedy: Eighteen people had died when a tower collapsed. “Unless you repent,” He repeated, “you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5).

It has been this way from the beginning. God prescribed perishing as the consequence of disobedience when He restricted one tree from Adam’s and Eve’s diet and warned, “In the day you eat, you shall surely die.” We know the story; they ate, and we have had funerals ever since. The Apostle Paul calls this the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). Or, in economic terms, he says death is our wages for wrongdoing (Romans 6:23).

Thankfully, this exchange of Jesus with those who brought news of Pilate’s massacre brings news of another kind: the good news of the Gospel. Here there are two stories to this good news.

The first is this: Jesus will not do what we cannot do. He will not save Himself. He made that plain now, in this conversation, and later on the cross. He said at this time He must die in the city, “It cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem” (emphasis mine). At His crucifixion, spectators sneered, “He saved others; let Him save Himself.” Jesus avoided neither Jerusalem nor the cross but went to both because we cannot save ourselves. Nor would He.

This also means Jesus did what we cannot do—save ourselves. We perish because we do wrong; Jesus died because He did no wrong. He was “obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross,” (Philippians 2:8). In His own words, “No one takes my life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself…This command I have received from My Father” (John 10:17-18).

What does this have to do with us? Jesus explains, “I lay down My life for the sheep” (John 10:15). We perish on our own; Jesus would perish—for us. Another writer put it this way, “Since the children have flesh and blood, he himself also shared the same things, so that by his death he might … free those who were slaves all their lives because they were terrified by death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

The obedience of Jesus overcomes our disobedience, by His death He unites with us in bearing the consequences of sin, and His resurrection secures our own rising from the dead. We may perish but, in Christ, it is not forever.

This leads to the second story of the Gospel in this dialog: To perish is not inevitable.

It is imminent, as Jesus reminded those who engaged Him in this conversation: “You will all likewise perish.”

And it may be immediate, as it was for the massacred Galileans or the eighteen who died in the tower’s collapse or the thousands who died of COVID-19.

But it is not inevitable.

“You will…unless.” Jesus reveals the alternative: Repent. The word means to think differently. He wanted His immediate audience to stop thinking they must be safe because they were still alive or that the victims were great sinners because they died. Jesus warned that perishing, whether it comes sooner or later, awaits everyone and there is only one escape: Repentance.

For us who, thanks to Luke, overhear this conversation, I hear Jesus saying to rethink our conclusions about life, about God, about ourselves and others. And consider especially what we think about Jesus. He forged ahead deliberately—resolutely—knowing He would perish. Like prophets who had gone before. Like all of us.

All to lay down His life for us.

So, when you wonder how believing in someone who lived 2,000 years ago can help today, remember these words of Jesus.

The Apostle Paul put it this way, “The life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).