Context of Luke 13
This morning we're in Luke chapter 13, and I want to read this passage for us as Jesus is challenging the crowds who have surrounded him to repent.
This is in the context of Luke chapter 12, where Jesus has been preaching and teaching hard-hitting truths to people that were not receptive. He started in chapter 12 by addressing religious hypocrites, and he said, "Woe to the Pharisees and the scribes." Essentially, the warning was they inflict their rules on other people, but they don't even keep them themselves.
And Jesus continued on from there in chapter 12, exhorting believers in how they ought to live, being alert and watchful for his second coming.
Call to Repentance
Also being ready to see the signs of God's pending judgment against sin. And now in chapter 13, at the beginning of this chapter, it's really the end of this set of warnings in chapter 12. And here he exhorts everyone that hears his message to repent.
Hear these words beginning in verse 1: "Now were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, 'Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans? Because they suffered this way? I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those 18 who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no. But unless you repent, you too will all perish.' Then he told them this parable. A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now, I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree, and I haven't found any. Cut it down. Why should it use up the soil?' Sir, the man replied, 'Leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine. If not, then cut it down.'"
As Jesus is preaching, he's expanded his audience from his disciples, which in parts of chapter 12 was his narrow focus, to now all who were thronging around his ministry wanting to be in his presence, to hear words off of his tongue, and perhaps to touch the corner of his garment. But the words Jesus shared in this warning were not words of comfort, but words of repentance. He was calling the people here to recognize their sinfulness and to confess it before the living God.
Some of the people, however, were ignoring Jesus' warnings. They were focused instead on tragedies. And in the ancient world, much like our own, people looked for explanations about the presence of evil and suffering. They wondered who was to blame for wicked murders and tragic mishaps? Was God passing judgment for specific sins? Did the victims in these examples receive divine judgment?
Lest we judge the ancient people that Jesus was speaking to, we also have the same tendency to speculate about current events and try to connect them to God's justice. We wonder out loud if our country is facing divine judgment for widespread immorality. We wonder whether someone has a chronic illness or receives a fatal diagnosis because of some secret sins. We wonder if our church suffers because of someone else's sin. And we ask if these offer signs of God's judgment. We take shortcuts trying to suggest that there's a line of cause and effect between someone's specific sin and that particular judgment.
But Jesus in this passage is not allowing that line of thought. Instead, he corrects this cause and effect thinking as misguided. Rather than looking at someone's suffering and death as a sign of God's judgment against them, Jesus invites us to consider suffering and death as an urgent call to repent. Paul picks up the same thing in Romans 6 when he says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." In other words, all of us deserve sin or deserve death for our sin, but God in his mercy does not require our lives now. He's giving us time. And he wants us, even urges us, to repent before it's too late.
Urgency of Immediate Repentance
And Jesus, in this context, urged the audience around him to repent immediately. That's the first point that I see in this passage this morning, in the first five verses, that Jesus urges us to repent immediately.
He says beginning in verse one, that there were some present at that time who told Jesus about some Galileans. But Jesus was not informed or surprised by this news. Jesus was aware of what was going on in Palestine, especially Galilee. Jesus had been born and raised in Galilee, and there's no doubt that he had heard news of this awful crime perpetrated by Pontius Pilate.
Pilate, you may remember, was the Roman governor in Judea, and he ruled violently over the Jews. He did not respect their culture. He did not respect their customs, and he certainly did not respect their religious convictions. He forcefully imposed Roman authority over Israel, and he ruthlessly crushed his opposition. He governed from Jerusalem with Caesar's symbols and insignias around Israel's most sacred city.
And the Jewish people hated Pilate. They resented Roman rule, and they were sharing this incident to rile up the crowd and provoke a response from Jesus. So when they told him that some of the Galileans had been murdered by Pilate and their blood had been mixed with sacrifices, they were ultimately testing Jesus' loyalty to either Israel or Rome.
Pilate had killed some Galileans. The whole context and story is unclear. We don't know. There are different theories about what this may have been. But I think more than those theories, the main point remains that Pilate unjustly killed Galileans while they were worshiping in Jerusalem. They were in the city, perhaps during a religious Jewish festival, and they were there to make sacrifices to God. But Pilate invaded their sacred space. He killed the worshipers and he corrupted the offering with their own blood.
It's a grotesque and horrid scene. It just showed the depravity of Pilate, that he was willing to do something so despicable as to kill people in the middle of worship. But Jesus knew that the crowds wanted a partisan answer. He also knew that the scribes and the Pharisees were lurking in the background trying to set a trap for Jesus. If he did not condemn Pilate, they would accuse him of being pro-Roman and not defending fellow Jews, these Galileans. But if Jesus took the other route and condemned Pilate, supporting the Galileans, he may risk trouble with the Roman authorities. Either way, Jesus would face wrath from either the people of Israel or from the rulers in Rome.
But Jesus, as he often did, turned the tables on the crowd completely.
Turning Political Questions into Spiritual Ones
He didn't fall for the trap of a political question. Rather, he turned their trap into a more searching question for their souls. He asked them rhetorically in verse 2, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?"
So instead of condemning Pilate's sins, which were grievous, Jesus confronted the people questioning him with a more difficult question about their own sins. Jesus understood Galilee. He could have identified with some of these Galileans that had been murdered, and he recruited his disciples from this part of Israel. In fact, in Cana of Galilee, this is where Jesus performed his first public miracle.
But although he was from Galilee, more cultured Judeans would have considered Jesus' social status ordinary. This is another reason they're picking at this point. It's not only the politics of Rome, but it's also the politics of Israel, the rivalry between Judea and Galilee, and they're putting a spotlight on Jesus being from Galilee. After all, Galileans had a reputation at this time of being low class. They were troublemakers and they were rioters. Everyone knew, especially the religious class of Israel, that the Galileans were vile sinners.
Therefore, Jesus' question, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way," revealed some of their assumptions. It raised some theological issues that they needed to wrestle with. First, did these individuals believe that there was some specific sin that had caused this tragedy? Is it because of something that these particular Galileans had done that Jesus had allowed Pilate, or that God had allowed Pilate, to kill them?
Second, Jesus is asking them, did these Galileans deserve this judgment for their sin? Was their sin so despicable that God required their lives in that moment? Jesus wanted the crowd to consider why the victims suffered this way, verse 2.
The Reality of Universal Sin
Why did they experience this ill fate? Why were they murdered? But before the crowd could answer the question, Jesus answered with an emphatic no. He says in verse number three that this is not what had happened. Instead, the people who died unexpectedly were not the worst sinners. They were not more sinful than the people who remained alive. These were the Galileans who had escaped Pilate's murderous wrath; they had absolutely no reason or no grounds to consider themselves morally superior to the ones who had died.
Instead, Jesus said to them in verse 3, and again he'll say it in verse 5, "Unless you repent, you too will all perish." Jesus is acknowledging that there are difficult and horrible things that happen in the world. Anyone can be murdered and suffer unjustly. In fact, our lives depend on the mercy of God every day, whether we're in Christ or not. I read Romans 6 at the beginning, "the wages of sin is death." That means that for a single sin, the penalty is death. Your life will be required.
The fact that any of us are alive, especially if we're outside of Christ, means that God has extended his generous grace, giving us an opportunity to live and breathe so that we could learn the gospel and receive Jesus Christ. So being murdered, as these Galileans were, was not an indicator whether or not they were receiving divine judgment for their sins, because everyone outside of the grace of God will be judged for their sins. But their mortality was giving evidence of sin's presence in our world. Consider that again: their mortality was giving evidence of sin's presence in our world.
In other words, under sin's curse, the author of Hebrews said it this way: We are all destined to die and after that to face judgment. It's not to say that their death, the way they died or the timing of their death, was the judgment, but that they would one day stand before the presence of a holy God who would judge them for their iniquity. Jesus used the tragic murders of the Galilean worshipers as a warning for everyone listening to admit their sin and repent immediately. Rather than pass judgment on the victims or rage against Pilate, Jesus was calling the crowds to turn away from their sins before they would also face their own deaths.
No one knows when they will die. So we must confess our sins and cling to Christ immediately. Paul said in 2 Corinthians, "Behold, today is the day of salvation." The idea is that if we hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and we recognize that we're a sinner and we believe that Christ died for us so that we can have the forgiveness of our sins and that he will give us his righteousness, then we ought to believe that gospel with our whole hearts. We should not make excuses and say, "Yes, but what about this tragedy? What about this person that has cancer? What about this other person that has some ill thing in their life?" No, Jesus wants us to consider the need for repentance in our lives.
Rather than passing judgment on other people and saying, "I wonder what they did to deserve that," Jesus is saying, look at their death as an opportunity to be reminded that you too will one day die. And before you die, you need to be in a right relationship with God. Sadly, brothers and sisters, I have observed that far too many Christians, churches, and pastors rail against the sins of our culture, and they rail against non-Christians while they ignore their own sinfulness.
We're in election year in 2026, and the politics are overflowing and they're spilling out everywhere. And they are horrible. The politics become worse and worse in every election cycle. And it's tempting to criticize corrupt politicians and bemoan our immoral culture. And they are corrupt, and our culture is immoral. It's easy for us to blame one political party or another for our country's failings and point to the misdeeds and moral failures of the politicians and not cast any blame on ourselves. But before we cast stones at our culture and condemn other people, we should ask about our own sinfulness. We should, like Peter says in 1 Peter 4, remember that judgment begins with God's household. And if it begins with the people of God, Peter says, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?
God disciplines believers first because he loves us and wants us to be in a right relationship with him. Then he judges everyone else who rejects the gospel. I would argue America does not need more Christians complaining about our culture and criticizing our politicians. Instead, our country needs more Christians who confess our sin and live in obedience to Christ. We need to model the very gospel that we say that we believe.
The problem Jesus was confronting in Palestine is that the scribes and the Pharisees were expressing indignation about Pilate, but they were also ruling with the same hard heart that Pilate had. Though they had not murdered Christ yet, their hard hearts would eventually lead them to murder Jesus on the cross, showing that they were no different than Pilate all along.
Jesus' point in this passage is he was calling them to repent, calling them to see their own sin and their desperate need for forgiveness. And yet they were ignoring him. To underscore this vital need for repentance, Jesus offered a second example in this passage. He mentions the tragic deaths of 18 souls who died when a tower collapsed. The accident occurred at the Tower of Siloam near a water reservoir on the southeastern edge of Jerusalem. Again, we don't have details historically to know exactly what happened. There are different theories or suggestions, but Jesus' point is not exactly what happened. It's the fact that this happened at all.
He pointed to an accident that was beyond anyone's control. It was a tragic mishap, and it ended in the deaths of 18 people. Rather than a senseless murder like the Galileans, the victims in Siloam died because of a bad set of circumstances. When the tower fell on them, verse 4, they simply found themselves in a deadly accident. Their awful fate was like being killed by a natural disaster such as an earthquake or a severe storm.
And Jesus asked the crowds to consider why these 18 people died. Verse 4. Do you think they were more guilty than all the other ones living in Jerusalem? Jesus returned to the same theological questions that arose from Pilate's murders. Did some specific sin cause this tower accident? And did these 18 people deserve this judgment for their sins? What about the 19th or the 20th or even the 50th person who was only injured and did not die? Jesus was asking, were those who died more guilty than everyone else in Jerusalem?
Again, he was not expecting an answer from the crowd. This was a rhetorical question, and his answer was an emphatic, no, this is not the case. The people who died in the tower were not more guilty than anyone who remained alive. The others in Jerusalem who had escaped when the tower fell should not consider themselves better than the people who were dead. Instead, Jesus repeats his plea, verse 5: unless you repent, you too will all perish.
Jesus was dismissing any notion that the murders or the mishaps were God's judgment on the worst sinners. Neither the Galileans nor the 18 should be blamed for their untimely deaths. God did not kill them for some specific sin and use their tragedies to display his immediate judgment and justice. Instead, Jesus called everyone who heard him to repent of their sins immediately, and he called them to repent so that they would not die as well. But he wasn't talking about physical death. He was talking about eternal punishment. This idea of perish carries the idea of eternal punishment for sin.
Sadly, after natural disasters, whether it's something like a building collapse, an earthquake, a flood, or some other tragedy, there are some Christians who quickly and publicly pass judgment on the victims and the situation. Think about the Twin Towers. We recently celebrated, not celebrated, marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. And those were awful. Thousands of people died untimely and unjust deaths. There were outspoken pastors in the hours and days after those attacks who came out publicly on all the news networks or wherever they had a platform, and they said this was a sure sign of God's judgment against America. He was judging America for abortion, for feminism, for LGBTQ plus, for political liberalism, for secularization, for immorality of every kind, and for being godless.
Some of these pastors later apologized and tried to set the record straight. They were responding emotionally in the moment, they said, but yet even their emotional response revealed their true belief. Most pastors, however, did not apologize. They doubled down and said this was a sure indication of God's wrath against America. Sadly, this is not correct. God will deal with sin and all sinners deserve to die as the right payment for their iniquity. But God is not taking people's lives now simply to exercise his judgment against one person over against another.
There are many people who associate moral evil and tragic deaths with divine judgment for wrongdoing. Some people, particularly Hindus, call this bad karma. But Jesus rejects all of this and says all sinners will eventually die. Remember in verse 3 and again here in verse 5, he says, you too will all perish. The death rate in every place on earth among every generation is 100%. No one escapes death. But God provides a way for us to avoid punishment for our sin. He provides a way for us to repent so that we can have forgiveness.
John chapter 3, verses 16 to 18 are often quoted, but they fit what Jesus is teaching here. It says, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
There, John is recording the fact that Jesus was offering salvation by believing in him. Those who do not believe in him are already judged and condemned. It's not as if people are born innocent with a blank slate. He's essentially affirming what Paul teaches throughout Romans: that people are born sinners, that there is none righteous, there are none who seek after God.
It is only by God's grace that we receive the gospel of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. And that grace is available to all who would repent, confessing their sin and trusting Christ for his righteousness. Jesus is stressing that every sinner, including every one of us, must face our own mortality. We don't have to worry about the circumstances of our death, but instead we should focus on the fact that we will one day die.
And at that point, we will stand before God. And we can either stand before God robed in the righteousness of Christ or robed in the filthy rags of our self-righteousness. And Jesus is offering us the opportunity to repent now so that we can have the forgiveness of our sins. This message could not be more relevant whether you're a child or a teenager or an adult. All of us sin in different ways to different degrees, but every sin deserves death. So we must confess and forsake our sin, trusting in Jesus Christ.
My question here would be, are you believing in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins? Or are you simply distracted by the sins of others? Are you like the Judeans who were here bringing up questions about the Galileans so that you can divert attention away from yourself? Do you sometimes say, "Well, at least I'm not as bad as so-and-so"? "At least I don't do that." "At least I didn't say this." "At least I wasn't a part of this other thing."
And whatever the case, we simply divert and push blame aside because we're not that bad after all, we think. And yet, this passage is a reminder that though we are not as bad as we could be, we're still bad enough to deserve the death penalty. And yet, there's been a way of escape provided, that we can avoid the death penalty by receiving Jesus so that we can live with God for eternity in heaven.
Bearing Consistent Spiritual Fruit
We will still have to pass from this life through death unto eternal life. But that eternal life can be in the realm of heaven rather than in hell. We simply have to repent. This passage calls us to repent immediately.
And when we do repent, my second point in the last section, verses six to nine, is that Jesus expects us to bear fruit consistently. So while he calls us to repent, he also expects us to bear fruit in our lives. Christians are simply sinners who confess our sins and believe in Jesus Christ for his righteousness. Over time, our lives should show increasing evidence of repentance and bear consistent spiritual fruit.
In context, Jesus taught us that the gospel stops us from being self-righteous hypocrites who condemn others. That goes all the way back to the beginning of chapter 12. And rather than being self-righteous, we become rich toward God and generous toward other people. Again, he says that in chapter 12, verses 21 and 33.
To illustrate the difference between repentance and self-righteousness, Jesus shared a parable about a fig tree. He says in verse 6, a man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but he did not find any. It normally took three years for a fig tree to produce figs. And according to Israel's law, the fourth year, fruit was supposed to be designated to God. So this tree had been fruitless for way too long. You can interpret it that it was either fruitless for three years or perhaps it was fruitless for seven years. Whichever the case, this tree was not doing what it was designed to do.
So Jesus continues in verse 7. The landowner said to the man who took care of the vineyard, "For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and I haven't found any. Cut it down. Why should it use up the soil?" This landowner expected, and rightly so, that a fig tree should bear edible fruit. But this particular tree was wasting his resources. So he decided it was now time to cut his losses, cut down the unfruitful tree, and move on.
But before the landowner could destroy the tree, the caretaker of the vineyard intervened. He said, "Sir, leave it alone for one more year. I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine, but if not, then cut it down." This caretaker asked if he could buy a little bit more time. Could he loosen the soil and provide more nutrients and give this tree one more year? Maybe the extra time and the extra attention would transform the barren tree to become a productive tree.
Jesus used this short parable to make an important point. The fig tree symbolized Israel and their self-righteousness. The nation was not responding to their promised Messiah who was among them. They were rejecting the Son of Man who could forgive their sins. And his ministry had been loosening the hard soil of their sinful hearts. And he was offering the nourishing grace of repentance. But they were unfruitful. They were not having it. They were simply inert. They were not bearing fruit.
The scriptures say in multiple places in the Old Testament that God is slow to anger, but they also say that he does not leave the guilty unpunished. That while he may not judge them immediately for their transgressions, he will judge them for eternity for all of their iniquities. Just because God did not punish Israel immediately did not mean that he overlooked their sins. Rather, his patience was showing that he was merciful, that he was gracious, and in the words of Peter, that he was not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Jesus' parable applied to every individual in the crowd and to the whole nation. He wasn't simply condemning Israel. Israel was made up of individuals. He was condemning sinners. Jesus had the authority to forgive anyone's sins. He says this in chapter 5, chapter 7, and in other places up until this point in Luke's gospel. And he also taught his disciples to confess their sins in his model prayer. He urged everyone to repent, to turn from their iniquity, and to bear the spiritual fruits of righteousness.
He could have destroyed Israel, but he graciously spared them. Nearly 40 years after he was crucified, the Romans finally destroyed Jerusalem. As another indicator of God reminding them of their mortality, we must not assume that mercy and patience demonstrated by God means that he will not condemn us for our sins in the future. We must repent and turn from our sins before it is too late. And we must confess our sins and receive Christ's righteousness while there is time to do so.
God's willingness to delay judgment for our sin shows his grace toward us. When we hear about tragedies that involve death, we should not be quick to judge the victims or the perpetrators. Instead, we should ask ourselves, "Is my life bearing the fruit of repentance? Does my life give evidence that I have confessed my sin? And do I live like someone who has been forgiven?" Jesus expects our lives to bear the fruits of repentance.
The fruits of repentance are not simply wagging self-righteous fingers that cast judgment over other people. But the fruits of repentance say, with the publican on the steps of the temple, "Woe is me. I am unworthy." When we realize that, it changes everything about us.
My desire for us as individual Christians and as a church is to be a church that has been humbled by the gospel, not a church that is proud and self-righteous about the gospel, because pride and self-righteousness run contrary to the fruits of repentance. Instead, when we repent, we are like the Apostle Paul, who at the end of his life said, "I am the worst sinner." The older translation said, "I am the chief of sinners."
Paul did not come to the end of his life on this earth and say, "I'm the best Christian that there's been. I'm better than all the others combined." No, Paul says, "I'm fortunate to be saved. I'm fortunate that God has forgiven me." And in that same context in 2 Timothy, he says, "But the righteousness of Christ abounds." Saved sinners who repent of their sin depend on the righteousness of Jesus. We don't make excuses and compare ourselves to others, but we see that we believe because the fruit of repentance is being produced in our lives.
Many times over the years, I've had the opportunity to meet with boys and girls and talk to them about the gospel. Many are eager to please their parents and say, "I believe in Jesus. I want to be baptized." And I always take that at face value. But what I tell every boy and girl is, I say, "That's great. Now we want to wait a little bit longer and see that you're living according to this gospel."
Even for a child, they can understand that if they love Jesus, it will change the way they love their parents. It will change the way they love their brother or their sister. And it will change the way they think about other people. It doesn't mean that a child will have a Ph.D. in systematic theology or be able to expound upon the fullness of scripture. But it does mean that even childlike faith can bear the fruit of repentance.
Even more for an adult who has confessed Jesus Christ as Savior, we should be living as if we have been forgiven. We should not be an adult who says, "I prayed a prayer when I was a child. I made a decision in vacation Bible school. I remember going forward at a summer camp." While those can be important times and those decisions can be lasting, they're not enough. Those should be the beginning of a life of repentance, a life that is borne out with fruit that shows the righteousness of Christ, an uncommon righteousness that people would say, "We are here by the grace of God."
The Spirit of Humility
If it were not for the grace of God, we'd be no different than any other unforgiven sinner. So, would God give us a spirit of humility? A spirit of not self-righteousness, but dependence on Christ's righteousness that works its way out in humility.
Jesus' main point to those who are asking these questions was not, "Why did the Galileans or the people at Siloam die?" It was, "Why haven't you yet repented for the sins that deserve death?"
And if you're here this morning and you've not yet repented of your sins that deserve death, I want to beg you and urge you to confess your sin before Christ and to trust him for his righteousness.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we consider this passage, it's sobering because we live in a broken world that is cursed by sin. We see tragedies and injustice all around us. And in fact, we participate in condemning our culture. And rightly, we want to stand against sin and evil.
But God, we do ask that you would forgive us for those times when we step over the line and we pass judgment. And we think in our minds, whether we say it out loud or not, "They deserve that. That happened to them because they're so bad or so evil."
God, help us not to have that kind of self-righteousness in our hearts and in our mouths. Instead, help us to confess our sins. Help us to be people that are broken by our sins and yet built up by your righteousness. People that offer the hope of the gospel to others and people that are seeing your righteousness bear fruit in our lives.
Father, help our church to be a reflection of Christ to a broken and dying world. Help us to be a place where hurting people can come and find mercy and grace. And help us to be a place where we see the sweet fruit of conversion and its carry-on effect in our lives in multiple generations. And God, we pray all this, dependent on you, in Christ's name. Amen.