People die. It is an undeniable fact of life.

What people have a problem with is the “how” and the “why” in relation to the circumstances of a person’s death.

Some people die peacefully in their sleep. Some die in war. Some die as a nonparticipant but collateral damage of war. Some are raped and killed. Some are tortured and killed. Some are killed in the name of religion (all religions are guilty of atrocities, all). Some die due to cancer, or some other disease, some painful, some not. Some die by overdoses of recreational drugs. Some die in car accidents. Some die in random acts of violence, like shootings. Some die because a structure collapsed. Some die from natural catastrophies. Some die in the womb.

The point is people do die. The matter and means of that death is not really relevant. Am I being cruel? Perhaps. But that is a matter of perspective. Most will say how can a loving God let all this happen.

Jesus was presented with just such a question in Luke 13. Pilate had killed some Galileans in the Temple, mixing their blood with the blood of the daily sacrifice. In that time, people who died in a certain manner, like the Galileans, or were born with infirmities, like the man born blind in John 9, had some secret sin in their life that God had to punish. And that is why they were victims of Pilate’s execution in the Temple because they did something extremely horrible in the eyes of God.

Jesus presented two situations that were real contemporary events. In Luke 13:1-2:

  1 There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things?

The intentional violence of Pilate against the Galileans. Then in verse 4, He presents another event:

4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?

This was an apparent tragic accident. The Tower of Siloam collapsed, killing eighteen people. It would be like a bridge collapsing while cars were driving across it. A failure in a manufactured structure that caused an “accidental” death of a number of people. We would see news stories of emergency workers picking through the rubble, eyewitness accounts of the tragic event, talks of new government investigations and propose new guildelines, etc.

But how did Jesus respond? His response to both situations, an intentional act of violence and a tragic accident, is exactly the same.

3 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.

5 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.

Jesus is teaching that how a person dies is not what we ought to be focused on, but that is what we do. Why? Because we reject the doctrine of original sin and the need for repentance. When Jesus is talking about “perishing”, He is not talking about how we die, He is talking about the Second Death, the death that really matters. If we don’t repent before we physically die, our means of death won’t matter because the consequences of the Second Death are eternal punishment, an eternity of conscious pain that cannot be escaped once this life ends.

Jesus was telling those following Him, and is also telling everyone today, that we all must repent of our sins or we will perish without Him.