Unless You Repent.

     It is easy to look at the misfortunes of others and make quick judgments about them.
     When a tragedy strikes, it is a common thing for some people to assume that the people involved must have been great sinners.
     So often, we find temporary comfort in making these judgments, because it gets our focus off of our own lives, and onto the lives of others. We tend to feel better about ourselves when we find someone who in our estimation, is worse than we are.
     Jesus was confronted with this, when some people reported a tragedy to Him concerning some Galileans whom Pilate had killed, and mixed their blood with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1).
     Indeed, this looked very bad for these people, and no doubt many people believed that these things occurred because they were great sinners (Luke 13:2).
     Jesus pointed out that these individuals were not greater sinners than any others. He then gets very personal when He states to the crowd that unless they repent they too would likewise perish (Luke 13:3).
     Using another example, of some people who had died in another tragic way, He makes the same point again to emphasize the fact that we are all responsible to God (Luke 13:4-5). It is not a matter of who is the greater sinner, we are all accountable to God, and unless WE, AS INDIVIDUALS, repent of our own sin against God, we too will perish.
     God deals with each and every individual on the basis of their own sin. What one individual does determines their eternal fate. To believe that somehow God will overlook my sin because He is more concerned with somebody else is to be deceived.
     As Jesus said "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." We are accountable to God, we have all sinned, and we will all stand before God someday.
     What will you do about it? Will you look around you, hoping to find somebody worse than you, to ease your guilty conscience, or will you take the responsibility for your own sin against God, and give it up for His sake?