NOTES for Bar 4:21
The words of the prophet about the deliverance from the hand of the enemies can seem at first sight too encouraging. If everything was so simple, people profoundly and sincerely religious, if we believe Baruch, should not at all suffer the consequences of the human wickedness. However all know well, that such is not the case. Besides: from the enemies suffered even the Christ Himself, the Messiah, Who came into the world to bring the Kingdom. How to understand the words of the prophet? Can God deliver man from enemies, and If He can, why He does not do it always? The best answer to this question could be the earthly path of the Savior. Not because He is a God-Man, but because He is free from sin. If it was about an ordinary person, one would always have been able to say that each receives according to the sins, and it would be difficult to argue with such assertions: because few of men know even the measure of their own sin, without speaking about the sins of the neighbors.
And, if it was always about an ordinary person, in the consciousness of those asking, and those answering would insinuate (maybe, involuntarily) the idea: what if this was for his sins? As regards Jesus, there can’t be any doubt: He deserved absolutely nothing bad, because He never knew sin. And all the same, during His earthly life He suffered in the same way as any other person on His place could suffer.
Nobody else of course could bring to the world the Kingdom, but to betray, to libel and to execute under false accusations could whoever, who achieving God's work, would cross the way of the secular authorities or the religious authorities. But however, according to His own words, Jesus could easily avoid it, If He wanted, but then His ministry, for which He came into the world, would remain incomplete. Probably, it is also the same thing with each of us.
Sometimes God can deliver us from enemies that we shall have in any case, if we do in this world at least something good and necessary. But it also happens that to deliver us from them is possible only at the price of the unfinished work, God's unfinished work, and then we should not wait for deliverance, if of course we want to end what we began. Sometimes it happens that what attracts to us our enemies is in particular our sin, more exactly its demonstrations: wickedness, arrogance, aggressiveness. Then it happens that there is nobody to blame, except oneself. Then here can help the repentance and the conversion to God: because with repentance and conversion for the repentant begins a new life. The life with the God Who does not offend.