NOTES for Luk 13:1-9
One of the questions that has tormented thinking people in every age has been the question of the justice or injustice of the world.
Some believed that everyone in life, sooner or later, receives what he or she deserves. Others, by contrast, were convinced that chance rules the world and that a person's fate therefore does not depend in any way on that person's actions.
There was also a position that took into account the law of cause and effect, which in the untransformed world can be considered absolute: its adherents were convinced that everyone reaps the fruit of what has been done, but that there is nothing moral or immoral in this, no ethical dimension at all. It is only a matter of an objectively existing universal law whose action extends to everyone. Such an approach can appear quite balanced, but it does not take one thing into account: the person himself, his spiritual and moral choice. In this case, an accidental mistake can prove fatal, and repentance plays no role: the deed is done, the mechanism has been set in motion, and regret over what was done and pangs of conscience can no longer change anything.
At first glance it can appear that Jesus supports, if not the position based on the idea of the immutability of the law of cause and effect, then at least some nonmoral attitude toward the evil happening in the world. After all, He clearly denies a connection between a person's sinfulness and the troubles and disasters that fall upon that person. With one important reservation: unless you turn, you will all perish in the same way. Of course, this means the kind of turning that involves receiving the Kingdom, for according to the Savior's own words it has "drawn near," and now to turn means to receive not only God but also the Kingdom of God, to receive it in order to enter it and live by its laws. As can be seen, only such reception, only participation in the life of the Kingdom and life according to its laws, can deliver a person from the random and completely unregulated evil of the fallen world.
The fallen world is unjust; evil reigns in it and can fall on anyone's head, whether that person is righteous or sinful. Even the law of cause and effect does not guarantee that the consequences of one person's sin will not affect many. In a world where evil reigns, virtue is not rewarded and sin is not punished. There is neither meaning nor purpose in its existence. But meaning and purpose exist in the existence of the Kingdom, just as there is meaning in the transformation that awaits our world at the end of time.
The only meaning of the untransformed world's existence is that it can become a place where the powers of the Kingdom act, a space where the breath of God is felt. And for a person, the only meaning of existence in a meaningless world can only be participation in this process. There is no other meaning, no other salvation in the fallen world. And the Savior proves quite severe here: either turn and become inhabitants of the Kingdom, or you will all perish as meaninglessly as those about whom you are asking.