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THE KING’S BUSINESS
suit of His coming was not to give peace but to cause division. Our Lord causes division right in the household between those who accept Him and those who re ject Him., Time and time again the father is divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against the •daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law. There cannot be real peace between those who' accept Jesus’ Christ as what He really is, the Son of . God, and those who reject Him. There are many who are clear-sighted and of quick judgment in material matters, who are utterly blind when it comes to spiritual matters. The fact that one is of the keenest; discernment in physical science or in other purely earthly matters; does not guarantee: that h e . is of any discernment whatever when it comes to moral and spiritual mat ters. Thursday, December 30. Luke 13:1-S. Men love to sit in judgment upon their fellow-men. 'If extraordinary calamity overtakes any one, there are always men who are ready to conclude that the suf ferers were guilty. Our Lord here rebukes this crude and cruel method of judgment. He does not say, nor even imply, that the Galileans who suffered from Pilate’s harsh ness, or the eighteen who were killed by the falling tower in Siloam, were not sin- ners ;■ but He denies^ that they were un common sinners, sinners above others, and He warns other sinners to see in their mis fortune, not a call to sit iff judgment upon them, but a call to repent of their own sins. Our own sins should always occupy our at tention and not those of other people (cf. Rom. 14:4, 10, 12). The only way to es cape the penalty of our sins is to repent: “Repent or perish” is Christ’s way of put ting it. Repentance.is not simply sorrow for our sin, it is a change of mind about sin, a change from the attitude that loves sin to that attitude of mind that hates sin and renounces, sin. The one sin of which
we must repent if we would not perish, is the sin of rejecting Him whom God hath made both Lord and Christ (Acts 2 :36-38 ; 3:14, 15, 19). Friday, December 31. Luke 13:6-9. It is -not only for positive wrong doing that men perish, but also for failure to do good or bear fruit. If thé fig tree in God’s vineyard does not bear fruit, the edict will go forth “cut it down.” This parable of the fruitless fig tree applies primarily to the Jew (cf. Ps. 80:8-13; Isa. 51:3, 3; Luke 20:10-13), but it can be legitimately applied to all nations or individuals who do not bear fruit for God. God’s complaint against the Jew was, (and regarding us is) “I come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none.” God’s sentence on the fruitless tree i s ,“cut it down” (cf. Matt. 3:10; 7:19; John 15:2, 6 , 8 , 16). The tree that does' not bear fruit “cumbers (makes idle) the ground.” So does the fruitless individual or nation. God’s sentence, however, is de layed to give space for repentance (Gen. 6:3; 2 Chron. 33:10, 11). Forty years was given Israel for repentance after the warn ing of this parable, but the ax fell at last. It is customary with God to multiply means of grace to nations and communities and individuals, just preceding times of judg ment. We have been living in a day of special grace, and now we seem to be in a time of special judgment upon nations who have refused to repent and bear fruit. In this is a call for individuals and also for the nations that have not yet been sucked into the maelstrom of war, to repent and bear fruit.
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