In Him

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:17-18)

He who believes – in Him is not judged.

He who does not believe – has been judged already.

...not believed in the name, the character, the real truth about God as demonstrated in Jesus.

This is part of the beginning of the unveiling of the “in Christ” concept that is further greatly expanded upon in the New Testament, especially by Paul.

What I see a little bit here is that if I am in Christ, whatever that really means, then I am not judged, whatever that really means. And I suspect that the more I really know what both of these things really mean the more profound and exciting this is going to be for me.

What is also interesting here is the tense of the judgment on those who do not believe. It says that they are judged already, not sometime in the future as we usually assume. Therefore, that should indicate some things very important and relevant about the true nature of whatever this judgment is talking about here. Somehow, the very act of not believing apparently induces this kind of judgment inherently.

It is clear here that these two options are being presented as complete opposites and contrasted with each other.

Believe = no judgment.

Refuse to believe = present (induced?) judgment.

Likewise it also seems to stand that these two are closely linked with living life “in Christ” or living life outside of Him. Therefore the following would also seem to be true.

In Christ = no judgment.

Not in Christ = living under judgment in the present.

I am curious about this phrase, has been judged already. What I really want to know is what kind of judgment this is as well as who is doing it. And I am not ready to jump to the conclusion that this is some kind of condemnation imposed on us by God if we don't believe. That would directly contradict verse 17 so I must rule that out from the get go.

It seems that there is a built-in answer to this question by the nature of what immediately follows. It says that this being judged already is caused by not believing in the name of the Son of God. Therefore, whatever this believing in the name means is extremely important to understand if I am to avoid coming under current judgment. This believing in the name of Jesus is here directly linked to living under judgment or not living in judgment.

I am not at all satisfied with the typical religious assertions about what it really means to believe in Jesus. Most of what I have heard along these lines is far less that truly spiritual in nature and some borders on something more along the line of magic. To simply ascribe to some set of predetermined beliefs written out by other religious people in my view is not at all what these verses are talking about. And just confessing with our mouths that Jesus is the Son of God, despite texts produced to justify that practice is likewise not sufficient in my opinion for one to enter into a real saving relationship with Him. There is something being described here that goes far deeper into the heart and soul of a person than simply the shallow versions of belief that are commonly used among many Christians today.

The very next verse tackles a closer definition of this judgment and discusses such things as light and darkness as well as hate and fear. These also give me strong clues as to what is meant by this kind of belief as well as what it means to live “in Christ.”

It says that judgment happens when we love darkness instead of light. So it must mean that living in darkness, which is really lies about God, induces judgment inside of us. This judgment I believe is better translated condemnation which some other version prefer. Because these two words are used interchangeably so often they produce a bit of confusion when thinking about them. Personally I believe that in this context the word condemnation is much more accurate to describe what a person feels when they resist light rather than the word judgment.

Condemnation is something that happens inside of us, not something put onto us by God. That would explain why it happens when one loves darkness and hates light. By resisting belief in truths about what God is really like and clinging to our own opinions instead that are based in dark ideas about God, the natural consequences of this choice always result in inner dissonance which is condemnation.

This condemnation also involves the fears that are always present whenever our lives are out of harmony with the approaching light of truth about both God and ourselves. If instead of admitting our fears and asking God to deal with them, we try to avoid the light that is exposing us, then we are being controlled by our fears instead of by a love and desire to grow into the truth.

Most of this activity is taking place at the heart level more than at the head level. But it is often true that those who hate the light may actually be very religious folk who think that they are in fact embracing light. The problem is that they insist that light is defined by intellectual truth rather than heart truth. But everyone who resists having their hearts exposed and their true motives revealed by the revelations of God's beauty and true character are actually hating the light while professing to love it.

This class of people may possibly be the most deceived people on the whole earth. They are certain that they have the truth because they can prove it unequivocally with the Bible. They can point to their lives, their behavior and their track record and say that they are obeying God's commandments and keeping His ordinances as instructed. They will even insist to God Himself that they have done everything asked of them on the final day of judgment while oblivious to the fact that they have completely failed to connect with God at the most important level of all – their heart. To their utter amazement and horror they will realize that instead of promoting and endorsing the real light of God's love they have been believing in a partial light that was not fueled by the passion that burns in the heart of the God they claim to serve.

I have spent most of my life living as one of those people so I am keen to understand more clearly what God really wants of me when it comes to loving the light. I want my own heart to be much more connected with the heart of God so I am not found to be living under condemnation instead of in the light. I want God to open my mind, my heart and my spirit to see the many deceptions that still keep my own soul in darkness and cause me to resist the light. I pray for a genuine spirit of love for the true light so that I will come to the light and live in the light continually. I want to live in Christ for real.

What and How to Believe

He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18)

"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21)

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. (John 3:17)

Part of the fog in my mind I have struggled against for years involves the words and symbols used in religion and the Bible. I can distinctly remember my repeated frustration with comments insisting on things like our need to “give our hearts to Jesus”, being “washed in the blood” and other such terms. In these verses is yet another one that constantly eluded explanation in ways that made sense and clarity – “believing in the name of Jesus.”

Now, the last thing I am interested in is settling for typical platitudes in response to these kinds of questions. I have resented those platitudes all of my life and continue to do so, maybe too much. But it is the very use of so many platitudes and clichés that has kept me quite literally in spiritual darkness and it has been the persistent challenging of those things that has resulted in much of my awakening over the past few years. I am unwilling to simply be satisfied with stringing together nice-sounding phrases and going through religious-looking motions repeatedly without any real life-changing significance. If religion is not transforming one into the beauty and maturity of genuine God-likeness in its true nature, then it must be a counterfeit and a useless religion as far as heaven is concerned.

Again, that is one of the reasons I am spending so much time trying to really understand particularly this chapter of the Bible. Somehow I sense that if I could decode some of the real meanings of these verses through the revelations shared by the Spirit who inspired them in the first place, then my heart can become more alive and my perceptions will be empowered to much more clearly see many other revelations of God throughout the rest of Scriptures. I need heart understanding as much or more than just head knowledge.

This chapter along with the whole book of John is full of references to the need for believing. It is also chock full of narration about the need for love in the heart in order to truly connect with God effectively. Both of these terms have been shrouded in darkness for me most of my life when I look inside with brutal honesty. I really want to know what it means to believe. I really want to be filled with the kind of love inside of me that I am just beginning to perceive exists in the heart of God. But transferring much of my increasing understanding of these things into actual heart beliefs and experience is a whole different project, at least it seems so at times.

This is where the cliché effect has frustrated me for so long. People say things like, we love God because He first loved us. You have to love God to go to heaven. You must believe to be saved, etc. Now, while all of these things may be technically true, just throwing the words around doesn't make them happen in my heart. That reminds me of another typical platitude answer – faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. It seems that the answers always tended to lead back to an intellectual knowledge of the Bible as the basis for any relationship I might have with God in order to be saved. While I have been pursuing faith and love all of my life I have sensed that much of the time my efforts have been at least somewhat misdirected.

The last couple days have seen an atmosphere of fear trying to press itself over me. I find myself fighting consciously and repeatedly intense internal pressure to give in to depression and a sense of foreboding. I have to repeatedly remind myself to focus on the truth about God, to talk with God honestly and openly about my feelings and to force my mind and imagination to turn away from the frightening scenarios playing tapes in my head and instead focus my imagination on the real truth about God that I have been learning for a number of years now.

As I have been doing so I am forced to see that although many of the things I have been learning with my head are all wonderful, true and desperately needed by me, my heart's readiness to absorb and really believe many of these things is all too often lagging far behind. I even find frustration within myself at my inability to effectively convey to others how to deeply connect with God when they ask me repeatedly how one goes about doing this. I wonder if maybe I am on the verge of breaking through to a much deeper level of conversion than I have ever experienced before.

I have been praying for several days for God to really convert me much more deeply. I have given Him unlimited permission to do whatever it takes to transform me into the person that He designed me to be in Christ. That sometimes has resulted in very frightening events in my life that make me feel extremely vulnerable and out of control. But that should not be surprising in the least. Nevertheless they can be terribly upsetting and fear-inducing at times. This time I seem to be having similar feelings.

So I keep coming back to this passage day after day and seeking to perceive true reality within the context of the Word of God and the personal tutoring of the Holy Spirit. I pray that the Light talked about here will in fact begin to penetrate the very real darkness that presses over my own heart and mind and will create new life, hope, joy and peace within my soul. I am not satisfied with being religious, I want to live in vital heart connection with my Savior and God. I want to become a channel of life to others around me, not a source of confusion or discouragement.

One thing I have concluded over the years is that believing in the name of Jesus has very little to do with just the label we give to a person as humans use a “name.” But that thinking always seems to try to insinuate itself back into the perception no matter how many times it is exposed. I was taught many years ago that the name has to do with character, so believing in a name really means believing the truth about what a person is really like on the inside. This makes much more sense to me but again is more difficult to believe with my heart than with my head.

As I looked at these verses this morning I noticed that the context may offer definition to what is meant by believing or not believing in the name of the Son of God. It looks to me like it is referring directly back to what was just said about both the Father and the Son in verses 16 and 17. It is the motives and desires of God towards us that is being revealed here and that seems to be embedded in the very idea of the name. It is full of the idea of God wanting to save us along with the Son desiring the very same thing. It is also the truth that the Godhead is not interested in using condemnation to attract us to their love for us but wants to reveal the real truth about God to our hearts in any way possible to attract us to turn away from the lies about them that have kept us in darkness and fear for so long.

This pressure toward making a decision about what I am going to believe at the deepest level about what God is like and how He relates to me will inevitably cause what is called judgment. Judgment is not something forced on us by God but is something that inevitably happens whenever light comes into a dark place. The hidden things can hide no longer and people are forced by circumstances to make some kind of choice for one direction or the other. They will either confess and agree with the reality and truthfulness of the real nature of beliefs inside of them, the things they have felt about God that are inaccurate and create resistance against Him, or they will try to hide even further from the Light, deny its truthfulness or do anything to avoid coming into agreement with the convictions of the Spirit that always accompanies that Light.

The real truths about God focused on here is that God and Jesus want to save us from our sins – not in our sin. But it is also the truth that God is not the one trying to make us feel condemned – that is just a side-effect produced by our own resistance to Him.

Another truth that I see here is the exposure of the real object of our love, what our hearts want to fixate on and where we look to receive life for ourselves. Sin has caused us to look to all kinds of sources and people to make ourselves feel more alive or to feel good within ourselves. But when the true Light comes it exposes the reality that all of these things are in fact false gods that we look to for life instead of trusting fully our own true Creator.

When I find myself trying to justify my feelings and desires to get life from some other source than from God, the Light exposing that will always produce fear in my heart because my justification is really resistance. Fear is always the result of sin/lies in my heart and will prevent me from experiencing the true love that comes only from God. The greater the presence of fear in my heart the more obvious is the fact that I am resisting Light in some way or another. It is often not clear to me just how I am resisting the Light, but I am trying to train myself to notice these symptoms and choose responses to them that will allow God to more effectively expose the lies embedded inside of me. Then I can allow the Spirit of God to address, identify and replace those lies with truths that I have not believed before, at least at the heart level.

My head may be full of all sorts of wonderful truths that I have been learning for years. But I am sensing more intently my need to somehow have my heart get on board and believe at a much deeper level the truths about God and about myself that I have been learning intellectually. It is not that learning these things with my head is at all wrong or bad. But the way the heart learns is radically different than the way the head learns. That involves having it mentored by someone with a more mature heart that can use the methods of communication that the heart uses in order to absorb what it needs to grow up into Christ and into truth.

The discrepancies begin to show up when my head says that I believe that God wants to save me and not condemn me but my feelings scream just the opposite as I find myself in terrifying circumstances. That is when a trial or situation becomes a means of shining light onto the lies in my heart that are not in agreement with the truths in my head. The resulting disagreement and tension created by this huge discrepancy is called guilt or condemnation and can produce incredible amounts of fear as a result.

Since perfect love casts out fear, it becomes obvious that I need a great deal more love in my heart along with real truth that so far has gotten more to the left side of my brain than the right. It is much easier to say this than to experience it, but I am aware that this is what needs to happen. It almost always involves a level of discomfort that is never very welcome but that is natural when one is forced to move from one perception of reality to a completely different one. That is the process of sanctification as some people refer to it.

Father, I feel very uneasy lately and sometimes downright terrified. I know many things about You with my head but I have to trust You to somehow plant those truths much deeper into my heart and soul if they are to really make a transforming difference in my life. I trust myself into Your hands and I trust Your heart. I remind myself of the words You spoke to me through Psalm 37. Trust in the LORD and do good; Dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness. (verse 3 margin) I choose to feed on Your faithfulness and trust You to finish the work You are doing in me.

Light and Judgment

"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." (John 3:19-21)

I sense something here I have not noticed before but do not yet see most of the implications. Because of the mostly external nature of my religious upbringing it has always been assumed that the Light referred to here was mostly correct knowledge and religious facts. Of course we also gave credence to the fact that Jesus was labeled the Light of the world but somehow that was more of just an aside rather than a central reality for us personally. We mostly talked about the light of truth and truth, like light, was more focused on what we believed about doctrines much more than how we felt about Jesus.

But John's perspective was radically different at the time he wrote this then when he experienced these events with Jesus originally. All of the disciple's views of reality were radically altered over a couple of months following the death and resurrection of Jesus and continued to be challenged even for years after that. But for most of us it is difficult to discern the real underlying messages contained in many of their writings because our own view of reality is nowhere close to that embedded in their thinking when they wrote the books of the New Testament.

My own understandings and perceptions from what I read in the Bible have been undergoing a great deal of shifting for a number of years now. That is primarily due to a growing realization that true religion must be founded solidly on an intimate relationship with my Father in heaven rather than an accumulation of religious knowledge and/or seeking to control my behavior to get rid of sin in my life. Because of this dramatic difference in focus I now see far more things in the Bible than I ever imagined were there and each time I read I am surprised by so many things I never caught before. I have to honestly say that the Bible really has come alive for me personally and that I genuinely enjoy listening to the Spirit interpret the Word and apply it to my heart as well as to my mind.

Again I find myself wondering what is hidden in these three verses that seems about to explode into a mountain of fresh revelations for me. As I read these verses with new understandings and deeper definitions of the terms used, the first thing I notice is that if the Light referred to here is more about Jesus than it is facts and beliefs, that has potential to change all kinds of assumptions about what these verses really mean. I am not saying that is the only meaning of these verses, but it is certainly a way of looking at them that I have not seriously considered before.

Most religious people will agree that what this first verse is referring to is the fact that Jesus came to this world as a Light to expose the darkness of sin. But subtly and strangely the conclusions drawn from that observation often directly contradict what is stated so plainly just a few verses previously – that God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world but to save it. This problem of course is rooted in false assumptions about the meaning of the word judgment. And to further complicate matters the Bible sometimes uses this word to imply different meanings just as we often do with words. So to correctly assess which meaning of the word should apply in different places has to be guided by a more complete picture of God's motives as demonstrated in the whole life and teachings of Jesus who came to reveal that very thing to us.

At this point in time I feel that when Jesus stated that He was not sent to this world to judge it He was using the word in the way we most often use it – as meaning that He did not come to condemn us but to transform us. But that is not to say that condemnation will not occur as a result of His presence. Just because He did not come to condemn us does not mean that condemnation will not happen in much greater intensity than before. And this is due to the very nature of light itself which is what I believe is being explained in the verses I am now considering.

The true nature of the word judgment primarily means to expose out into the open the secret things and motives of the heart. But it is also very important to realize that this is not done under duress or by the use of coercion and force as we are so often familiar with in human judgments. God's ways are not our ways and God does not use force to accomplish His purposes, though at times it appears to be that way. For real love to be able to flourish it must always have the opportunity to grow and flourish in the atmosphere of freedom of choice. God is only interested in genuine love, never in forced love – which is really an oxymoron itself. So if Jesus came to this earth to induce sinners to love God more it would be completely counterproductive to ever use force or condemnation to accomplish that purpose.

But when sin causes us to resist the advances of God's heart seeking to draw us into relationship with Him, that resistance to love will always produce feelings of condemnation in our own hearts. But just because this condemnation is always triggered by the approaching presence of God does not mean, as we almost always assume, that it is God who is condemning us and not something that is created by our own internal mechanisms.

I learned a few years ago that the feeling we call guilt, which is also condemnation is really the tension that happens when the left and right brain are unable to agree with each other about something. This can happen in various ways so there is potential for various forms of condemnation or guilt. But until the left and right brain come into agreement and synchronize with each other, that feeling will remain and will cause discomfort for us internally. The intensity of that discomfort will be directly related to the seriousness of the problem causing the internal conflict. When it is the presence of God drawing our hearts to synchronize with His heart of perfect love that we are resisting, then the closer that love comes to us the more intense will be our feeling of condemnation and guilt.

This is perfectly in line with the illustration given in these verses about light and deeds of darkness. The closer that light comes to an area of darkness the more things hiding in that darkness are going to be exposed. If the things dwelling in darkness resist or resent being exposed then hearts and minds desiring to maintain that cloak of darkness are going to experience condemnation and fear as a result of the approaching light.

But much of the confusion surrounding these verses in my opinion involves what is really meant by the Light as well as what it means when it talks about deeds, either dark deeds or practicing the truth. Because of the generally external focus of most religion, these phrases tend to cause us to think more about our behavior than about the condition of our hearts and minds. These is the parts of these verses that I desire a clearer understanding about.

I have observed over the years that people who claim to have all the right facts, who claim to have the truth and the light but who do not have a heart relationship with Jesus personally, these people will most often view these verses as a confirmation that we must have intellectual truth and be living it out in our lives if we want to be ready to meet Jesus at the Second Coming. Their focus is largely upon learning doctrines comprehensively and getting all the facts about religion hammered out accurately. These people almost always insinuate that once we have most of our facts corrected in our minds that only then will we be able to enter into a deeper relationship with God – whatever that means to them. I know personally because I have been one of those most of my life. And my mind still tracks down that road of logic quite easily.

Since I grew up with this approach to religion I was diverted from finding a satisfying relationship with God for many years. That does not mean that it was not talked about frequently. But the basis of that relationship always included a great deal of effort to get my life in line with the many requirements of the Bible if I ever hoped for God to accept me fully and approve of my life. Because I always felt so much condemnation whenever I came closer to God I believed that He was condemning me and was disapproving and unaccepting of me as a person until I would get my act together better. The way to do that was to learn more truth and to beg God for more help and strength to get rid of more sin in my life so He could love me more.

This of course becomes an endless routine of circular thinking that gets one nowhere except into deeper and deeper frustration and despair. This is one of the devil's most effective counterfeits for the real truth of the gospel and I have lived in it for many years. I see many around me in various versions of this trap still and I get a little bit angry about it at times because of the debilitating effects this kind of religious thinking will produce in a person's heart.

What I am now seeing a little more clearly is that the reactions of condemnation that I feel as I sense the truth about Jesus through revelations of the Spirit are related to lies about Him inside of me. If I resist the fresh revelations about the compassion, love and true nature of Jesus as seen in the stories of His life or the explanations of Him in the New Testament, then my heart is going to feel condemnation as a result of that resistance. On the other hand, if I lay aside my preconceived ideas about God accumulated through years of tradition and culture and embrace each revelation about Jesus as it is presented to me by the Spirit, then instead of condemnation I find myself wanting to come even closer to Jesus in my own spirit and actually looking forward to more convictions by His Spirit. This is the process of coming to love the Light Himself, seeing the inner beauty of Jesus and God that can draw me into a real loving and saving relationship with Him.

Conviction by the Spirit of God is not something to be resented or resisted but is really just a sign that there is something inside of me out of harmony with the original design God created for me. As I choose to surrender to the convictions of the Spirit of God and come into alignment with His way of thinking and viewing reality, instead of experiencing increasing guilt or condemnation I experience a deepening connection at the heart level with God's heart and with all those who are likewise following on to know God more deeply. It is then that I begin to know what true fulfillment and satisfaction really feels like.

Right now it seems like this would fit into the meaning of the phrase, practices the truth in these verses, but that phrase seems somewhat awkward. Maybe it is an issue of how the translator's chose to word the original meaning – that is certainly often the case. But it is clear that there is two distinct and opposite mindsets in relation to the presence of Jesus as a Light that exposes what is hiding in our hearts. My decision as to how to respond to that uncomfortable exposure will determine whether I experience condemnation or whether I experience increased growth and am able to mature more into truly living in Christ.