The Core of Judgment

Jesus was not sent into this world to judge the world but to save it.

Jesus said that He was given the job of judge.

Jesus said that He never judges anyone, but that what would judge everyone in the end would be His words.

What is the difference between Jesus' judging, which He apparently did not do, and His words judging which is what will happen on the last day? How can the words of a person judge without the person themselves judging?

When we better understand this difference, which I am sure we do not understand very well yet, then it will affect the way we think and treat others around us. It may prevent us from judging and criticizing others and simply allow the Word of God to produce the judgment that is inevitable when it is clearly understood.

As I look at Romans 4 again in relation to this, I can see better that belief is really about God's words and how we choose to relate to them. If I believe that God can and will do what He promises to do in and through me from His Word, then I have entered into belief about the goodness and faithfulness of His character, His name. If I refuse to believe that God really has saved me or that my sins may be too hard for Him to forgive or that He really doesn't love me like His Word says that He does, then I will cut myself off from the life-giving Word, the promises that connect me with the only Source of life. Being cut off from life, the only other option is eternal death.

Unbelief creates fear, doubts, apprehension, apathy and every other fruit of sin. Unbelief can easily be disguised as rational thinking or realism. But the problem is that “realistic thinking” starts with a false assumption about what version of reality is true. It bases our decisions and premises on the counterfeit reality that is so familiar to us living in a sinful world instead of believing in the declarations about the real reality that is foreign to our way of thinking but that is revealed in the Word of God.

Jesus came to more clearly enunciate this true reality in the words that He spoke and the ways that He related to sinners and lost religious people. If we use our own measurements and assumptions about reality as the standard to which we compare the words of Jesus instead of making His words the standard of what is real, then we are living in unbelief and cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven.

To be born again is to enter into a real heart-level belief in the words of Jesus that conflict with our assumptions about reality. When we choose to believe God's words instead of what feels normal or right, then we will start thinking in harmony with God's view of reality and will not be judged. This is described as loving light in John 3.

If I insist that the way I have seen things from my perspective is more real than the way God says things, then I am loving darkness rather than light. For the words of God in Jesus are the light by which I am going to be judged or vindicated.

In the end, everyone will be measured against the words that they received from God to see what they chose to do about it. Judgment is the time of exposure when it becomes unavoidably clear to everyone around whether we really believe the things that God has said or whether we simply have used them to reinforce our own preconceptions and false ideas about God. For it is possible to use the words of God to keep in place many traditions and lies about Him and perpetuate false ideas about His attitude towards us.

Judgment, according to everything that I am starting to see here, is not what God decides about us as most people assume. Judgment is what happens as a result of the decision we make about whether God is really merciful, kind, compassionate, loving and doesn't resort to force to get His way. If we choose to follow on to believe the real truth about God as revealed in the words of Jesus, we will have to come to believe in a God who is radically different than the god that religion has taught us. And on the final day of judgment the natural consequences of sin will be supreme agony as our lies about God are exposed in contrast to the incredible truth about God's perfect love for us.

In the final day of judgment, as the lost begin to become aware that it is not God who is going to punish them, the agony of having lost their ability to respond to love will overwhelm them with anger, bitterness and rage against all who have misled them into believing that God was angry at them. The lies about God as arbitrary, angry and manipulative causes all who believe these ideas to rebel against such a deity, and rightfully so. But unless we come to embrace the real truth about God as a truly merciful God instead of a vengeful, arbitrary God who resorts to force and fear to control His subjects, we will never be able to come into that relationship of love and trust necessary for all those who will live for eternity in His presence.

The judgment then is simply the times when our real beliefs about God come out into the open and cause us to act out whatever comes naturally as a result. If we have come to know God as it is presently our privilege to know Him, then in the final judgment we will find that we can respond to Him and have His character ignited to its full potential in us. If we have rejected believing that God really loves us and does not hold our sins against us, if we reject the pleadings of His mercy and refuse to let His compassion and grace transform our thinking and our souls and our theology, then we will lose the capacity to interact with that love and too late we will face the fire of internal anguish as we realize that we have disqualified ourselves to survive in the fiery passion of His heart that is the essence of His presence.

Veil

A veil over our faces keeps us from knowing the truth of God's glory. But it also prevents us from appreciating or even comprehending the reality which surrounds us as heaven sees it. Having this veil is loving darkness rather than light. Indeed, the very purpose of a veil is to produce darkness, to obscure a face from the revealing light. Having a veil is refusing to be exposed, to have our faces seen by those around us because we are afraid or ashamed.

The people of Israel complained about the shining face of Moses and insisted that he put a veil over his face so they would not have to be exposed to the glory of God even second-hand. Paul puts a different spin on this story when he says that Moses put the veil over his face so that the people would not notice that the glory was fading away. Then he goes on to say that it is this same veil that still covers the faces of those who study the Scriptures diligently but fail to view them through the lenses of a real relationship with Jesus. Because of this darkening veil it is still impossible to truly perceive the real glory of God.

But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:15-18)

I see a correlation between this issue of a veil over our hearts and loving darkness discussed in John 3. In some way the person themselves is responsible as to whether the veil will remain or whether they will permit the Spirit of God to remove it so that they can really experience liberty. Nicodemus was covered with this veil when he came to talk with Jesus and this is the issue that Jesus was addressing in this passage of John 3.

When a person chooses to live without a veil to darken their heart, they become a person who loves the light, who comes to the light and who uses that light to behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. As they keep coming to the light and keep on being willing to be exposed by the Spirit of the Lord, they are in the process transformed in the image of God and increasingly reflect His glory. This is all part of being born again, of being born of the Spirit and giving the Spirit full access to continue the work of transformation.

The children of Israel under Moses resisted the light they saw on Moses' face so they insisted on the use of a veil instead of allowing that light to transform their own hearts. As a result we have the tragic history of their unbelief and resultant rebellion along with all its consequences throughout the 40 years of wandering around in the Arabian desert.

But Moses himself did not refuse the light of God and the Spirit of God kept using him and transforming him from one level of glory to another. And even though he also made a fatal mistake near the end of his life, God was so closely in touch with him and Moses was so humble and responsive to the discipline of God that God chose to elevate Moses after his punishment to even greater glory by honoring him as the first resurrected human ever to enter the gates of heaven.

Judgment Equations

This is the judgment... (John 3:19)

I feel like I need to take a completely fresh look at this word judgment as it is used in this passage in John 3. I keep running into seeming discrepancies that I keep circling around and I don't want to confuse or maybe deceive myself in order to maintain preconceived ideas that may not be in line with what is really true. I want God to unpack this more plainly for me which sometimes requires that I have to suspend everything I assume, even those things I am sure God has shown me in the past to some extent, and take another look at the basics again.

That can appear on the face to be a dangerous proposition at first and may feel a little scary. But truth itself is never afraid of close examination and re-examination and it will always come out to be consistent with all other truth. So if I need to change something I have believed about this it will not conflict with anything else that I have learned as long as it is true as well.

I'm not even sure how to go about this re-examination except to pray for an open mind and wisdom and insight that I seem to be missing at this point. I start by trying to compare these verses and also to see how they coordinate with other things I have been learning from various sources about this subject from the Bible. I realize that I am influenced by several teachers whom I have come to deeply respect that have shared their views of judgment from the Word. But I need to know for myself what this really means so I will not be ashamed when cross-examined about this at some point. I can freely admit that I do not fully understand it, but that does not excuse me from trying to understand it much more than I do no matter how much I have already learned.

So I come to approach this somewhat as a problem solving process like might be used to solve for an unknown in an algebraic equation. I realize that using formulas and logic alone is hazardous at best when coming to know real truth, but it is also legitimate and useful at times as long as it is not the sole consideration and is guided by keeping the ears and heart open to the Spirit. Math was also designed and invented by God so it is not wrong to use logic in our process of coming to know truth, it just cannot be the sole source of the basis for what we believe.

I have for some time been operating on the premise that this word judgment is primarily being used along the line of condemnation more than exposing. But then at other times I may have said that it means exposing rather than condemnation in the same passage. In the Greek it is using the same word throughout this passage so it is not usually safe to assume that an author is mixing meanings for the same word in the same passage. Another consideration that was brought to my attention recently was that there is clearly a different Greek word used for condemnation and that word is not used in this passage. This is the problem that seems to be emerging causing me the need to go back and carefully reconsider.

There are negatives and positives in these verses in relation to this word used for judgment. The first time it says that God did not send Jesus to judge this world. Then it says that anyone who believes in Him is not judged – a second and reinforcing negative. Actually there is more than this going on as is often the case in an equation. Verse 17 couples a negative and a positive with each other as a pair as does verse 18 with two of these pairs but reversed. This might be an important clue for me.

Then verse 19 seems to offer a clue as to the identity or value of this new factor that has been introduced into the equation. 17 and 18 have used the word judgment without defining its value and 19 seems to address at least part of that missing information – This is the judgment... Then in defining this unknown factor in the equation the definition itself introduces yet more ingredients – love, hate and fear, though love has already been mentioned in 16.

I am still not seeing this all clearly but something seems about to emerge if my mind and heart can just grasp it and if God will increase my understanding. Just like solving math equations was sometimes frustratingly difficult at times, this seems to have a complexity that as yet continues to elude my clear understanding and comprehension. But I am not satisfied to close the issue with stock answers from others who claim to have already figured it out. I want to know for myself what this really means, for part of God's intent for me I believe is to experience the deeper bonding with Him that takes place when I have to grapple with unknowns for a period of time while trying to make sense of things. By causing me to exercise my mind and heart beyond what is normal or comfortable means that I am forced to challenge assumptions and to deepen my connection with Him in the process.

If I take the position that judgment means condemnation in this passage, then it doesn't seem to fit very well in 19 though it can to an extent. I guess what has brought up this question is that I was listening to a favorite teacher of mine a few days ago say that this word here translated judgment is not the same Greek word used for condemnation. In my own research I found that there is clearly another Greek word that is translated condemnation that is different than this word used for judgment. This is what brings up my uneasiness that maybe I am trying to push this in the direction that I want instead of letting the Word and the Spirit explain themselves.

On the other hand, to accept that this is not referring to condemnation seems to push me to old models of thinking about God that are clearly untenable for me at this point, ideas about God that always led to fear and condemnation which have darkened my heart for most of my life. That is something I cannot go back to at any cost for it is to embrace a view of God and reality that only leads to legalism and lies about God that I have been coming away from. I cannot give up the light of truth about God in favor of trying to justify one passage which means that the larger truth must help me to understand more clearly the seeming confusion about this word in this passage.

This word judgment is not as simple to understand as many would make it out to be. I have been learning a lot about it from various places in the Bible which has definitely broadened my perception of its meaning but it is still somewhat confusing to me. Quite likely if I could read and clearly understand the original Hebrew and Greek myself it might add much more clarity to this. But I can't so I have to rely more on comments from others who do as well as listening to the One who inspired the Bible originally to explain it to me over time.

Possible meanings for the word judgment:

• Making a decision or determination about who is to blame for something bad that happened. Deciding who is guilty or innocent without their consent. Assembling evidence, witnesses and evaluators to conduct a legal process to create a label or identity to attach to a person accused of wrong-doing.

• Blaming, criticizing, condemning people for doing things we don't like in order to make them feel bad, guilty, afraid, worthless or to attempt to control their behavior.

• Love of deception, lies and counterfeit systems of life in contrast with loving truth no matter how inconvenient it might feel.

• Creating opportunity in seemingly passive ways for people to act out what their true motives are inside. Creating situations where their inhibitions might be reduced in order for it to be seen publicly what they will do when they feel there may be no consequences to inhibit them from carrying out the imaginations of their heart.

Before being able to reasonably come up with an understanding of the purpose of judgment it might be well to first of all understand which judgment we are referring to in our assumptions. Depending on which one of these versions of judgment we are talking about, the reasons for judgment will vary dramatically. And the kind of judgment we assume we are talking about will have a great deal to do with our beliefs about the motives of those who are assumed to be doing the judging.

I am struggling to discern in this passage why it starts with God saying He did not send His Son into the world to judge it but then turns around and says that this is judgment two verses later. That is the intriguing part that keeps me looking deeper to find what is really being said here. So I find it quite useful to at least temporarily suspend all my assumptions and beliefs about what I think judgment is in order for me to consider that it actually might be something possibly different if I would just be open-minded enough to consider it.

Of course, this passage alone may or may not have all the necessary information to determine the real meaning and purpose of judgment, but it certainly looks like it may be a significant part of the definition by the way it is worded. Other passages will certainly play into amplifying or altering the assumptions that may be drawn from this passage, but I do not want to overlook anything in these words right here by rushing off to bring in something else too soon. That might tend to be done in order to justify preconceptions rather than to necessarily add light to the subject. I believe other passages will greatly enhance the truth contained in these verses, but I want to be sure that I have given this passage enough opportunity to unpack itself and challenge my preconceptions to start with before bringing in more passages that will need to be carefully analyzed the same way.

Manifesting Deeds

"But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." (John 3:21)

So that it may be seen to others that the choices I made about my externals (my deeds) were motivated from a heart that is seeking to submit and synchronize with God's heart.

Does this mean that all the deeds are going to be right, perfect, good? Not necessarily. In fact, it is this very point that becomes a source of fear or contention. It is very easy for people to point out my errors, mistakes and failures and use them to claim that my heart is false, the my motives are evil, that I am a bad person that is not being honest about what is inside. They can easily claim based on my track record that I cannot possibly be practicing the truth because of all the mistakes they can see in my life. In short, they believe that the most important things about figuring out my identity are my faults and mistakes.

And this logic is very powerful in affecting my own thinking and perception about myself as well. Satan, the accuser, is always eager to reinforce this kind of shame and doubt about my connection and desire to follow God, to be in God, to abide in Him. And that is precisely why it is so important for me to keep coming to the light instead of trying to figure out my own motives or to justify myself against accusations.

This text does not say that it is my job to prove that what I am doing is motivated by a desire to follow God. It says that coming to the light will result in that being manifested. I am not the one responsible for manifesting to others what God is doing inside of me. I must rest in God and trust Him to manifest His work in and through me in the ways He chooses, not in order to justify myself. In fact, any time I try to justify myself or my actions I prevent Him the opportunity to justify me Himself. And that is certainly not a very good place to find myself.

But there seems to also be multiple layers of this. Parts of me are eager to come to the light to find that my motives are truly to know and follow God. But then I sense that there also may be deeper, darker areas inside of me that resist coming to the light even for me to see. Some would say that this indicates that my real self is much worse than I believe it to be. Others would say that it is simply an awareness of the sinful flesh that resides in every one of us. There is always debate going on about this and the motives of those debating this also have a great deal to do with the real meaning and truthfulness of the conclusions that they draw.

Then there are likely those who would say that all this introspection itself is the real problem. Is it? Sometimes I wonder myself. Am I trying to figure myself out and becoming more and more frustrated or am I really trying to understand God's word and how it applies to me personally? I have to conclude that in the end only God really knows the answer to these questions and that maybe He has other different questions or statements He is more interested in me dwelling on.

Believing and Consequences

No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. (Romans 4:20-25 NRSV)

As I saw these words on one of my walls earlier today it connected with my ongoing pursuit of understanding this thing John talks about so much in his writings – what it means to believe in Jesus and in the Father.

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)

I am perceiving that understanding the true meaning and nature of the kind of belief that Jesus talks about is an extremely large undertaking. The simplistic explanations of what it means to believe by many religious exporters falls far short of the deep heart involvement that God has in mind when it comes to believing in a way that is really meaningful. I really want to not only know what it means to believe with my mind but far more urgently I want to experience what I am learning about in this area.

Abraham encountered and experienced this thing called belief in such a way that God made him a prime exhibit of what He wants all of us to do in relationship to His words. The Bible says that Abraham believed in such a way that the result was an accounting of righteousness on his behalf, whatever that really means. And it seems to mean, besides maybe a lot of other things, that he and God became very connected in a mutual trust and love relationship at the heart level. That is certainly something that I need to experience much deeper myself.

I remember when these passages about Abraham were first pointed out to me a number of years ago. It startled me that belief and righteousness were described in this way – simply believing that God can and wants to do what He says He can do in our lives. James talks about this from a different angle and emphasizes that if Abraham had not taken action on his belief ideas that they would have been useless and lifeless. That describes much of the belief and faith that is promoted today. But that was not the main problem I grew up with. My culture emphasized belief as a very high priority in religious experience but without the focus on a personal relationship with God. It was belief in a set of doctrines and rules more than anything else.

As a result, there grew up around those rigid teachings a whole lot more rules that were supposedly designed to help us keep those “truths” from being contaminated or violated. This is exactly what the Jews had done by the time Jesus arrived on the scene and yet we today still cannot see the strong correlation between what we are doing and what they did back then. It is amazing how self-deception can keep millions of people oblivious to the presence of lies and false assumptions that govern every aspect of the life. I am no exception to this problem either.

What I find compelling in looking at these two passages together is what is involved in the belief described here in Romans and then how a failure to enter into that kind of belief will inevitably produce judgment in one's life. I feel I need to revisit my own comments about this passage that I wrote during my intensive study of the book of Romans and remind myself of what God was showing me about this verse. I feel I could really benefit from comparing those notes with the implications that relate to understanding judgment better in relation to these verses in John 3.

As I look at this again this passage in Romans seems to say to me that I will be filled/covered/accounted with righteousness (the essence of what God is) whenever I believe what is described next. And there is a great deal described in this passage that upon close examination is often not what we assume it says.

First of all, this belief is directed toward the Father God, not just Jesus Himself. That is very easily missed in a quick reading of this verse but is very clear upon close observation of what the words literally say. ...believe in Him who raised Jesus. This again reminds me that the main reason that Jesus came to live and die was to change our minds and opinions about God, not to change His feelings about us in the slightest. The whole Trinity loves us in unison with love that is unquenchable and will never cease. They are all in perfect agreement in their desire to save us from the lies about Them that sin has poisoned us with and that prevents us from trusting Them in faith.

The only way that I can come into a saving faith relationship with God is to first begin to have my perceptions of God changed. I simply cannot produce trust in anyone that I cannot see good reasons to trust, not at least at the heart level. Ironically I actually violate that statement much of the time by trusting my heart to humans who have never earned my trust simply because they look good or have fooled me into believing they won't hurt me. Part of the insanity of sin and its effect on our psyche is that we too easily trust the untrustworthy here on earth while we uniformly seem unable to trust the only One who really is trustworthy because of the lies about Him that are embedded so deeply into our hearts.

The last two items listed in this passage from Romans have great significance that is also easily overlooked. We talk a great deal in various ways about Jesus being handed over for our sins, but there is so much in that phrase that completely flies right over our heads and never connects. I don't have time here to go into all of them but again I believe that I may have tried to unpack at least some of this in my previous notes when I studied this much more some time ago.

The second phrase, was raised for our justification, is even more startling and misunderstood. This too I remember dwelling on in my previous notes and I remember how surprised I was when I first saw this. It really challenges me to examine closely what I believe about what Jesus really did for me on the cross and for me to take a hard look at the many questionable assumptions about the cross contained in most of the teachings of religion along this line.

But part of what I am seeing today is the connections between properly believing these truths in relationship to what Jesus did for me and the presence of judgment referred to in John 3. This judgment is not an imposed, arbitrary condemnation type of judgment inflicted on anyone who refuses to believe things the way God insists we must. This is a judgment – an exposing of the heart – that is a natural consequence that results from the outgrowth of what I have chosen to believe about both the Father and about Jesus and His death on the cross for me.

This is really a warning to me to be very careful about swallowing the typical jargon and assumptions about the cross that swirl around in religious teachings today. Most of what I hear about the cross of Christ is tainted with false assumptions about what it really meant and is almost consistently based on terrible assumptions about the Father and His supposed animosity toward sinners. When the cross is seen in the light of Jesus placating an angry Father to any degree, then that belief is dangerously laced with deadly poisonous lies about God that must be avoided at all costs. That kind of thinking and believing is not a saving faith but is the kind of belief that will produce negative judgment in the heart and life.

This can help to explain why most of Christianity today is so full of condemnation, fear and confusion. It is because nearly all of our teachings about the Father and about the cross of Christ is founded upon false beliefs about how God feels toward us and how He implements salvation and even what those words mean in the first place. There seems to be more confusion, darkness and distortions about the cross of Jesus Christ and what it means for sinners than there is about anything else in the Bible.

But that should come as no surprise, for Satan is intent on keeping us from knowing the real truth about God in any way possible. And the focal point of his plans to keep us in darkness is to promote lies about God that will attack the plainest demonstration of love this universe has ever witnessed. In the ways that we usually present the cross we actually endorse many of the lies of Satan and weave them into our explanations of what was going on there which in turn weakens our faith instead of strengthening it. What is truly amazing is that in spite of all these fierce attempts by demons and sinners to obscure the truth about God through religion, through blatant lies or by any other means, the incredible love of God and the truth about Him is simply so big and powerful and unstoppable that it continues to leak around and through all the barricades of lies, distortions and perversions of the reality of God's positive attitude towards us.

It is at this juncture that we find this verse in John applicable. This is where each one of us finds ourselves looking into the measuring mirror of truth. When we come to begin to perceive some of the real truth about God's attitude towards us as described here in John 3, it is then that our deeper motives and attitudes begin to be exposed. It is here that we either are confronted with our love for darkness or can see more clearly that what we really desire is to grow closer to the light of the truth about God. The real core issue that is the pivotal point of destiny here is whether we are willing to be exposed and healed by the light of truth about God that will continue to challenge and often shatter our preconceptions about reality and God or whether we will insist on clinging to our fears and assumptions about God and His supposed anger towards us.

If we choose to remain in the darkness of false assumptions about God after seeing the truth as it is in Jesus, the consequences of that choice always results in more darkness, increased condemnation, reduced ability to embrace repentance and reduced ability to feel convicted by the Spirit of God. As this condition intensifies by repeated resistance to the real truth about God, we will find it easier to believe our lies, our false systems of belief about Him, our false constructs of religious explanations about the cross and God's wrath and all sorts of other religious-sounding topics. All of this religion will lead us to believe that we are in fact living in increased light while in reality our hearts are being shrouded in darkness and are becoming hardened against the gentle voice of a compassionate Father pleading with us through His Spirit to believe in Him.

If I am unwilling to believe in the scandalous-sounding mercy, grace and compassion of the Father; if I am unwilling to believe that the Father loves me exactly like the Son does; if I believe that Jesus was appeasing an angry God when He died on the cross instead of exposing the intense passionate love of the Father to me, then the effect of that belief will keep my mind in darkness and will produce judgment and condemnation in my heart that will prevent me from being able to trust this God who desires to save me from the destructive lies about Him that infect my soul.

But if I allow the real truth about God to cut through my traditions, upset my life-long assumptions and the religious teachings I have embraced all of my life; if I allow my mind and heart to open up to radical new impressions and emotions and ideas about what God is really like and give Him permission to reveal Himself to me personally, then it will become evident that my motives are inspired by the Spirit of God and that I am being drawn to a Light that is different than what I have ever believed before.