Deferring Judgment

For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son. (John 5:21-22)

I am noticing a growing distinction between the roles of the Son and the Father in these verses, but not a difference in character or intentions. In this discourse Jesus is clearly laying out for us some vital inside information about what is going on in the bigger picture behind the scenes that we could not know without this revelation. I have been intrigued over the years as I have come across various clues about some of the principles behind what seems obvious to us that are so important to making sense of why certain things happen or don't happen. This is yet another one of those clues.

In these verses I see Jesus declaring a certain difference in the way the Father has chosen to respond to the problem of sin that has come up in the universe, and the role that has been assigned to the Son. While the Father participates in raising the dead and giving them life, it seems to remain true in this verse that He doesn't necessarily go past that point. This is specifically pointed out in the following verse and the rest of this passage in what the Son does that the Father abstains from doing. That part of the resolution of the great war between the Godhead and Satan's attacks against them is that the Father has deferred all judgment Himself and has given full responsibility of that into the care of the Son until everything is fully resolved.

This aspect of how the Godhead has chosen to deal with sin has a great deal of instruction and value in it if properly understood and appreciated I believe. I don't yet grasp most of the implications of this important truth but I am trying to stretch my mind to get a better hold on it and seek to have the Spirit of God reveal more to me about this. I feel that it is vital for me to grasp more intently the significance of this reality because understanding and appreciating this will radically alter the way I myself will respond to similar situations in my own experience. I will more accurately reflect the kind of character that God has in my own responses to accusations and will demonstrate the kind of response that God would do as His presence dwells in me and leads me to respond differently than I 'normally' would.

It looks to me like what God has chosen to do is to submit to the judgment of the universe instead of trying to vindicate or justify Himself in the eyes of His created beings. This may at first sound astounding, unbelievable, and maybe even heretical in the opinion of many religious people; but I have been coming to this conclusion for many years now in my study of the Word. God does not ask us to do something He is unwilling to do Himself; so when He tells us that we should not resist an evil person or try to get vengeance for ourselves, He is going to respond in the very same way Himself when attacked or accused.

God is modeling to all the universe the proper and only effective way to respond to accusations, particularly false attacks, innuendos and slander against our reputation. The Father has chosen to not only submit to the decision of all of His created beings in the final day of revelation and judgment along with everyone else, but in the largely misunderstood plan of salvation that has been crafted by the Trinity from ages before even time began, they have covenanted to have the Son be the Judge of all the universe until the point when all of these accusations have been fully resolved.

This is one of the few places in Scripture that clearly spells out this fact. Jesus says here that not even the Father judges anyone. Implied in these words is the problem that Jesus was facing right at the time He was speaking these words. The religious leaders and people who thought they had been given the authority to make determinations about others around them were judging and condemning Jesus, because in their strong opinion He had broken the laws of God and of their country and deserved to be censored at best. Their feelings about Jesus' violations of their rules ran so deep that many of them even wanted to kill Him.

As I have been learning over the past few years, our greatest temptations come in the form of wanting to react in kind to how we are being mistreated. If someone becomes angry at me I am sorely tempted to become angry in return. If someone cheats me I want to 'get even' somehow. If someone strikes me I want to strike back so they can feel at least the same amount of pain that I have felt. We call this 'getting even' mentality 'justice'. Pretty much our whole legal system is set up based on this distorted mentality and most people, even those who believe they are Christians, have come to assume that God's justice is reflective of the way we do things in our justice system. But that is far from the real truth. We need to have our eyes and understanding opened to see how heaven views things and the reality outside of our dreadfully artificial cocoon that we live in on this planet of sin.

This is precisely why we have such a very hard time accepting many of the teachings of Jesus at face value and the principles laid out in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. It is there that God is revealing more clearly the underlying principles of reality that exists plainly everywhere else but on this planet. These underlying principles are what Jesus was talking about when He repeatedly mentioned what the Kingdom of Heaven was like. But these principles are a radical departure from the way we assume things are supposed to be, and if we don't challenge our own assumptions but simply try to adapt and conform Jesus' teachings to fit our own ideas and beliefs we will continue to miss the main points of what Jesus is trying to convey to us about reality.

Justice in the true Kingdom of Heaven is so different than the kind of earthly justice we are familiar with that it seems almost unjust to us because it doesn't satisfy our deep thirst for revenge and retaliation that broods deep in the heart of every wounded person. We sometimes try to mask these deep desires for revenge by religious talk and pious platitudes to give them a religious veneer, but deep inside the Spirit will continue to challenge us with conviction that our ways really are not God's ways at all.

In this verse Jesus makes it very plain how God has chosen to respond to the accusations against Him that Lucifer birthed in the very center of the literal Kingdom of Heaven. If we refuse to pay attention to these important revelations about the true nature of God's Kingdom we will fail to enter into the kind of life that is so necessary for us to experience in order to enjoy living in that Kingdom throughout eternity.

I have only begun to scratch the surface on this and I cannot take the time right now to further develop it. But neither do I want to just stop at this point and forget to continue to pursue this thread that is opening up whole new areas of insight and awe in my growing awareness of God's true character. It is nearly stunning to try to grasp the fact that the most powerful, undisputed Being at the center of all the universe would submit to being judged by the puny, inferior creatures that came from His hands and relinquish the control of that judgment into the hands of another, even if that Other is part of the Godhead Himself. But the Father is not afraid of the outcome of this judgment but is depending on it to reveal the hidden underlying principles that even Lucifer failed to take into account in his 'new theology' during the early days of his rebellion.

Now we are deep into the after-effects of Lucifer's rebellion – the effects of his new theology – and we find ourselves immersed in the lies and deceptions and distortions of his ill-logic. Jesus was sent to this earth for a variety of reasons, not the least of to expose the falsity of Satan's lies about God, but more importantly to qualify Himself in the eyes of all involved so as to gain credibility as a human being to be considered a fair and sympathetic Judge in the final showdown that is coming very soon between God and Satan.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)