Passing Out of Death

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. (John 5:24)

For some time now I have been learning that the concept of judgment is quite different than what is usually supposed by most people. I realize that this implies to many that I think I know better than everyone else or that maybe I am just stubborn and want to be unique and strike out to blaze some new trail just to distinguish myself from everyone else.

But this is not really the case, though I am certainly just as liable to fall into deceptions of pride like many others. Over the past few years I feel that I have been led to question all of the assumptions of religion that I have been handed and to begin to think through things for myself instead of just blindly accepting what others have taught me either directly or by implication. And as I have challenged assumption after assumption and the many religious words and clichés that circulate around today, I have found time after time that I live in a miasma of deceptions calculated to keeping me from perceiving the real truths about God and experiencing true spiritual growth as God intends for me to encounter.

There is great fear among people and particularly leaders who exert control over other people's thinking to allow people to explore the Word of God for themselves and to learn to listen directly to the Holy Spirit. When people are allowed to seek to know and discover truth for themselves outside the strict boundaries put around them by their leaders, the established system comes into great danger of losing much of its power and influence and even financial support as people begin to discover that truth is different and much broader and deeper than they were ever allowed to perceive while constricted within the narrow confines of typical religion.

In addition, people will begin to discover that God does not employ the use of force, fear, punishments and intimidations like most people are accustomed to believing. It will be seen more clearly that most of these techniques are really methods of religious systems and human institutions to keep the masses under their control instead of knowing the ways of God. In all of this the true God of heaven is misrepresented to the common person and His reputation is severely tarnished. In fact, what Satan has managed to pull off is to convince most people that God's character is more like Satan's than it is like what God claims He is like.

The issue of judgment and what that looks like and what it means and involves is one of the truths that has been seriously abused and distorted to manipulate people into blind servitude to abusive religious systems of control. God has been painted to be a harsh, arbitrary judge eagerly looking for excuses to 'get even' or to exclude from His presence anyone who strays too far out of line with His demands. On the other hand, other people are so disgusted with this dark view of God that they either reject the idea altogether that there even is a God or they paint Him as one who is totally permissive and so 'loving' that He would allow anything and everything to go unnoticed in the lives of all who are willing to say a few 'magic religious words' which will somehow give them a guaranteed ticket into paradise.

All of these distortions of truth come about partly because people are not willing to invest time and effort and humble themselves enough to listen personally to the voice of God to their souls and spend personal time in the Word of God. What is needed today is a massive revival of true Bible study – real study guided by the Author of that Word, not carefully controlled and predigested so-called 'Bible studies' that merely have people fill in the 'correct' answers to questions they may not even feel like asking.

We need to be willing to come into personal accountability to the authority of God in our own hearts and to spend significant time exposing ourselves to the only reliable document that can objectively expose the falsehood and lies about reality that permeate this planet. Instead of relying so much on religious people around us to learn truth and pass it on to us, we must be willing to allow the Spirit of God to personally expose our hearts and minds to truth and to transform us into His own image through that process.

The idea of judgment has become so perverted that sometimes I find it useful to simply lay aside all preconceived opinions for a time whenever I come to this teaching in the Word and to allow the Spirit to show me from the context what might have been overlooked either by others or by myself in my previous ideas of this word. I have already seen rather distinctly that the way God uses this term is radically different than the way our social systems utilize it. The way most people think of judgment usually is more along the lines of condemning people for doing bad things rather than the way heaven speaks of judgment. Most people tend to think of judgment as parallel to our desires of 'getting even' or accomplishing revenge. That is why in Romans we are told to leave vengeance in God's hands, partly because we have almost no idea of the way heaven perceives justice. (Romans 12:19)

I have been coming to see over a number of years how heaven's views of judgment are so different and yet so revealing about the true nature of God when understood properly. Instead of promoting the conflicting idea that judgment is condemnation, which directly contradicts the plain words of Jesus Himself to Nicodemus, I have been seeing that true judgment is more along the lines of simply exposing all that is hidden in the secret places of the heart. Judgment is bringing out into the open the hidden motives that people thought would never be seen or that maybe even they did not discern themselves. Judgment is really the ultimate simplification of everything back to its original intent and purpose, not an imposition from some arbitrary judge who forces His will on rebels and takes away their freedoms.

Modern beliefs about judgment and justice are so perverted that it is very dangerous to try to use our systems to understand heaven's ideas about judgment. Whenever I hear someone using our government methods of 'justice' to explain why God does things I begin to cringe, because using human inventions to understand how God operates is always fraught with extreme danger. It leaves far too much room to implicate selfish motives and methods in the ways of heaven because they sound so logical and normal to our way of thinking. But God's ways are not our ways and we must be extremely careful to allow God to define what His ways are instead of us trying to insinuate our assumptions onto His character.

This verse is very intriguing because it describes a people who apparently do not even come into judgment, whatever that term means in the mind of Jesus. This statement of Jesus alone brings into serious question our normal assumptions about what is involved in judgment. That is why I want to allow the context here and the Spirit of God to unveil what can be learned about heaven's opinion about what judgment is instead of relying on human perversions of judgment that are all around me. This text is so full of deep meaning that I want to spend careful time allowing it to glow with truth that is so close to the surface here.

Recently I have pondered the significance in this verse of believing and hearing and having eternal life. It is the people who do this according to Jesus who will not come into judgment but have passed from death into life. That last phrase also adds a big clue to discovering what true judgment is all about. If judgment is not condemnation as many assume it is, then what does it really mean given this context and description?

This whole passage is filled with references to judgment that can be very revealing to an honest, open mind. Jesus refers repeatedly to this idea of judgment in relation to life and death and belief and resurrection. There is certainly vital truth to be learned about judgment here and I want to conform my own beliefs around what Jesus is trying to convey in these important words so what I can be part of that group of people who do not come into judgment but pass from death into life.