Just Because

I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. (John 5:30)

I have seen for quite some time that what most people term 'justice' is very often quite different than what heaven views as justice. Having grown up myself in a culture that abuses the idea of justice and perverts it for selfish gain or political advantages, I have been seeking to grasp in my own mind what the real kind of justice looks like, how it really operates and to perceive its true nature.

Part of what I have been learning is that true justice has far more to do with natural consequences than is has to do with punishments. In fact, I believe that real justice is possibly only about consequences except when it is artificially imposed as a means of changing the thinking of a person who is living under the grace of probation in order to get them to realize the enormous dangers from making wrong choices. God is shielding all of us from suffering the full natural consequences of violating natural principles of reality that we often call laws, many of which we may still be ignorant. He may sometimes impose or allow lesser painful things to happen to us in order to provide a window of opportunity for us to turn from our evil ways and to have our hearts and beliefs more closely aligned with His eternal principles.

But when it comes to the final judgment, I don't believe there is any shred of imposition of artificial punishment on the part of God. All of the opportunities for changing our characters during a time of probation and protective grace that has shielded us from ultimate consequences will quickly evaporate. In the last moments of judgment day we are all going to be exposed to the immensity and intensity of the greatness of God, the passionate power of God's unquenchable love and the results of that exposure will be either natural and permanent annihilation or spectacular glorification.

In this verse I perceive that Jesus is speaking about much bigger truths and facts than we normally think about with our small views of reality. Jesus is ever trying to get us to think much larger, to put our lives and problems and issues and questions into the context of the much bigger picture of the reality of what is taking place in the rest of the universe. When He says that His judgment is just, He is striking at the very heart of the arguments that Satan has been using against the government of God since the very inception of sin. This verse addresses the core issues of the contention between Christ and Satan and that fuel the great battle going on between them, between light and darkness, between truth and deception, between good and evil.

In this verse I see Jesus stating rather clearly why it is that His version of judgment is just in contrast to all other ideas about judgment and justice. Examples abound around us of perversions of justice. We don't have to look very far at all to find ugly manifestations of injustice committed in the name of justice. But what is vitally needed are demonstrations of real justice, the kind of justice that only comes when God is involved. We need these kinds of examples of real judgment and justice if we are ever to come to a better appreciation and understanding of what real justice looks like or begin to have it worked out in our own life and relationships with others.

My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will...

Here is one of the strongest clues that helps me see the true nature of valid justice. A person who is practicing the kind of justice or judgment that is in harmony with heaven's reality will never allow selfish motives to play into the decisions being made. Given the corruption and ulterior motives, greed and thirst for power in the hearts of most judges in our courts today, it is easy to see why so little real justice can ever be found in the government systems that uses the name justice so glibly. But Jesus makes it explicitly clear in this verse that He has no part in the corrupting influences of earthly counterfeits of justice but only deals with the kind of justice reflective of the perfect, loving, selfless nature of God's character.

While Jesus certainly stands to benefit from the salvation of His children, He also is going to suffer even greater, far greater losses as most of His earthly children reject His offers of mercy and refuse to believe the truth about His Father. But real justice never plays favorites at the expense of truth, and real truth cannot be hidden forever just as light cannot avoid dispelling darkness. Salvation is the incredible arrangement of God by which the secrets of His character are finally revealed that have been hidden from the minds of angels and men alike from all eternity past.

Lucifer thought he knew enough about the principles of reality to outsmart God and to set up an alternative form of government that could supplant the government of heaven. His schemes and intricate deceptions and complex arguments and proposals were so compelling that around one third of all the extremely intelligent angels of heaven fell for his reasoning and joined him in his new government.

But Lucifer miscalculated and failed to perceive even deeper things in the Father's heart and wisdom that was beyond his grasp. Although it was his primary role as covering cherub over the throne of God to perceive the principles of reality and the character of the Father and then and expound that to the rest of the intelligent beings God had created, he didn't realize that he had missed some of the most vital elements of God's character in his rush to exalt himself in the estimation of heavenly intelligences and elevate his reputation above that of Christ.

Satan has worked extremely hard on the minds of created beings to separate the concepts of love and mercy, justice and grace. Humans in particular have fallen for his misrepresentations of these realities and we have believed that these concepts are in competition with each other or possibly even mutually exclusive. As a result we have come up with notions and perceptions of God that are horrendous in nature and that are more reflective of the character of the devil more than that of truth and righteousness. All this is what Jesus came to this earth to challenge and counteract.

But in coming to this earth to reveal to us the true nature of the Father, Jesus never once participated or employed the methods of His opponent to accomplish His purposes. God's goodness and grace and love are good enough and always have been. God never had to change anything about Himself or His ways to accommodate the emergence of sin into the universe. If He had done so it would have proven Satan's assertions that there was a flaw in the system of heaven, that love was not enough to deal with all potential problems and that God's ways of dealing were not strong enough to ensure loyalty and allegiance and respect and obedience.

Lucifer proposed that some tweaking was necessary to ensure stability in the government of heaven, that there were additional factors that needed to be introduced to patch hidden weaknesses of God's government not perceptible by lesser intelligent beings. He proposed that given his superior capacities to perceive intricate and complex issues beyond the ability of any other created being to grasp, only he knew of these inherent weaknesses and had the ability and wisdom to create a fix for the 'holes' that he had discovered in God's ways of governing.

But what most could not see and many still cannot perceive, is that it is the logic of Lucifer that is full of holes and leaps of logic, not the government and character of God that has a problem. We have all lived under the government and logic of Satan all of our lives, and this earth has been so immersed in this way of thinking that it is impossible for any of us to understand reality the way God designed it without supernatural revelation from the only Source of wisdom. Only God can explain His own character and only God can refute the compelling deceptive arguments of His arch rival. If highly intelligent, unfallen, untainted angels of heaven struggle to see through the mirage of deceptions invented by the most intelligent created being in all the universe, then weak, fallen human beings have no chance whatsoever in figuring out reality without direct intervention by a Savior and Mediator sent to reveal the truth about the Father.

This is precisely why Jesus says in this verse, I can do nothing on My own initiative. It is not that Jesus is incapable of doing anything on His own but that if He were ever to do so while living as a human sent to reveal the real truth about the Father that He would neutralize the very method by which the Father had to be revealed. If Jesus were to even for a fleeting moment act or do or say anything from a motive infected with selfishness, He would have justified Satan's charges against the government of heaven and would have lost the war between Him and the enemy of God.

Notice the extremely close link created between this phrase and the definition of justice in the latter part of this verse. It is found in the word because. It is because Jesus never did anything on His own initiative that He is able to legitimately claim that His judgments are perfectly just and fair. The foundation of God's government rests squarely on the principles of selfless love and service for others. Thus, for Jesus to reveal the heart of God's true character that has been obscured ever since Lucifer introduced rebellion and sin into the universe, He could not be tainted in the slightest with the toxic poison of selfishness even in the slightest degree.

Thus is becomes plain here that real justice and valid judgment must always be totally free of the contaminating element of self-serving or selfishness on the part of anyone doing the judging. If we apply this principle to the many times that we judge those around us or even judge God about how He treats us, it becomes quickly evident that our ways of doing judgment are pretty much all counterfeit in nature and are invalid and distorted. Only the judgment of God as revealed in the ways and life of Jesus demonstrates what true justice looks like.

And, contrary to the claims and attempts of Satan to drive a wedge between the ideas of justice and mercy, forgiveness and fairness, grace and law, it will finally be seen that there really is no distinction whatsoever between these concepts in the heart of the Father. Real justice is mercy and authentic mercy is one of the highest forms of true justice. Law and grace will at last be seen to have no tension whatsoever between them, but all of these are simply perfectly synchronized expressions of the balanced and amazing synergy of the one central reality in the heart of the Father – supreme love.

Just as a rainbow is an integrated and inseparable demonstration of light broken down into a variated illustration of the aspects of pure light, so all of the varied identities that we think of as different and possibly even in competition with each other are only the variated revelations of the heart of passionate love from a perfect Father who has created all things beautiful in its time.

This revelation of truth confronts me very strongly. I know that Jesus is my perfect example of how to live. What I am seeing more clearly here is that anytime I act from my own initiative that very likely I will find myself straying out of the ways of God and into the counterfeit system of thinking that appears so logical and practical. All sorts of questions immediately begin to rise up in my mind and many of them are not easy to answer. But the words of Jesus cannot be avoided and I am compelled to examine my own motives and beliefs and assumptions about how to live life each day as a practical Christian like Jesus did.

And yet, if I want my life to reflect the kind of justice that comes from God's heart, then I must learn to live as Jesus lived in some sort of perfect arrangement of reflective righteousness instead of self-initiated goodness with lots of God's help. Now, that's starting to sound like something I've heard before.

Father, continue to transform me and teach me and polish me and use me to reflect more and more Your goodness and perfect love and Your kind of judgment and justice. Help me to hear more clearly so that my choices and actions and words are reflective of Your nature and character instead of mine. Make me a better channel of Your truth and compassion and love and grace to others today – for Your name's sake, Amen.