Truth About Judgment

For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. (John 5:22-23)

As I read the devotional from Oswald Chambers for today, I was alerted to something I had not noticed before concerning judgment. It really helped open my eyes to an important truth lurking in these verses and that has been emerging more into my awareness over the past few years. But I have never seen it quite so clearly as I have today.

I have been noticing recently the fact that the great war going on in the universe between good and evil revolves centrally about the issue of the Son of God, Jesus Christ and what all created beings believe about Him and His authority. It was this very issue that first initiated the seed of sin as it was originally conceived in the mind and heart of Lucifer, the covering cherub assigned to hover over the throne of the great God of the universe. Christ, the Son of God, from evidence gleaned here and there throughout the Bible, seems to have been involved similarly around the throne and well may have been a companion to Lucifer. He may have seemed so similar in appearance and function to Lucifer that it might have been possible for Lucifer to mistakenly come to assume that Christ was not necessarily equal with God the Father but was more like himself as a created being.

When the Godhead went into secret planning sessions in preparation for creating this world and were designing a race of beings to uniquely reflect the image and likeness of God, Lucifer began to be jealous of the fact that Christ was taken into the secret discussions while he was excluded. He wondered why Christ was allowed to participate in that level of confidence while Lucifer, the highest created being and the most intelligent and beautiful of any angel in the entire universe, was not allowed into those secret councils. As a result he allowed jealously to remain and grow and deepen into resentment and for the first time ever selfishness became a dangerous element that began to sour, contaminate and infect the heart of perfect beings.

Up to that point in time there was no one in the entire universe that had ever questioned the perfect love of God or the perfect arrangement and function of all creation that God had placed into existence. But even in the midst of perfection throughout the universe it was necessary for faith to exist. We sometimes assume that if we lived in a more perfect world that we would not need to exercise faith because everything would be plain. But that is not so true. The angels of God actually lived in faith long before sin ever came into existence – they just didn't realize how important that faith was or ever stopped to analyze just what it was; they simply lived a life of perfect faith which is just implicit trust in the heart of a perfectly loving God whom they believed would always take care of them and provide for all of their needs.

When Lucifer began to allow doubts about God's goodness to linger in his heart and mind and when those doubts began to formulate into concepts and ideas and strengthen like noxious weeds inside of him, he also began to resist the convicting Spirit of God that warned him of the danger of his new urges and selfish feelings. As he began to resist internally more and more that quiet conviction, in turn he gave more room for these strange notions to coalesce and deepen. As a result, sin began to take on all the counterfeit aspects of deception and his brilliant mind began to invent perversions of true reality. To justify his feelings and growing deceptions, Lucifer had to continue to fabricate more and more compelling ideas about why he believed he was right and that Christ was the real problem with God's government. Finally God had to be more open in His warnings to the angels and to Lucifer that the path they were starting to follow would only lead them to disaster and ruin.

Of course, another problem was that there had never been such a thing as death or pain or disaster before, these things had never existed. So warnings in that context may not have had the same impact as they potentially can have on those of us who are all too familiar with pain and death. But that does not mean that the angels could be excused for not responding properly to warnings from God. For it is not the presence of fear based on personal knowledge of sin that is the motivation we need to stay in alignment with God as many suppose; it is a choice to trust the heart of the Father and choose to believe His words and declarations even when we cannot understand how it all is going to work out. That is the nature of true faith and it was just as necessary for the angels then as it is for us today.

Because the central issue that initiated the beginnings of sin in Lucifer's heart revolved around disputing the inherent authority of Christ the Son of God, that issue continues to be at the center of the dispute and will be up to the last moments of the final Day of Judgment that will expose the complete truth about both the Father and the Son. Thus, judgment is really all about exposing the truth about Jesus Christ as well as about the Father, not mainly about exposing all the sins and faults of those who have rebelled against God. Those are just evidence as to the credibility of the witnesses.

The very term judgment has been so mistakenly used in our thinking for ideas about forcefully imposing arbitrary punishments on people who commit bad actions against others that we have pretty much completely lost sight of the real purpose and nature of God's judgment. This has been slowly emerging into my attention over the past few years and it has caused me to become very excited as I am beginning to see what true judgment is really all about. As Revelation 14:7 plainly states, "Fear God, and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heaven and the earth and sea and springs of waters."

It is now becoming more and more clear to me that God's judgment is all about correcting the lies about God and about the Son of God that have plagued the universe ever since the inception of sin and the rebellion of Lucifer became a full-blown war in heaven. The real battle has always been over the authority of Christ to exercise the full prerogatives of God in the universe and this has been the point of contention repeatedly every time the war becomes evident. This is the issue that Jesus is addressing in these verses and is one of the issues that lies at the root of much of our own sin problems.

Is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, qualified to reveal the correct truth about the Father and how the Father relates to all created beings? Is Jesus Christ actually God or is He a created being? Does Jesus have both the inherent authority and the received authority from the acknowledged Supreme Authority of all the universe to govern and determine and expose the real truth about both God and about sin and all those who have chosen to embrace the lies of sin?

I would like to go ahead and quote the devotional for today that I mentioned at the beginning, but now from the context that I have just laid out here (with added emphasis of my own) and then make a few final comments.

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God. 1 Peter 4:17.

The Christian worker must never forget that salvation is God’s thought, not man’s; therefore it is an unfathomable abyss. Salvation is the great thought of God, not an experience. Experience is only a gateway by which salvation comes into our conscious life. Never preach the experience; preach the great thought of God behind. When we preach we are not proclaiming how man can be saved from hell and be made moral and pure; we are conveying good news about God.

In the teachings of Jesus Christ the element of judgment is always brought out, it is the sign of God’s love. Never sympathize with a soul who finds it difficult to get to God; God is not to blame. It is not for us to find out the reason why it is difficult, but so to present the truth of God that the Spirit of God will show what is wrong. The great sterling test in preaching is that it brings everyone to judgment. The Spirit of God locates each one to himself.

If Jesus ever gave us a command He could not enable us to fulfill, He would be a liar; and if we make our inability a barrier to obedience, it means we are telling God there is something He has not taken into account. Every element of self-reliance must be slain by the power of God. Complete weakness and dependence will always be the occasion for the Spirit of God to manifest His power.

Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI : Discovery House Publishers, 1993, c1935, S. May 5

This affirms what I have been discovering for a number of years now – that the real truth about God and His potent love is the real issue of judgment. True judgment is not primarily a rehashing of all of our sins and faults or our failures to ask for forgiveness. Judgment and salvation is mainly about revealing the actual truth, both about God and His perfect, unconditional love for His created beings and about the fact that Jesus Christ is actually and incontrovertibly one and the same as God the Father and as such is a perfect expression of the character of the Father.

From this perspective of the true meaning of judgment, it suddenly crashed into my awareness this morning what this text really means that was quoted at the beginning of this devotional. Of course judgment needs to begin at the house of God! And it will begin with the people who finally allow God to reveal Himself through them by dwelling in them. Where else should the revelation of the real truth about God – the true meaning of judgment – begin? God intends to reveal to the entire universe the true nature of His own character by reproducing His perfect love and what He looks like under the pressure of surrounding sin and antagonism, first in the life of Jesus when He lived here on earth and finally in the lives of a special group of people in the last days of this earth's history.

Judgment – the revelation of what God is really like and how He relates to others – will happen when those who claim to be filled with His Spirit begin to allow that Spirit to totally control everything they do and say and think and feel. When that begins to happen they will collectively start to live the life that Jesus lived and will fulfill the prophetic words of Jesus Himself, Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. (John 14:12)

Father, prepare and shape and transform my own heart and life to be part of that group of people who will expose and bring about real judgment – the revelation of Your perfect character and love to the world in the face of any and all opposition and resistance. Cleanse me of all of my resistance to You and demonstrate the incredible power of Your grace to change this sinner into a saint – all for Your name and for Your reputation's sake, Amen.

Believing the Father

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)

I just noticed this unique statement about believing in the Father as well as the Son. Maybe it is not so unique because it is mentioned elsewhere, but it is not emphasized to the degree that maybe it should be in the thinking of many people.

We tend to put more weight on believing in Jesus than we do in finding out the real truth about the Father. And I suspect that this just might be the way Satan wants it to be. For considering many of the horrendous ideas about God that most people have mingled all through their thinking and belief systems, most people's beliefs about Jesus look very good by comparison.

But this is precisely one of the reasons why Jesus came to this earth in the first place – to reveal the truth about the heart of the Father and that the Head of the Godhead, the Father of all light and truth and goodness and love is no different in the slightest iota from how Jesus feels toward us or how He relates to sinners.

Most Christians have far less trouble believing that Jesus is good and that He cares about them than they do in believing that God the Father is equally loving and caring and kind and gracious. Satan has effectively managed to segregate our ideas about Jesus and the Father to a great extent, and much of that has taken place at a deeper level than most of us are even conscious of to a great degree. This has been Satan's scheme from the very beginning, to cause a rift in the thinking of intelligent beings all throughout the universe, to insinuate doubt and drive a wedge between our ideas of God the Father and Christ the Son in the minds of all. He has also led us to believe that justice and mercy are opposites, that grace and kindness are somehow incompatible with straight truth and righteousness and fairness.

Satan has largely accomplished, through the vehicle of religion in particular, that which he started out to do since the very inception of sin in his mind – to cause doubts in the minds of as many as possible as to the real truths about reality, either in our ideas of the character and authority of the Son of God or through false beliefs about the character and intentions of God the Father.

In heaven where it was much more obvious that the Father was all-powerful and the supreme ruler of the universe, Lucifer focused on discrediting the reputation of the Son and managed to effectively convince one third of the angels of God to embrace his assertions about the illegitimacy of the Son. In many ways he has continued that campaign on earth, but in some ways he has tweaked it to include many more lying reports about the Father. Because it is not nearly so clear to humans that God the Father is the one in ultimate control over the entire universe as it is to angels, Satan has been able to use myriads of lies to confuse and darken the hearts of most people to cause them to view the great God of the universe as one who is bent on harming them every chance He can get.

I firmly believe that this discourse by Jesus is a direct attack against the fundamental lies of Satan that were initiated from the very beginning of the controversy between Himself and Lucifer – Satan's original name in heaven. One of the main assertions that Lucifer had put forward was that Christ did not have the same authority as the Father God and thus he implied that it was Christ that was trying to exalt Himself to be equal with God, not Lucifer as is revealed in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.

Satan the accuser has long sought to project his own evil characteristics onto the reputation of God or of Christ all throughout the long history of rebellion. He managed to convince nearly half of the angels in heaven of his slanderous assertions and enticed them to join him in his attempt to overthrow the kingdom of Christ in heaven. Then later on this earth he continued his massive campaign of deception quite effectively by inducing Adam and Eve to buy into his lying assertions about God's intentions towards them and deceived them into turning over their authority to him along with that of every succeeding human being ever to be born on this planet.

As a result of that coup d'etat by Satan and his subsequent claim to legitimate authority over this earth, the controversy was ramped up to a new level and God introduced an even broader plan to counteract the counterfeit system of governance that Satan insisted was better than government under the Son. The foundation of Satan's government is selfishness itself and Satan managed to inculcate this principle of selfishness into the very fabric of every human being born with the embedded lies of evil which were introduced into our gene pool by the introduction of sin. God had to come back with a plan to salvage the human race in such a way as to not legitimize any of the lies of Satan about God but to vindicate the real truth about the character of God that had come into serious question in the minds of many.

So what is becoming evident to me in this verse is the point that Jesus and God the Father have no difference whatsoever between them as far as their attitude and feelings and intentions toward their created children. Satan has long sought to promote his lies that somehow there were differences between the Father and the Son, and he has sought to insinuate those claims from every angle possible. But Jesus and the Father both have been working quietly behind the scenes and at other times rather openly to discredit the lies of Satan and to undo the enormous damage caused by sin all throughout the universe and especially here on this dark planet.

The jealousy and animosity of Lucifer – now known as Satan – has only amplified throughout the succeeding ages since he first began his rebellion in heaven. Most of his animosity and hatred has been directed toward the Son of God and he has done everything he can think of to discredit the authority of the Son. But instead of resorting to the methods of Satan by indulging in force or self-vindication or any arbitrary means to suppress the rebellion and the lies being spread about them, the Father and the Son have chosen the long, painful but more perfect path of allowing this rebellion to play out to its fullest extent possible; they have chosen to let evil be exposed in the face of perfect, selfless love and to allow all involved to clearly see the stark difference between living life based on selfishness compared to life based on perfect love.

How to Get Authority

And He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. (John 5:27)

Authority is another one of those very misunderstood topics that keeps most confused as to what it really means, how it should be used and who should have it. Abuse of 'authority' is one of the biggest problems becoming ever more open in our society, and rebellion against authority has always been one of the most difficult issues to address effectively. This likely happens when people in rebellion come to find themselves in positions of authority without knowing how to be subject to authority themselves.

Many times, what is done to supposedly deal with rebellion is to enforce authority by resorting to force, threats, abuse of every kind and the use of fear to try to bring about conformity to the selfish desires of those who claim to have authority. But this is little different than a predator using intimidation and force to suppress the desires of a victim to expose their abuser by threatening to hurt or kill them if they ever tell anyone else what they have experienced. We shudder in horror and are outraged when such situations come into the open, and yet the way we run our government and even the way many raise their children is tainted with this mentality and we too often come to think that it is just normal and even sometimes necessary in order to achieve conformity through control.

No wonder that our internal pictures of God are so horrendously distorted while upcoming generations of children become more and more immoral and disconnected from wanting to have anything to do with religion. Those who have used religion to assert oppressive control over their children when they were young should not at all be surprised to find that their children want to distance themselves as far as possible from the religion of their parents as soon as they are old enough to break away from their control. And if the children do choose to stay within their parents religion the results of that training too often leads them to perpetuate the lifestyle of abuse instead of turning away from it in favor of a relationship-based spiritual encounter with their true Father in heaven.

This issue of authority is a constant theme that keeps emerging over and over as I look at the Gospel of John. The Jews, very much like us, had developed the art of using force, fear, shame and abusive control to demonstrate what they believed God was like and how He related to sinful human beings. In doing so their ideas of what authority was all about morphed into similar veins of thinking that we are so familiar with yet today. They assumed that authority was something you received by grasping for it, by gaining control over the lives of others through the use of force like the Roman empire did. The counterfeit concepts of authority that the world believes in had been integrated into their ideas of religion and so their views of how God exercised authority had become so perverted that they had little appreciation for real authority when they were confronted with it in the life of the Son of God.

When Jesus acted in the full authority of His Father by disrupting the traditions and routines of religion in His day, He was repeatedly accused of acting outside of proper authority. This was a constant and ongoing issue that loomed large in the minds of the leaders of Jesus' day. And it should not be surprising that the very same problem is happening again and creates problems in our day whenever someone chooses to orient their spiritual guidance system to a personal relationship with God. This will happen when one resists taking all of their cues from religious institutions and man-invented systems that try to control the minds and consciences of those within their systems.

I heard an exposition one time on this issue of authority that asserted that authority is not something you impose on others but is something that is given to a person by those who willingly choose to live under that authority. It is a very intriguing idea and I believe there is a lot of important truth in that. But I struggle to see how that fits completely with what I am finding in Scripture here. At this point I wonder if that is only part of the picture of what real authority is all about.

In this passage I find the issue of authority coming to the surface in a very marked way and also being closely linked with the reality about judgment. I can't help but believe that Jesus in these words was addressing far more than just the people standing around listening to Him that day or even all those who would read these words in coming generations. It seems increasingly clear to me that He was also addressing quite directly the supernatural intelligences that were also in attendance and that He was targeting some of the core issues of contention that had emerged early on in the initial rebellion of Lucifer in heaven. Jesus was speaking directly to the fallen angels and to Satan himself and to the questions that Satan had agitated all throughout his career as the accuser of the brethren – and particularly against the Son of God.

Lucifer had contended that Christ did not have inherent eternal life within Himself as the Father said He did. Satan has asserted that Christ did not have proper authority to pass judgment on those who disagreed with God's government and that any such judgment would be an unfair, arbitrary imposition of force just to get His own way. If God did so then the fact could be assumed that God or Christ was operating at least in part from a sense of selfishness which would mean that sin itself would then have valid justification for its very existence.

It was actually Lucifer who first began to distort the meaning of the idea of judgment and authority itself. He claimed early on that if Christ were to judge and impose sentence on those who choose a different path from that outlined by God that it would actually vindicate Lucifer's claims that there was a flaw in God's government that needed repairing. Lucifer claimed, through convoluted but compelling reasoning, that he had the answers to fix the subtle flaws in how God operated His government and that others should trust Lucifer's superior wisdom and intimate knowledge of God's government and join him in creating a 'patch' to repair those flaws.

Lucifer also agitated more and more among the angels that Christ did not really have the right to all the authority and power that He was exercising and that it was unfair that Lucifer was excluded from the intimate counsels of the Godhead while Christ was taken into those secret meetings. Lucifer became jealous of all the privileges that Christ enjoyed and his jealously kept pushing him to make more and more open accusations that Christ was acting outside of His proper role as a high angel who was supposed to work in tandem with Lucifer covering the throne of God and revealing God's will to the universe.

I spoke previously about the fact that in Lucifer's mind and to most others it may have been impossible to externally distinguish between Christ and Lucifer because of God's possible choice to have Christ take on the form of an angel whenever the angels were first created. Since a created being cannot grasp much about reality before their own existence, the angels would have to accept on faith that Christ was not really one of them as far as having an origin in time. Interestingly a number of people still today assert that Jesus must have been created because of some of the terms that God has chosen to use to describe His Son. But this false belief is not a new one but is just a reflection of what was originally conceived in the mind of Lucifer, the first great rebel who accused Jesus of stepping out of bounds.

As Lucifer's rebellion grew in size and influence throughout heaven, he became more bold in his accusations against Christ in particular. He knew he could not get very far by attacking God directly because God was indisputably all-powerful and pre-existent Himself. But Lucifer directed most of His accusations and insinuations against Christ as being one who was not really as equal with God as God said that He was. Thus Lucifer transformed himself from being called Lucifer, which means 'Son of the Morning', to becoming Satan which means 'Accuser of the brethren'.

Satan's campaign of accusations has gone on for millennia, from long before this earth was even created. It has only strengthened in intensity and aggressiveness but is soon to come to a final climax in a showdown called the Great Day of Judgment. But unlike Satan's version of what judgment is all about that most people embrace today, the actual judgment is really going to be conducted God's way and is going to be radically different than how Satan has lead most to believe it will happen.

One reason that this issue of authority was so central in the ministry of Jesus while He was here on earth is that it was precisely during that time that Jesus was actually gaining the rights to legitimate authority that was so crucial in order for Him to effectively carry out the final solution to sin on the last Day of Judgment. I can see in this passage I am looking at right now how it clearly states that Jesus will have authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. This speaks volumes about the true nature of authority and is an important key to unlocking the truth about what true authority really is and how a person receives it.

When I link this passage with the one in Philippians 2:3-11 where Paul talks about Jesus coming to this earth to serve, it becomes much more clear to me how real authority is received as well as why and how it is exercised. These passages are an exposé on the true nature of real authority and how it is to be earned and exercised. It is sharply different than most ideas of authority that we see in this world's systems, but it is vital that we learn the truth about authority so that we can escape the deceptions of the enemy and the deadly consequences of rebellion that will become plain in the final Day of Judgment.

By becoming a human being Jesus gained the credibility with all humanity to be able to relate to what they have to experience in life. But far beyond that, Jesus chose to become a human weakened by 4,000 years of the effects of sin and at a time in history when humanity had sunk to one of its lowest levels both physically and morally. In doing this Jesus gained His credentials through personal experience and earned the right to the respect of everyone who will someday face the final judgment with Jesus acting as the Judge. If Jesus had not condescended to suffer like us and pass through the struggles and painful experiences that we must endure, we would not really ever be able to believe that He had the right to expose our faults or make declarations about our eternal fate.

Only as a person who can identify with our weaknesses, our pain, our sorrows, our struggles can Jesus have the credibility to earn our respect as the final Judge of our lives. And even much more than that, Jesus took upon Himself the last few days of His life on earth, all the consequences internally of all the sins that have ever or will ever be committed in addition to all the other experiences of humanity He had already endured. This was done so that there would be no excuse left whatsoever for anyone to doubt His ability to identify with their problems and temptations and His ability to understand them.

But it is at this point that many get off on a very popular but very dangerous track of thinking. Jesus did NOT come to this earth to appease an angry God by taking upon Himself the arbitrary punishments intended by God for rebellious sinners. Jesus came to reveal the incomprehensible love of the Father, a love that is so foreign to our way of thinking that it actually elicited the greatest resentment, bitterness and hatred and caused humans and demons alike to vent all the wrath produced in sinful hearts against a love that will not let them go. When love is resisted the inevitable result is enormous pain and suffering. So when Jesus died on the cross of a broken heart, it was not because God had gotten angry at Him but it was because the passionate love of the Father came into such close proximity to the rebellious nature of the sins that were laid supernaturally into the mind and heart of Jesus that it killed Him. His agonizing death demonstrated the ultimate consequences of the total incompatibility between sin and righteousness.

Jesus' death was not an exhibition of God's anger toward sinners but was an exposé of the wrath inherent in sin itself against the irresistible love of God. In effect, the actions and attitudes and response of Jesus acting with the Father's presence internally controlling Him fully, while facing sinners and demons doing everything possible to force Him to act defensively or selfishly – all of this cried out, “There is nothing you can ever do, no matter how evil or painful or disgusting or wicked that can ever make Me stop loving you to the very end of my human existence or even for eternity!”

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19 NIV)