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.

Credible Witnesses

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. If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true. (John 5:30-31)

The issue of judgment is coming up repeatedly as I study the Word. I have been learning a great deal about the true nature and purpose of judgment – God's kind of judgment that is. Now I see another aspect of judgment coming into focus in this passage as Jesus moves from talking about the realities of what is really going on and His true identity to talking about the credibility of His statements and the need for witnesses to testify on His behalf.

The next few verses focus rather intently on this issue of testimony. The testimony of witnesses always becomes an issue whenever truth is in question. The presence of lies and deception requires witnesses to corroborate the claims of either a defendant or an accuser. The Bible teaches that we are not to just accept the assertions or accusations or insinuations of others but are to resist believing evil claims until there are enough credible witnesses to expose sufficiently that a real fault exists or a real crime has been committed.

In the ancient Jewish culture the system of justice instituted by God was quite different than the so-called justice systems that we see in place today, particularly in our Western cultures. Judges back in Old Testament times were not supposed to be free of all bias when deciding a case. They were supposed to always lean in favor toward acquittal of any accused person until the evidence presented by credible witnesses was so compelling that the judge was forced to decide in favor of the accuser.

Several factors came into play along this line as well. No one could be convicted on the testimony of only one witness; there had to be at least two or more credible witnesses to convict a person and refute their claims of innocence. Also, the witnesses were subject to examination themselves to discover their own motives and the nature of their integrity and character. This all had to be taken into consideration by the judge who was supposed to take the side of defending the accused as long as possible until the evidence from credible witnesses made it abundantly clear that there was real guilt involved.

This concept of bias in favor of the accused is reflected in the cliché we hear today about a person supposedly being assumed innocent until proven guilty. However, it doesn't take much observation to see that our current systems of 'justice' do not often operate on that principle but are based more on self-serving interests and back-room deals and technical legal codes or even financial considerations. There are very few cases where a fair and balanced example of true justice can be found anywhere like the justice reflects God's high court of heaven.

The issues and facts that Jesus speaks of in this chapter are all central in the dispute that Satan has promoted before the court of public opinion of the whole universe. The real issue in this great controversy between Christ and Satan is not whether sinners can be saved into heaven but is the issue of the character of God and the claims of authority concerning Christ, the Son of God. The identity and authority of the Son of God has been at the very center of the contentions and allegations that Lucifer has used to promote his cause. Everyone will ultimately be compelled to decide who's side of this issue they will choose to believe.

All throughout this controversy the issue of judgment has necessarily been taking shape. Judgment is fundamentally the process of uncovering the truth of a matter whenever that truth has been brought into question through accusations or insinuations. Lucifer initiated the dispute about the role and authority of Christ in heaven and the controversy was amplified on this earth when Adam and Eve were sucked into agreeing with His lying insinuations about God. Now the center of the battle has shifted to this planet after Satan lost his credibility among the angels in heaven and had to move out long ago.

Christ took on the form of humanity and humbled Himself all throughout His life on earth until the very moment of His death as a means of bringing about true judgment against the lies of Satan. He did this, not by bringing railing counter-accusations against His adversary or making counterclaims about His own position and authority, but by simply bringing the light of truth into minds and hearts that were filled with the darkness of ignorance about God. Lies and evil and falsehoods thrive like cancer cells whenever there is a lack of true knowledge about God and about His character. People become fearful of God and believe that God is more like Satan and so turn away from Him and embrace their own notions of how to live and find peace and fulfillment.

We now live in a heavy atmosphere of deceptions about reality, about life, about God and His intents and feelings towards us. It is impossible to escape the miasma of lies about life and about God for it is in every human heart and permeates every culture and religion. None of us are even close to being free of all the lies about reality and God no matter how insistently some may assert their freedom. If it were not for the effects of a far more potent atmosphere of redemptive grace that surrounds this planet and that counteracts and protects us from the baleful effects of these lies, we all would have disappeared as a race many years ago. Were it not for grace and the direct intervention of God over and over on this planet, the lies and desires of Satan would have swallowed all of us up in pain and death from the natural consequences of living in sin apart from the only Source of life.

Jesus in this passage is making some serious revelations about reality and life and judgment and truth. At this point in the chapter He begins to talk about the need to back up these statements by bringing witnesses to support His statements. He says here that it is not enough for Him to just say what He knows to be true, for the nature of sin has caused us to always doubt the credibility of a person who tries to vindicate themselves whenever they are being accused. It is one of the effects of sin that accusations seem to carry more weight than claims of truth whenever a controversy erupts. We do not generally assume innocence on the part of accused but usually gravitate toward the side that our feelings favor. And those feelings are easily swayed by titillating stories and preconceived ideas, media influence or even mass hysteria.

Just yesterday I had a long conversation with a woman who relayed story after story of abuse and devastation that has deeply wounded her through sexual exploitations by many people in her life. Along the way she mentioned names of people whom I know quite well as she claimed they also had participated in immoral activities and had contributed to her disgust for Christians in general. Yet all through her story she implied that her view of God was much better than the picture of Him that Christians have displayed in their treatment of her.

These accusations about my friends troubled me considerably and I had to ponder these things internally. I didn't know what to make of them for they seemed totally inconsistent with what I personally know about their characters. Yet I am also aware that sometimes sins of this nature can easily remain hidden from public view for many years, especially in very conservative groups, until circumstances finally expose their hypocrisy and evidence comes into the open that shatters the pious front that many have tried to maintain in the name of conservative religion for so long.

This continued to disturb me all evening and into this morning. Insinuations are so powerful that they can seep deep into one's thinking and the imagination can begin to suspect all sorts of things that we would have never considered before. I was harassed with persistent doubts about my friends and couldn't shake them off easily and wondered how to relate to these graphic charges regarding them.

Then this morning I remembered that I myself had been the target of very similar accusations only a few years ago that devastated my own life and ruined my reputation with many people who never bothered to try to find out both sides of the story. Most people did not even try to find out if the accusations were true but simply allowed the insinuations about me circulate in their imagination and support doubts about my character that caused a deep rift between me and many of my own family and friends. This has been an extremely difficult experience for me and resulted in some of the most painful emotional events of my life. I knew that if I tried to justify myself that it would only tend to strengthen people's suspicions about me because self-justification always tends to produce that effect.

After awhile I began to realize my great need of credible witnesses who would come to my defense and give clear and convincing testimony about my character and motives. Sadly there were very few willing to do this and the fallout over the past few years has changed the dynamics in many of my relationships. Now I am faced with a very similar potential situation with close friends of mine even though they do not know that I have heard these accusations about them. I am faced with what to do about evil reports about someone else just as evil reports were circulated about me not that long ago.

As I thought more about it this morning I found myself in this passage and realized suddenly that this issue of credible witnesses is vitally important when it comes to choosing what to believe about evil accusations about anyone. God does not participate in accusing anyone of evil. Satan is the instigator of the whole program of accusing and the very word Satan literally means 'the accuser'. Jesus said that Satan was a liar from the very beginning and is the father of all lies. Deception is the name of his game along with fear and shame and force and is the foundation of his government. Satan is constantly accusing everyone possible and if we are to get free from this miasma of lies we must be willing to move toward truth and live in truth, not easily embracing insinuations about others simply because they sound exciting or even compelling.

As I thought more about what I heard yesterday I also began to see the flaws and weaknesses in some of the accusations. I realized that this person had a long history of sexual abuse and consequently views all the world through these lenses. Someone who has grown up under much abuse almost always assumes that the motives of everyone around them is likely based on those motives whether that is true or not. That was part of the problem in my case and I could now see more clearly that it is very likely the fact in this current situation as well. I remembered how she had said that some of those stories were told her by another person who also had very doubtful integrity which brings these insinuations into even more doubt. I see no testimony from any credible witnesses that my friends have done anything like what she has accused them of doing. The only thing I have so far is the titillating stories that she shared with me that contradicts everything I have known about them for many years.

God also has been lied about and insulted and has had more insinuations spread around about His character than anyone else has ever dreamed of having against them. Yet He is choosing to not vindicate or justify Himself but is relying on the testimonies that will be flushed out when the final judgment fully exposes all the lies of the enemy and the history of every person's life will testify either for or against God. In the process all of the witnesses will have their own credibility challenged and their credibility will be exposed to the brilliant light of truth as well. Thus, by the mouth of not just two or more witnesses but by the testimony of all who have ever lived, God's character and motives will be finally vindicated and sin and rebellion will be forever extinguished.

And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: "Great and amazing are your deeds, Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, King of the nations! Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed." (Revelation 15:3-4 NRSV)

What is More Important?

Previously I noticed a chiastic structure in this chapter that I mapped out graphically. Over the past few days I have started noticing another chiastic structure in this passage that is emerging that overlaps the previous one. Here is what I am seeing.

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.

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, 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.

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.

Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man.

"Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.

"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 5:19-30)

If you are aware of how a chiasm is set up, the most important point of the whole passage is not at the end of the writing like we often tend to do in our Western culture but is at the very center of the bell curve-like structure. Given that arrangement, I now can see that the center message of both of these chiasms is about the importance of the authority of Jesus Christ. But in this last chiasm it moves a little farther and the climax statement at the center gives the compelling results of recognizing and embracing that authority – eternal life for all who choose to listen and believe the truth about Jesus and His Father.

As I meditate over this and the surrounding passage I notice another small series that seems to complement this larger one. And the message that I sense from it is vitally important for me and all those who sincerely want to receive eternal life.

You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life;

it is these that testify about Me;

and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. (John 5:38-40)

As I read and reread over these last few verses it began to impress itself on me that I and many around me in my life have made the mistake that Jesus is pointing out here. Like the Jews, we have claimed to have a handle on eternal life because we are so agile with the Word and founded on the Word of God. We know how to be ready to quote proof texts and be more educated in biblical knowledge than most. We raised our children to memorize Scriptures and to learn all the right answers, even to many questions they had never thought to ask to start with. We even learned to quote these very verses to prove that the Jews made a serious mistake in rejecting Jesus as their Messiah.

And yet through all of this it is still so very easy to repeat the same mistake that those before us did, even when the clear declaration of Jesus is fresh on our lips. While firmly believing that we have 'the truth' and that our church is the one identified as the last church and will go through to the kingdom, we have mostly based our beliefs and hopes on the foundation of our Bible knowledge rather than on an intimate, personal, integrated relationship with the personality of Jesus Christ in a very real sense.

While claiming to have the Word abiding in us, quoting the Word ubiquitously and even being able to mingle it into nearly everything we talk about in religion, we still are far from actually knowing the living, real-time presence of Jesus as a personal friend and one who is eager to drastically change our opinions about how our heavenly Father feels towards us. In short, we have settled for an intellectual religion while refusing to enter into an intimacy with God that is so vital for experiencing a saving relationship that will prepare us to enjoy His fellowship for all of eternity.

The power of deception lies mostly in the fact that we seldom realize we are deceived. When that is the case we can read clear statements like this about our true condition and still insist that it only applies to someone else somewhere else and not to us. Yet I am learning that if I myself do not feel the convicting presence of the Spirit urging me to see myself and my own condition in these warnings from Jesus and feel a growing need to apply these words to my own relationship with God, then I am likely still caught in a trap of deception myself and am in desperate need of an awakening just as were the Jews in Jesus' day.

I can distinctly remember that many times over the years I have pondered with frustration the words of Jesus about coming to Him. Come to Me for rest. Believe in Me. Follow Me. Come to Me so that you may have life. All of these sorts of statements seemed to be designed to frustrate me more than to help me feel closer to God or feel secure. Since I could not personally and physically see Jesus for myself I found it maddeningly irritating at times to read such statements for they seemed to throw up an impossible prerequisite that I had to accomplish before God would allow me to receive the craving of my heart, the peace and joy that I so longed to experience. Since I couldn't figure out the right formula to get myself past the apparent conditions laid down, I could never quite get to the place that my heart longed for the most.

I would try to spend hours feeding on the Word of God and maybe even memorizing Scriptures to fill my mind with truth. That is certainly helpful and I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from pursuing that to some extent. But there was always something still missing and I never seemed to be able to put my finger on the missing ingredients from religion that would finally help me break through into that feeling of being reconciled to God and at peace with my conscience.

As I immersed myself in the Word year after year I became more and more educated and familiar with Scriptures. That has been a tremendous blessing and asset to me over my life and I certainly do not regret that investment. God has used that internal library of stored verses many times to knit together incredible pictures of beauty as He has been revealing Himself to me over recent years. But that knowledge alone never accomplished what my heart has longed for all of my life. Only a personal encounter daily with the presence and person of Jesus Christ and His Father through the intercession of the Spirit has allowed me to begin to experience the kind of relationship that Jesus speaks of in this passage.

So how do I move past just becoming a growing expert in the Word of God into coming to Jesus and having that Word Himself abide in me?

I must say that it is an on-going experiment of faith. (Interestingly it is an adventure of interactive faith, or maybe I might say mutual faith. I have been discovering that the faith of Jesus is actually a faith that Jesus has in us where He believes that given enough attention and attraction we will respond to His drawing love in our lives.) Yes, it is true that if we look around us many of us cannot discern very well the evidences of love in our lives. But it is sometimes in a very different place that we discover God is speaking to our souls, and many times in the most unexpected places and ways. Some of these experiences I would never choose on my own, but God shows up there anyway, maybe just to prove that He can love me anytime and anywhere.

But on my part, I choose to spend time every morning for an extended period of time meditating in the Word of God and actively listening internally for any promptings or convictings that the Spirit of God may want to bring to my attention. I try to focus on engaging my heart and my spirit intentionally in this experience at least as much as my intellect if not more. I spend this time in the Word, not primarily to increase my knowledge of the Bible – though that is certainly a powerful byproduct of these times – but mostly to quiet my own spirit and to submit my heart and will to the authority of God in my life for that day.

I have also found for myself that journaling, as I am doing at this very moment, dramatically improves my ability to hear His Spirit. It is like an interactive conversation with God while I write and I find it refreshing, challenging and inspiring. I try to maintain a caution against trying to figure very much out for myself though, and so I try to stop at times and just listen in silence to what God may be trying to speak to my heart or mind that I might miss in my eagerness to capture it in words. Sometimes the most important messages from God cannot be put into words at all but can only be received by a spirit that is willing to be still long enough to receive it effectively.

Father, I sense one of those times right now. I don't want to be so busy writing down what I hear in Your Word that I miss the quiet whisperings of Your love speaking to the deep wounded places in my soul that still need healing. Sometimes I need to just rest in Your arms and lay back on Your chest and let Your love hold me emotionally. These kinds of encounters with You give me a stability that lasts all throughout my day. But each morning I need to come again and quietly dwell in Your presence and be again recharged to meet the challenges and hazards of another day.

I choose to praise You and meditate on the qualities of Your character as they impress me with my need to reflect them more in my own relationships throughout the day. But the only way I can reflect them is to focus on You more intently myself and to absorb them into my own soul. Thank-you for being the One who is always faithful, compassionate, loving, forgiving, kind, generous, providing, protecting, blessing.... Reveal Your glory through me today in every conversation, in every interaction with others and in every choice that I have to make today. Dwell in me by Your Spirit and fill my life with Your presence so that I sink into insignificance while You become the Star that draws others to want to know You better themselves.

Chose Your Resurrection

For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment. (John 5:26-29)

I keep coming back to a question here about why Jesus says not to marvel at this. But when I go back a little ways in the context I see a previous place where He talks about works that will make us marvel (v.20). As I look at these two references I believe I may be seeing the outlines of a chiastic structure in the text with is very common, particularly in New Testament writings. There are a number of parallel thoughts connected with these two that tell me that likely the climax is somewhere maybe halfway between them. As far as I can determine at this point that is likely to be somewhere around verse 24.

In addition to this, another thing that caught my attention here was this reference to the two resurrections that are going to take place that will involve every person who has ever lived on this earth at any time in history. Whether a person chooses to believe it or not, we will all find ourselves involved in one or the other of these resurrections, and which one we participate in will also reveal what our future is going to be for all eternity.

It is not an arbitrary determination by God that decides which resurrection we will come up in and how our eternal future plays out. It is simply a consequence of the internal choices and the cumulative effect that those choices are making on our characters that is the factor that determines our eternal destiny. We are totally responsible for where we end up on the day of Judgment and Jesus talks about that in this passage. Everyone is going to hear His voice and come up from the dead. But some will hear it first and participate in the first resurrection which is certainly the preferred way to rise as noted in the book of Revelation.

This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years. (Revelation 20:5-6)

Today there is great confusion about this thousand years that is fast approaching and that is mentioned different times throughout prophecy. But that should be no surprise, for Satan is a master deceiver and will leave no attempt untried to keep us in ignorance about the true nature of final events predicted in the Bible. He spreads his lies about God in order to prevent us from being prepared for eternity by believing his lying interpretations of Scripture so that when the truth is finally seen clearly it will be too late to respond to grace. There are all sorts of false ideas that play into the popular beliefs about this time of the millenium as it is sometimes called, but it is very important that we not only understand the truth about it from the Bible's perspective but also realize why it is important to know that truth.

One of the most dangerous deceptions being spread among Christians today is the idea that it doesn't really matter if we obey God's commands and instructions because people will be given another chance to repent after certain events alert them that their last chance is now approaching. There are all sorts of theories about a supposed rapture, a time of seven years of tribulation (which is based on serious distortions of prophetic time-lines) and various related scenarios of end-time events. But most of these are calculated to cause sinners to relax their attention about the warnings being given to this earth of the nearness of the end and the kind of preparation we need.

If Satan can keep us relaxed and reluctant to respond to the pleadings of a loving God who is seeking to turn us away from our sins and heal us from the deadly virus of selfishness and fear, then without our even knowing it our hearts will become so calloused and hardened through that very resistance that we will not be able to hear the sweet voice of Jesus at the first resurrection and will find ourselves remaining in death until the next resurrection when it will be far too late to enter into the bliss of heaven with our Saviour for eternity. And those who are still alive and not taken with Jesus when He returns will soon join the dead who are awaiting the second resurrection because the glory of Jesus during His second coming will literally scare the life out of them.

One point of confusion that derails the thinking of millions of Christians are the references to reigning with Christ for a thousand years. They make the fatal mistake of basing their time-lines and belief systems on the idea that the saved people of God will need someone else to rule over if this is to happen the way they imagine it. Therefore, it is concluded that this thousand years must be something that takes place on this earth where the wicked are subjected to the dominance and political control of the righteous in an earthly government structure imposed through force by Jesus on the whole world.

As these scenarios progress based on these false premises, ideas then proliferate about how all of this might play out. An intensely popular video series has projected all sorts of ideas based on these false theories and very few people are willing to investigate the real truth of the Bible and question what popular theologians have proposed along these lines. Thus millions may be lost because they place their confidence in someone else's version of end-time events instead of listening carefully to the words of Jesus and the prophets through which He has sent His messages of hope and warning.

The more carefully I have considered these coming events in the light of Scriptures the more convinced I am that this thousand year period has a very special purpose for developing and finishing the work that was begun in the hearts and lives of all those who chose to listen to the voice of Jesus in their hearts and submitted their lives in obedience to that voice. Only those who have chosen to submit their will and lives to the authority of Jesus, whether they consciously knew who He was or whether it was only through their conscience, but only those who were willing to obey Him instead of following their own natural desires will be available for God to finish shaping into the full stature of the body of Christ.

This period of a thousand years is going to take place for the saved in heaven where the final period of maturing and development of perfection is going to take place in their lives. Meanwhile back on earth, Satan will find himself deprived of any living human beings to tempt or harass because all of them will have died or been taken to heaven at the second coming of Jesus. This will result in the most supreme discomfort for Satan and his demons, because the distraction of being able to tempt and destroy God's children for 6,000 years has kept their minds off their own situations and the final destruction that is awaiting them. (see Rev. 20:1-3, Matt. 25:41)

These parallel circumstances of the saved being cultivated into the perfect habitation for God to dwell in and the lost all sleeping in death until the second resurrection (Rev. 20:5) is radically different than the movie thriller versions being propagated around the world today. The battle between good and evil is extremely different in nature than most people make it out to be primarily because most people make the mistake of believing that God will pit force and fear against the force and fear employed by the prince of darkness. The whole Star Wars scenario and its emphasis on force is one of the themes that has brought confusion and reflected our confusion about this. The real problem is the false ideas that most people have about how God relates to His opponents.

Again, it is our assumptions about God's motives and methods of operation that lead us to very distorted ideas about last-day events and how they are going to play out or the true meaning of prophecies that foretell these events. If we do not start with a correct understanding of how God feels about sinners and the methods He employs to motivate us to choose to be saved, then everything from there on is totally going to be serious distorted and will not reflect truth as it is in Jesus.

My attention was just drawn to the words of Jesus a little later in this chapter that addresses this very problem. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? (John 5:44) Popular theologians and movie producers are usually more intent on seeking recognition and popularity from the mainstream (glory) than they are on humbling themselves to seek the wisdom that comes from above to those who submit themselves to the ways of God. The dark, distorted views of how God feels about us and how He is going to resolve the sin problem come from an unwillingness to believe that love really is enough to overcome evil. We struggle to bring ourselves to imagine that what appears to us to be weakness can ever overcome the enormous power that appears to threaten righteousness from the forces of evil.

As a result of this flawed thinking it is too easy to interject our own imaginings and scenarios about end-time events and weave into them pictures of a God resorting to using the weapons of darkness to overcome that darkness. But this is a fatal mistake and accomplishes just what Satan set out to do from the very beginning – to paint God in dark pictures of fear and tyranny and threatening destruction to accomplish His will in the universe. Satan has ever sought to cause us to view God as one altogether like himself, One who treats people like Satan treats people and thus prevents people from coming to trust or love God because of these lying reports about His character.

In my study I have come to realize that because God respects everyone's freedom to choose that He is going to allow the lost to stay out of the picture for a thousand years while all those who have chosen to accept the real truth about Him will be nurtured and healed and matured in a safe environment far from the devil's reach. This will happen in an environment where they can learn the full truth about God and about reality and develop close, intimate bonds with each other. That this will take a full one thousand years to finish is a testament to the enormity of the effects of sin and what it has done to deface the image of God in humanity. But this truth is also consistent with the ways of love that will never force or coerce anyone against their will but patiently nurtures and cultivates the spirit of each person to draw them out into greater expressions of joy and love and loyalty as they are restored back into the image of God as displayed in Christ Jesus.

In this passage in John, Jesus says that the Father has given Him full authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. To me that means in part that Jesus, by becoming a human and experiencing life like we experience it, has earned the legitimacy and respect of all involved to be able to determine who is safe to be saved and salvaged and who will wait until the second resurrection of judgment. After this second resurrection will occur a time of unprecedented reunions as every person who has ever lived throughout all of history will have opportunity to see everyone else in person, all alive at the same time. This will be the period of time known as the Day of Judgment but is not necessarily a literal day in time as we think of a day. I believe that this period of time may even last considerably longer than many suppose, for it will be enough time to once and for ever settle the issues of who is right and who is wrong in the great dispute between Christ and Lucifer now turned Satan. This will be the final day of reckoning, the time when every witness in God's trial will be testifying by the history of their life and choices as to who's version of truth they have chosen to believe.

Those who have sided with Satan's accusations that God is not as loving as He says He is and have clung to these lies in the face of evidence from God offered to them in various ways will face the judgment unprotected by the grace and healing of Jesus in their hearts. They will then have to experience the glory of God without being internally prepared to endure it. On the other hand, all those who have initially chosen to respond to God's promptings of love and offers of grace in this time of probation on earth, on that day will have finished their maturing process during the thousand years of close fellowship with Christ and with all the rest of His saved children. They will then be ready to be fully exposed to and inhabited by the powerful glory of a full revelation of the character of 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)

This may well be the central climax of this chapter. If we listen to the testimony of Jesus about what God is really like and believe the truth about the Father that Jesus came to reveal, then we have already entered into eternal life and have escaped the fate of those who refuse to believe that truth about God. For to enter into judgment while believing lies about God in our heart sets us up to experience death, just as surely as a resistor in a circuit suffers destruction when the voltage is increased beyond its capacity to handle. That is why it is so critical that we allow the Holy Spirit to remove all sin and resistance to the truth about God from our hearts, so that when the full revelation of God's character is finally exposed that we will become brilliant stars in the firmament of heaven instead of smoldering corpses like ruined resistors that can't survive the extreme high voltage that we have been warned is going to come. (Dan. 12:3, Isa. 66:24)

Father, dwell in my heart today and help me to fully let go of all unbelief in what You are showing me about who You really are. Each day I find myself amazed as Your Spirit reveals yet more truth and glory about Your character to my mind and heart. Cleanse me of all resistance to Your love and fill me with the spirit of obedience that motivated Jesus when He demonstrated Your character while here on earth. Transform me into Your image that You originally designed for me to reflect. Do all of this for Your name's sake, for Your glory and to attract others to want to participate in Your glorious plan of salvation.