The Core of Judgment

Jesus was not sent into this world to judge the world but to save it.

Jesus said that He was given the job of judge.

Jesus said that He never judges anyone, but that what would judge everyone in the end would be His words.

What is the difference between Jesus' judging, which He apparently did not do, and His words judging which is what will happen on the last day? How can the words of a person judge without the person themselves judging?

When we better understand this difference, which I am sure we do not understand very well yet, then it will affect the way we think and treat others around us. It may prevent us from judging and criticizing others and simply allow the Word of God to produce the judgment that is inevitable when it is clearly understood.

As I look at Romans 4 again in relation to this, I can see better that belief is really about God's words and how we choose to relate to them. If I believe that God can and will do what He promises to do in and through me from His Word, then I have entered into belief about the goodness and faithfulness of His character, His name. If I refuse to believe that God really has saved me or that my sins may be too hard for Him to forgive or that He really doesn't love me like His Word says that He does, then I will cut myself off from the life-giving Word, the promises that connect me with the only Source of life. Being cut off from life, the only other option is eternal death.

Unbelief creates fear, doubts, apprehension, apathy and every other fruit of sin. Unbelief can easily be disguised as rational thinking or realism. But the problem is that “realistic thinking” starts with a false assumption about what version of reality is true. It bases our decisions and premises on the counterfeit reality that is so familiar to us living in a sinful world instead of believing in the declarations about the real reality that is foreign to our way of thinking but that is revealed in the Word of God.

Jesus came to more clearly enunciate this true reality in the words that He spoke and the ways that He related to sinners and lost religious people. If we use our own measurements and assumptions about reality as the standard to which we compare the words of Jesus instead of making His words the standard of what is real, then we are living in unbelief and cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven.

To be born again is to enter into a real heart-level belief in the words of Jesus that conflict with our assumptions about reality. When we choose to believe God's words instead of what feels normal or right, then we will start thinking in harmony with God's view of reality and will not be judged. This is described as loving light in John 3.

If I insist that the way I have seen things from my perspective is more real than the way God says things, then I am loving darkness rather than light. For the words of God in Jesus are the light by which I am going to be judged or vindicated.

In the end, everyone will be measured against the words that they received from God to see what they chose to do about it. Judgment is the time of exposure when it becomes unavoidably clear to everyone around whether we really believe the things that God has said or whether we simply have used them to reinforce our own preconceptions and false ideas about God. For it is possible to use the words of God to keep in place many traditions and lies about Him and perpetuate false ideas about His attitude towards us.

Judgment, according to everything that I am starting to see here, is not what God decides about us as most people assume. Judgment is what happens as a result of the decision we make about whether God is really merciful, kind, compassionate, loving and doesn't resort to force to get His way. If we choose to follow on to believe the real truth about God as revealed in the words of Jesus, we will have to come to believe in a God who is radically different than the god that religion has taught us. And on the final day of judgment the natural consequences of sin will be supreme agony as our lies about God are exposed in contrast to the incredible truth about God's perfect love for us.

In the final day of judgment, as the lost begin to become aware that it is not God who is going to punish them, the agony of having lost their ability to respond to love will overwhelm them with anger, bitterness and rage against all who have misled them into believing that God was angry at them. The lies about God as arbitrary, angry and manipulative causes all who believe these ideas to rebel against such a deity, and rightfully so. But unless we come to embrace the real truth about God as a truly merciful God instead of a vengeful, arbitrary God who resorts to force and fear to control His subjects, we will never be able to come into that relationship of love and trust necessary for all those who will live for eternity in His presence.

The judgment then is simply the times when our real beliefs about God come out into the open and cause us to act out whatever comes naturally as a result. If we have come to know God as it is presently our privilege to know Him, then in the final judgment we will find that we can respond to Him and have His character ignited to its full potential in us. If we have rejected believing that God really loves us and does not hold our sins against us, if we reject the pleadings of His mercy and refuse to let His compassion and grace transform our thinking and our souls and our theology, then we will lose the capacity to interact with that love and too late we will face the fire of internal anguish as we realize that we have disqualified ourselves to survive in the fiery passion of His heart that is the essence of His presence.