The word “judgment” has received
bad press, and that bad press has mostly come from the church….
In one extreme, parts of the
church are now saying that God does NOT judge; He’s too nice and loving to do
such a thing. This has been carried to heresy in those that deny the existence
of hell and of a final judgment after death. Those who hold to such a view do
not know the Lord in His awe-inspiring beauty and justice. If there is no
judgment of sin, action and lawlessness, then God cannot be a just God. If He is
not just, then He is not holy, without mixture. In denying this aspect of His
holy nature, man thus has successfully remade God in our fallen image (at least
what we would LIKE Him to be).
The other extreme related to
judgment is that it portrays Yahweh as a remake of the Greek god Zeus, who sits
on a throne, arbitrarily waiting to throw lightning bolts of destruction and
pain in anger over the slightest thought that’s anything less than 100% moral.
In 2008, I led an intercessory/spiritual warfare team to Germany to work with
some of the saints in several well known cities to address some long-standing
demonic strongholds still leftover from hundreds of years past, right up until
the time the Nazi’s were in power. One of our stops was Wittenberg, where Martin Luther nailed his
theses to the door of the church. He also ministered in St. Mary’s Chapel about
two blocks from the Wittenberg
cathedral. Our tour guide took us to a back room in St. Mary’s where many very
old artifacts and works of art were kept. On the wall was a stone relief that
was once over the entrance to a cemetery, on which depicted a very angry
“Christ”, seated on a throne with lightning bolts in his hand, throwing them at
dead and dying people, who were obviously out of line with either him or the
church. Our tour guide told us that this was the picture that the church had
painted of God, thereby keeping a repressive form of bondage over the people to
control them. When Martin Luther rediscovered the truth of a loving,
compassionate God, to Whom the only way was faith in the finished work of the
Son apart from works (who really loved humanity so much that He Himself bore our
judgment to give us grace), the people were overwhelmed with desire to know
Him. The reason the Reformation took off like wildfire was because the horrid
picture of an angry, perfection demanding God (a perversion of His just nature)
was shown to be fallacious through the true revelation of the word of God.
However, this did not nullify the absolute truth that although He is 100% love,
He is also 100% just, and both parts of His nature will not rest until
completely satisfied.
Because He is love, He can be fully
trusted to judge justly. His judgment is not only just, but it is an extension
of His intrinsic nature of love. This is why we see the saints of God, the
bride of Christ, openly exalting and praising Him for His judgments when He
rises to restore justice and purity in the earth in Rev. 18:20 and Rev. 19:1-4:
"Rejoice over
her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on
her!”… After these things I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven,
saying, "Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the
Lord our God! For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged
the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has
avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her." Again they said, “Alleluia!
Her smoke rises up forever and ever!" And the twenty-four elders and the
four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sat on the throne,
saying, “Amen! Alleluia!”
The Lord is a Remedial Judge
And the LORD said,
"Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, since Abraham shall surely
become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be
blessed in him? For I have known him, in order that he may command his children
and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do
righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has
spoken to him." And the LORD said, "Because the outcry against Sodom
and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now
and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it
that has come to Me; and if not, I will know." Then the men turned away
from there and went toward Sodom,
but Abraham still stood before the LORD. And Abraham came near and said,
"Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were
fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare
it for the fifty righteous that were in it?
Far be it from You to do such a thing as
this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as
the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right?" (Gen. 18:17-25)
In the revelation of God through
the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ and subsequently the interpretation of all
scripture through Him who is the word incarnate, the Lord reveals Himself as a compassionate
Judge who desires to heal, restore and have intimate relationship with
man. If this is true, and we believe it is, how does a compassionate God deal
with sin, rebellion and evil and maintain His justice?
No earthly situation could have
been more dire than that found in Sodom
written of above. Not only was sexual immorality and perversion prevalent, but
it was only one of the many outward signs of the inward, animalistic
corruptions that were abounding. Lot was vexed (desensitized) by living in the
cesspool that had become Sodom.
He was even willing to sacrifice his own daughters to the inhuman and demonic
lusts prevailing through the crowd. Ezekiel tells us what the core issues were that
led to such demonic, immoral and inhuman degradation in Ezek 16:48-50:
“As I live,” says
the Lord GOD, “neither your sister Sodom
nor her daughters have done as you and your daughters have done. Look, this was
the iniquity of your sister Sodom:
She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance
of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And
they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them
away as I saw fit.”
In spite of the demonic mindsets
and activities humans have joined in agreement with (as seen in Sodom), the
Lord reveals Himself first as remedial Judge in the midst of such
circumstances, who desires to have mercy. He becomes a punitive Judge only after
consistent rejection of His loving remediation. We may not understand this from
a human viewpoint, but it is His mercy that brings judgment, because His
judgments are not meant to be punitive, but remedial.
From Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words (copyright 1985):
“Do right,” –
mishpat – Vines’ – “the act of sitting as a judge, hearing a
case, and rendering a proper verdict. <Eccl. 12:14> is one such
occurrence: ‘For God shall bring
every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or
whether it be evil.’
Because He is holy, and His
holiness demands sin and evil be judged, He must do so or be found unrighteous
Himself. But also because of His transcendent nature of love and mercy, He
always provides a way of redemption for humans and the means to achieve it, if
it will be surrendered to and accepted.
The Lord reveals Himself as Judge in two dimensions: As a
remedial Judge to those who love, yield to and obey Him and as a punitive Judge
to all who rebel, agree and act with the powers of darkness. The Lord,
as remedial Judge, allows discipline and hardship at times into the lives of
His people to bring training to our character and form Christlikeness within
us. The more we embrace the Lord and His remedial judgment and discipline, the
more our character is transformed into the image of Christ, the fruit of
holiness is witnessed to and we begin to share in a greater degree of His
kingdom authority and power.
The Lord reveals Himself as remedial Judge in three primary ways:
His
word, other people and circumstances. One “external” means of bringing
His discipline (remedial judgments) into our lives is making a habit of studying and obeying God’s word.
Consistent meditating on God’s word, and then putting it into practice,
eventually becomes internalized to become a part of our character.
Another external means of His
remedial judgments are the people that He brings into our lives and the
relationships that form around them. People are used by God to expose areas in
our lives that need healing, breaking, maturing or any combination of all of
these. The scripture is clear that relationships cause “iron to sharpen iron.”
One other means that becomes a
part of His remedial disciplines and judgments in our lives is the
circumstances we find ourselves in. It is to be noted that children and weak,
immature people will quit when things become difficult. We are called to be
overcomers, made into the image and likeness of the Son of God. This means
perseverance and pressing through our pain, weakness and fallenness, engaging
the grace supplied by the Spirit of God. If we are to become mature, healthy
adults, both naturally and spiritually, it will only come through persistent,
personal victories by faith and obedience.
This loving, remedial Judge
always deals with pride. One of the first conversations the Lord had
with Peter was to deal with his pride as an expert fisherman, so Peter could
fully trust Him and not his own ability or training. This was not to insult
Peter but to teach Peter to lean on the Lord’s power and grace and not his own
understanding or abilities. The Lord uses His judgments to teach us to pray,
study, worship, preach, trust and…raise the dead. These judgments come and
reveal areas of our lives that are out of sync with Him and many times are
actually in rebellion to Him and in agreement with the powers of darkness.
Faith is put to the test through these relationships, hardships and
circumstances.
The fruit of this loving,
remedial Judge’s disciplining hand is freedom. Freedom comes only through
the remedial judgments and discipline of the Lord. This means freedom to be in
union with Him, not freedom to do as we please, which is the exact cause of Him
bringing His loving discipline into our lives in the first place. Have you ever
heard an undisciplined musician? Ever seen an undisciplined athlete or teacher?
The purpose of this remedial Judge – His disciplines and training – is not
punishment, but to form us into the men and women of God we are destined to
become, lead us into deeper intimacy with the Lord and trust us with the
freedom to flow in His power and authority.
