Judgment part 2
It blows my mind how often I hear religious folk talk about the judgment of God against humanity. Usually, unfortunately, in the terms of "the wrath of God." Like God has a vendetta against humankind. And here's how it usually seems to go: God created humans. Humans disobeyed God. God got mad and decided to kill humanity in order to punish them. Jesus--who, by the way, IS God--decided to step in. Instead of God killing humans to "satisfy His wrath," He killed Jesus instead. And that, we are told, is the righteous judgment of God. Someone HAD to die, so Jesus did it. But that's not exactly what you see in the Bible. When it is humanity killing (or trying to kill anyway) God. It is people nailing Jesus to the cross. It is people torturing Him and mocking Him and spitting on Him. And it is Jesus crying out, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do!" And that, friends, is the true judgment of God. His mercy, and His grace, and His forgiveness... and His love. Jesus didn't die because God was mad at us. Jesus died because we were already dead in our trespasses and sins and He wanted so badly to bring us out of that death and into His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life! Jesus did not come to make "bad" people "good." He came to make dead people alive. He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. We looked at the verse in Hebrews that said it is appointed unto men once to die THEN the judgment. The judgment isn't death. The judgment is what happened AFTER the death. The judgment wasn't a death sentence, it was an eternal life sentence! God's judgment wasn't killing Jesus. It was raising Him from the dead! And just to be thourough, let's talk about wrath for a minute. My go-to on this one is 1 Thessalonians 5:9, "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ." In my opinion? Problem solved. Even in the Old Testament God set up an entire system of animal sacrifice in order for the people to NOT get killed for their disobedience. Like, we have this image of an angry, unyielding, petty God who throws a fit every time we don't do what He wants us to do. But that's not what we see in Jesus. Jesus knew Judas was going to betray Him, right? For example. And He didn't punish or mistreat Judas. He still invited Judas to the supper table. Still washed his feet. The only time we really saw any anger out of Jesus at all was when the religious dudes had turned the temple into a money changing scheme. Then it was time to flip some tables over. But when Jesus was being literally and physically abused, His prayer was not for wrath, or vengeance. It was for forgiveness. Because we didn't know what we were doing. Like Paul--when he was Saul--who, in his religious zeal took part in killing Christians. He thought he was doing the Lord's work. God didn't punish him... just struck him blind in order to truly and fully open his eyes. Chastening and correcting is very different than punishing. Consequences of our actions is very different than God's judgment. So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that when we see God as angry... we are more ready, willing, and able to run FROM Him than run TO Him. And that's a problem. Because He is what we need. Especially when we do something that we think would make Him mad. Running, or lying, or hiding what you've done always makes it worse. The judgment of God is forgiveness. The judgment of God is life. You can bring your problems to Him and He will help you with them. You can cast your cares on Him because He cares for you!