Materials
What We Believe
#4
He Will Judge The Living And
The Dead
John 5:25-29
by R. Todd Bouldin
I still recall those hot summer sweltering evenings at a Gospel meeting
in rural Tennessee that lasted for what seemed like an eternity –
usually about five to seven days. It made VBS look like a vacation.
We would sit through a sermon of at least an hour about all kinds
of titillating topics like heaven and hell, divorce and remarriage
and the second coming of Jesus. You always knew all the baptisms and
rededications were coming on “second coming” night. That’s
the night we would sing “Just As I Am” or “Softly
and Tenderly” over and over until someone responded. There was
another song about the judgment day that I remember so vividly. “There’s
a bright day coming, a sad day coming, a day that’s coming by
and by, when the saints and the sinners shall be parted right and
left, are you ready for that day to come?” And we all would
look down at our books, not making eye contact with the preacher who
might look us in the eye and see all of our secret sins. There was
another song that haunted me as a child. It was called Standing
Outside. The chorus went like this: Standing outside the portals,
standing outside denied, standing outside knowing that with the demons
you ever will abide . . ..”
Need I go on? It was a terrifying thought to us that one day we would
stand before the judgment seat of God and give an account of our lives,
and most of us knew that we would come up short before this judging
God. So all you could really do was repent for missing a few worship
services or for “falling short” and hope God would be
merciful. While some of my reading of Scripture and my understanding
of God has changed since those times, it’s still a basic teaching
of Scripture that can keep me up at night: that God will judge the
living and the dead. Today I want to explore what a difference it
makes when I accept that it is Christ who God will appoint as our
Judge.
Prayer
All I have to say are the words “judge”, or “judgment”,
or worst of all “judgmental” and some of you won’t
hear anything else I have to say. Back in rural Tennessee in the 70’s
in the Churches of Christ, it was one of the only words that would
cause you to sit up in your seat and pay attention. But that’s
not so true anymore. Judging is out and acceptance is in. When we
think of judgment, we think of it as something quite negative, condemning
and frankly we’ve had our fill of judgmental religious people.
We have a new intolerance with intolerance. Dennis Prager, who sometimes
writes for the Wall Street Journal, has noted that prior
to 1975 dictionaries did not contain the word judgmental. But today,
he writes, “Judging evil is widely considered worse than doing
evil.” Nothing is more eschewed in our society than judgment
that comes from religious sources. Maybe it was because it was August
and the President is in Crawford and the Congress is out of session,
but the news networks spent several days last week covering the statements
by the Christian televangelist Pat Robertson who said the U.S. should
“take out” the President of Venezuela. While I certainly
don’t endorse Robertson’s comments, I do find it interesting
how much coverage religious leaders get when they say something that
sounds intolerant.
But some Christians do have a totalitarian and judgmental impulse,
and many in the media and in culture tend to view Christianity and
other religions through these lenses. Has Christianity not been used
to oppress and legitimize injustice by those who have a harsh impulse
towards judgment? Sure it has. We all have been judged by some Christians
who seem to feel better by denouncing us.
So do we really want to say that we as a church believe in God as
our judge? Why can’t the church just be accepting and God just
be our lover and not our judge? Why can’t we say that it doesn’t
matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere and not a
hypocrite? “Trust your instincts, be yourself, and don’t
let anyone judge you for it.” But is it not our ability to rise
above our instincts that makes us humans created in the image of God?
Dogs trust their instincts, and it gets them in a lot of trouble.
Why would you want to trust your instincts when you could be a human
being called to something more and higher than your impulses?
You have an instinct to hurt when you are hurt, to find someone just
to take away the loneliness for the night, to take another drink to
take away the pain or boredom, or to hoard your money because you’re
afraid of the future. You have been created with the capacity to think
through your actions. That is called judgment.
There are good uses of the word judgment. If you have ever been the
subject of an injustice and you heard the court enter a “judgment”
in your favor, you are delighted. Students who receive an A on my
exams never question my judgment. Do we not teach our children to
have good judgment? Because we love them, we tell them not to go into
the street or touch the hot stove.
This is the sense of judgment that both the Old Testament and the
New Testament use to talk about God, who says, “No. Don’t
make idols, it will only hurt you. Don’t ignore the poor. Give
what you receive. Don’t steal.” Those laws were not given
to condemn us but to serve as a means of enjoying life. It is because
God loves us that God reveals His judgments to us. The opposite
of judgment is not love. The opposite of judgment is indifference,
and God is not indifferent about you.
Can you imagine going to a doctor who discovers a disease in your
body? But the doctor thinks, “I don’t want to be judgmental.
After all disease is a natural thing, and I don’t want to hurt
my patient’s feelings. I better not say anything.” No,
a good doctor tells you what is wrong, and how to find healing. Trying
to get rid of the judgment of God is like getting rid of the great
Physician who can heal our souls. It may protect your feelings, but
it does nothing for the disease called sin that is slowly eating away
at our souls.
The first chapter of Romans claims that God’s law was written
on all of our hearts. Whether they are religious or not, all humans
have some innate sense of right and wrong. That is part of what it
means to be made in the image of God. Our measure of right and wrong
is different for each of us. For some of us, the “right”
is taking care of our bodies, or working hard, or having a healthy
family. For others it is just doing what you want as long as you don’t
cause others harm. The striking thing is that no matter what measure
we use for life, none of us feel like we are doing well enough
– even by our own standards. Late at night when we are no longer
distracted by busyness, we think to ourselves, “I have to do
more. I am not good enough.” So we don’t even need God
around to feel judged. We handle that pretty well on our own. Most
of us know our lives are now what we would like them to be, much less
what God wants them to be. So we come here to church partially to
confess that we are not what we ought to be.
Church historian Martin Marty has said that one of the great contributions
of the church to society is that every Sunday we get millions of sinners
off the street for one hour. But no matter how much we confess here
or how much we aware that we fall below someone’s standard,
even God’s, we can never get to the bottom of all that is there.
We confess not just our list of sins but our inclination to sin.
When you fail at the law of God, the law written on your heart and
written down in Scripture, it is more than a mere mistake or failure.
It is a way of separating us from God, the Maker and Creator, the
source of our lives. To be separated from your source from life is
just be dead. You don’t have to wait to be dead to be dead.
All you have to do is get comfortable with your own judgments about
not being good enough. And life will slowly start to wither.
It may even feel good to make yourself feel that guilty, in some weird
kind of way. But that is not what your heart yearns for as life.
God will not settle for that kind of life either. In Christ God
entered the world and your life to restore you to communion with your
Maker and the source of your life. That is what Jesus has done
for you. He has come to find you to bring you back to The Father so
that you can find life again. He did not come so that your life would
be just one more obligation and guilt trip after another. There is
no life in that. How did that happen? Does God just overlook His judgments?
No, the Judge is now your Savior.
On the cross, the Judge was judged for us. He took on our death so
that we may find life. My favorite theologian Karl Barth spent many
of his Sundays preaching to prisoners in a local jail. These sermons
have been collected in a book called Deliverance to the Captives.
In one of those sermons he told men who were under a sentence for
their guilt that the death of Christ on the cross was not an act of
God’s wrath or judgment against us. Rather it was born out of
his love and desire to free us from the sentence of death. “In
the death of Jesus Christ, God has cleared away, swept out and let
go up in flames, smoke and ashes, the old man in us, that we may live
a new life of freedom.”
In our text for today, Jesus says, “The hour is coming and now
is here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and
those who hear will live.” (John 5:25). When you hear that voice,
He goes on to say, it is time to come out of the grave. Either to
life or to condemnation. It all depends, not on how much you’ve
done or not done, but on how you have responded to this grace.
The New Testament teaches that God has handed judgment over to
Jesus Christ. Paul tells the Athenians in Acts 17, “God
has fixed a day on which He will have the world judged in righteousness
by a man whom He has appointed, and of this He has given assurance
to all by raising [the Judge] from the dead.” (Acts
17:31) That makes all the difference in how you understand judgment.
It is not because Jesus has a lower standard than God. But now a Savior
has appeared before your life that you have judged inadequate and
that is slipping away, a Savior has appeared at the door of the grave
where you were trying so hard to make your own life. The difference
will come when you accept the offer to be forgiven. To be forgiven
means to be freed. It means to be freed from trying to get life right
on your own, and free for receiving life that God is making right
through Jesus.
When you know what it means to be fully alive in Christ, you are no
longer bothered by the judgments of others, you no longer waste your
life trying to be good enough for yourself or for others, and most
of all you don’t come to the end of life wondering if you’ve
done enough for God. To live your own life under your own judgments
or the judgments of others is to live a dreadful existence. You might
as well be dead because “you” isn’t really alive.
To live that way is to make the grave comfortable.
The grave is not the end of the story. The Judge has become the judged,
and the Judge has risen for you. You are forgiven and truly alive.
Maybe a little guilt is good for us every now and then. But guilt
never did make a life. It always ends in death. But Christ has been
raised from the dead, and the ways of death no longer have sway over
you. It is time to get off the guilt train. It won’t ever take
you where you want to go. God has opened up a new way. Accept forgiveness
and live.
The hour is coming and is now here. The dead will hear the voice of
the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
August 28, 2005
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