April 29, 2021 John 5: 22
14Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been
made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was
Jesus who had made him well. 16Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such
things on the sabbath.
19 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you,
the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for
whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. 20The Father loves the Son and shows him all that
he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you
will be astonished. 21Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also
the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes. 22The Father judges no one but has given all
judgment to the Son, 23so that all may honor the Son just as they
honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father
who sent him. 24Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who
sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from
death to life. 25“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the
dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26For just as the Father has life in himself, so
he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; 27and he has given him authority to execute
judgment, because he is the Son of Man.
Something
I had not considered before, knowing that Jesus is the Judge I will see at the
End of Time. I know God the Father
passed along this authority to the Son.
This is ALL judgement, which I would interpret to mean through all of
time and space. So this is extending
forward through all coming generations, but it is also extending back through
all prior generations.
Which
means the very system of judgement has changed from the Old to the New
covenant. In the Old Testament, we read
of how God judged the people and praised or punished them on the spot with
either ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ or external nations intervening in
their affairs. But the system of
thinking evolves in the Old Testament, from one of right service as a nation to
God to one where sacrifice and so on was not the important part, but the right
heart was. Sacrifice was still part of
the law, was still necessary, but there was recognition that there needed to be
something more personal to it. What was
implicit is made explicit.
So
what does that mean in this context? The
place of judgement is shifting. It will
no longer be executed upon the nation directly.
Rather, it is moving to the end of life, as the last hurdle before the
eternal placement is finalized. The
judgement is upon the individual, not the community. And where God the Father carried
the…stigma...of being an angry, belligerent God in the face of the
unfaithfulness of the people, where the Old Testament God is a scary figure,
passing the seat of judgement on to Jesus is passing the seat of judgement to
the one whose death and resurrection will bring mercy as the new justice.
It is
a fundamental shift in the process of revelation and forgiveness. What is developing now is a clearer vision of
what the afterlife is going to look like.
What is developing now is a system of judgement that is no longer tied
to the promises of land and prosperity.
As Christianity eclipses Judaism, there is no longer a land, a nation,
where the assumption is that God will rule directly. This was the way of the Old Testament until
God was effectively supplanted by the demands for a king. So there are continuing parallels of
“Christian nations” to the nation of Israel, but they are not hard and fast by
any means.
The
national identify of the nation of Israel, its prosperity and its crises were
all tied to the judgement of God the Father.
What we see here is that this judgement is moved from the natural to the
supernatural. There are definitely
consequences to the choices of life, but ultimate judgement is put off till the
end of life. This works in the other
direction as well, bad things happening in life presently are no longer
directly connectable to the judgement of God.
Because that judgement has shifted, in the persons of the Trinity and in
its connection to life here on earth.
More
coming.
Peace, Pastor Peter
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