Q3. Judgment and Gospel

[pcjames4]

On 1/30/2004 at 12:35 PM, Pastor Ralph said:

Q3. (1:17) Why are people in our culture so upset when they sense they are being judged by someone else? How do you reconcile final judgment with God's love for the world? Why must final judgment be at the core of the Good News of Jesus Christ? What happens to the Gospel when final judgment is left out or ignored?

Being judged by others can be upsetting because often the standard used by the culture is ripe with bias and injustice.  The scales are not fair or weighted towards ones on standard of righteousness that is often not God's standard.  

Final judgment must be at the core of the Good News of Jesus because belief in Him will be the determining factor for life or death, fellowship or eternal damnation.  When the Gospel is left out of the final judgment, works are lifted up and not faith in the Son.  If the Gospel is not in the final judgment, all perish.  No one can be saved.  

[Nim]

Why are people in our culture so upset when they sense they are being judged by someone else? How do you reconcile final judgment with God's love for the world? Why must final judgment be at the core of the Good News of Jesus Christ? What happens to the Gospel when final judgment is left out or ignored?

 

People become upset because they are not where that person that judged them is. And it is hard to be judged when someone thinks that what she/he is doing is right. Perhaps the situation forces them to be judged also. 

With God's love it teaches us to be humble and to accept judgement or even handel it even if we are not wrong lovingly. Judgement by God is fair when it is left out that meabs the balance of things is incorrect. Meaning i would not learn my lesson of noy doing it again. 

[Krissi]

No one likes to be judged ... and no one lives without judging others. Church discipline is the sanctioned form of judging others, though we make little judgments about people all the time. God judges impartially -- we judge from within our cultural norms. But we're supposed to look at others impartially, as God does, and view our own cultural/class biases as if we were strangers to others.

The reconciliation of final judgement with God's love is wayyyy beyond my capacity to understand. I'm sorry.

The knowledge that we'll be judged by God should be fear-inducing, which is why every revival and awakening in the past emphasized "sinners in the hands of an angry God." Although we give short shrift to the idea of judgment these days, I think that deemphasizing judgment is wrong, that many people will still come to know the Lord precisely because they feel guilty and fear judgment. 

When final judgment is ignored, sin loses it's sting. Without some sort of reckoning, the Overton window for acceptable behavior is widened and society is coarsened.