Love and Judgment

Voddie Baucham recently made one a profound observation.  Not one that we were not aware of, but one that is succinct enough to put into clear terms what we are experiencing.  He said, “There is a new John 3:16. The old John 3:16 was John 3:16. That was the verse that everyone knew, the verse that was familiar to all, the verse that you saw plastered all over the place, the verse to which people would point, the verse that even people who didn't know the Lord had somehow committed to their memory. John 3:16 was ubiquitous. The new John 3:16 is Matthew 7:1.” ¹

Now, Matthew 7:1 says, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” ²

I often hear that verse being thrown at Christians, and so I was keen to understand more of what Voddie was saying.  But first I wanted to reacquaint myself with the passage.  The context of that verse is the sermon on the mount.  That whole message (the sermon on the mount) was about correction.  From the beatitudes, which are about correcting your attitude, to rightly understanding your purpose, to rightly understanding the point of the law and the interpretation of the law.  From correcting ingrained views of your enemy, to giving, to praying, fasting and worry - it’s all about correcting our misunderstandings, including our misunderstanding about judging. 

So it’s ironic that today this verse is so often misunderstood and misapplied as a mandate for Christians to avoid the implications of discernment.  As Voddie says, “The shorthand for this new John 3:16 is quite simple: Don't judge me. That's our attitude both inside and outside the church. In fact, we use this as a baseline for establishing genuine love. Genuine love is a love that doesn't judge. Genuine love is a love that receives me just as I am. If you are judging me, you are not loving me.” ³

Does that ring true with you?  That if you want to be loving, you must avoid any kind of statement that can be taken as negative (by the person you are trying to love)?   One eventually gets to the point where you have to ask, ”Is it enough to love?”

To answer that I think we need (or at least, I need) to look at how Jesus loved.  So I did that.  And as the initial verse was in Matthew, I looked at how Matthew recorded Jesus loving people.  Jesus being God, and God being love (1Jn 4:8), that would be any time Jesus interacted with the general population.

In Matthew 4 we see the first interactions of Jesus Christ with the people around Him, “From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”^[4]  Now to call someone to repentance is to call them to recognize their sin.  That’s a hard call.  But to love someone is to first and foremost act for their restoration to God.  It isn’t to ignore their sin or passively condone un-Christlike behavior. 

The second thing we see from how Jesus interacted with people is in the first part of v23, “Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom…”, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.”^[5]

What we gather from that is that to love someone is to teach them about the Kingdom.  The good news of the Kingdom is that God is coming and we can be ready for His appearing and the establishment of His rule.  All we need to do is change our ways and act in accordance with His rule, and our sins will be taken care of by the sacrifice Jesus made.  Praise the Lord!  This is true love, that we rescue the perishing!   

And the whole world is perishing, as it and all who life on it sit under His judgment.  As Jude recorded, “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” ^[6]  And yet, because of the Good News, those who obey the Gospel do not need to fear His judgment.  

The third thing we learn from how Jesus interacted with people is in the last part of v23, “and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.”^[7]  

From this we see that to love someone is to minister to them.  To meet their urgent felt needs by exercising our spiritual gifts.  To do what only God in us can do.  That is love.  That is what Jesus did. 

It is not enough to merely love.  The whole world loves – in that sense.  The Beatles loved.  The United Way loves.  But love is more than just compassion!  Compassion without restoration is not love.  Compassion without teaching about the Kingdom is not love.  Compassion without exercising spiritual gifts to the benefit of others – well, that’s not love either.  Love must seek restoration.  Love must seek what God seeks.  Love must act the way God acts. 

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^[1] http://www.preachingtoday.com/sermons/sermons/2013/january/passing-judgment.html

[2]The Holy Bible: New International Version. 1996 (electronic ed.) (Mt 7:1). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] http://www.preachingtoday.com/sermons/sermons/2013/january/passing-judgment.html

^[4]The Holy Bible: New International Version. 1996 (electronic ed.) (Mt 4:17). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[5]New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. 1995 (Mt 4:23). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

^[6] The Holy Bible: New International Version. 1996 (electronic ed.) (Jud 14–15). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[7] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. 1995 (Mt 4:23). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

Clear sailing? Probably not.

Even those with an extended holiday break go back to work on Monday.  As the world thus gets back to the regular grind, the words of the pundits, and the soothsayers, and the secular prophets will be forgotten.  Their predictions and comments on what the new year might bring will not be brought up again unless they actually come true.  Such being the case, I have no wish to join them and so will not inflict any of my readers with my own forecasts.  Instead, I will present some facts to you and you can make your own!

1)    The US government has a debt and unfunded liabilities totaling 248 thousand dollars for every man, woman and child.  Just a few days into the new year they will have to increase the borrowing limit they’ve self imposed.  This will be the 75^th time it is increased since 1962.  You can make your own call as to how sustainable you think that is.

2)   In 1929 the US stock market crashed as a result of unbridled greed and unrealistic valuations of stocks.  Those valuations were allowed to climb as high as they did because people were allowed to apply leverage (by borrowing 10$ they could control 100$ in stock).  The crash would have been strictly a North American affair except for President Hoover’s demand that Germany repatriate US funds lent to them for rebuilding after the 1^st world war.  The resulting lack of liquidity resulted in a European financial crisis that radicalized the German people.  Bad things happened downstream (that’s my entry to understatement of the year).  Your call if you think any US financial crisis today can jump across the Atlantic and cause a worldwide problem.

3)   The US has spent trillions of dollars on shoring up the equity markets and made much of new laws regarding banking as a result of the 2008 crisis.  According to Wikipedia, “The U.S. Senate's Levin–Coburn Report asserted that the crisis was the result of "high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses”.  Meanwhile, they have completely ignored the derivative market.  The derivative market is entirely based on leverage – for instance, for less than 1000$ you can control over a million dollars in T-bills.  The derivative market is now valued at 1.5 quadrillion dollars.  Yes, that’s not a spelling mistake or a typo.  That’s about 20 times more money then it would take to buy every single stock of every company on every stock market in the world.  In other words, the derivative market is now worth >20x more money then exists in the whole world.  Your call if you think that such a bubble can continue without bursting.  Also your call if you think the US has learned anything at all from the ’08 crisis.

I don’t know about you.  I look at the facts and I get an eerie deja-vu.  I’m not saying that things will spiral into the toilet this year.  I’m saying that they will spiral into the toilet sooner or later when you allow mankind’s greed to be your guide.