Responsibility for Judgment

Introduction:

We have learned of the following realities about the incarnation and the crucifixion:

It is about disclosing or revealing God’s loving nature.

It is about God’s defeat of Satan.

It is about God’s solution for human fallenness.

At the cross we see victory, not defeat, love, not wrath.

Jn. 3:17-18 has explained the purpose of the incarnation was not judgment:

Eschatological or final judgment did not occur.

Messiah did not come to reconstitute the Davidic monarchy.

Rejecting Jesus is not merely rejecting a series of claims:

It is to reject God’s own loving nature.

Many issues remain for us to consider.

We have not yet left from the original issue in Jn. 2:24.

Why did Jesus not entrust himself to the crowd?

Two Types of People:

We should take note of how believing/not believing gets presented here.

Believing is not something a person just walks away from.

Believers enter into a constant, ongoing way of life, characterized by that belief or trust.

Not believing is also an abiding state until there is trust in Jesus resulting from the evidence.

Not believing is a way of life.

Judgment

What is explained in Jn. 3:18 accords with Jesus’ own teaching throughout the Gospel.

Moses as judge: Jn. 5:45-47.

We must, yet again, wrestle with the meaning of judgment in Jn. 3:18.

Judgment appears to be used in two senses:

Eternal or final judgment - Jn. 5:24. This accords with the initial claim of Jn. 3:18 for the believer.

Judgment ushered in by Messiah at the last days which would result in the establishment of an independent Jewish state.

Note the perfect tense for the one not believing: that individual stands in a state of having already been judged.

In order to understand judgment (note Jn. 5:22, 30), we have to put everything around the crucifixion into broader context (remember also Jn. 12:30-34: “now is the judgment of the world”)

Messiah did not come to bring in final judgment.

He must first suffer, then he will judge.

Furthermore, the dividing line of eschatological judgment is not Jew/Gentile but believer/unbeliever.

Judgment is a reality of human existence. The only way out of that reality is faith in Jesus Christ.

Revisit believing “in the name.”

Introduction:

In Romans 3:23, the Bible says that “all have sinned and come short of (failed) the glory of God.”

We are less than God created us to be. We may still be his imagers, but we do not manifest his virtues by nature.

What God is in his holiness and his eternality, we are not.

What God created us to be, we are not.

In Israel, we have an ideal group of people, but through them, we get to see how fallen we are.

A Contrast Between Men and God

Jesus’ presence exposes the difference between God and men.

God loved the world.

Fallen humanity loves its moral evil.

The themes from the Prologue (Jn. 1:4-12) have returned.

Logos is both the life-giver and the one who exposes the nature of God and man.

Note the perfect tense: “the light HAS COME into the world.”

Humanity wants to be able to justify itself, we want to justify our moral evil.

Prov. 9:8-9.

Prov. 16:2.

Jn. 15:24.

James 1:22-25.

Prov. 15:12.

φαῦλα (Jn. 3:20): a strong word that refers to moral baseness.

We want to remain in our evil, and we do not want Jesus to expose our evil.

Jn. 5:40.

Jn. 15:24.

Doing the truth may foreshadow the conversation between Jesus and the crowd in Jn. 6:28-29.