Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
We don't have to wait until the Last Day for judgment; it's a do-it-ourselves project, today. Jesus made it plain in John 3:18: "He that believeth not is condemned [judged] already, because he hath not believed .. " Not "will someday be condemned," but "is condemned already." And the previous verse, to the consternation of many church people, makes clear that it's not a vengeful Christ who condemns the lost, "for God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved." And He enlarges on this assurance in chapter 12, verses 47 and 48: "If anyone hear my words and believe not, I judge [condemn, Greek] him not: for I came not to judge [condemn] the world, but to save the world."
How then is the one who rejects the Gospel "condemned" or judged? The next verse explains: "He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." The "word" is the gospel of what it cost the Son of God to "save" us; and the unbeliever performs his own do-it-yourself judgment by recording in his own soul his responsibility for "receiving not" [rejecting] that "word" of the Good News. When the woman taken in adultery faced her accusers, Jesus made no accusatory tirade against them. Each who looked in His eyes slunk away self-condemned, a preview of the final judgment (8:9).
Some will say, "No, in the parables of the sheep/goats and talents/pounds, Jesus harshly berates the down-and-outers" (Matt. 25:26-30, 41-43). But Revelation 14:10 explains the apparent self-contradiction: before the world and the universe, the lost will be forced to look into the eyes of "the Lamb of God" whom they have persistently "crucified to themselves afresh, and put to an open shame" (Heb 6:6). They will be forced to see their part in the crucifixion and re-crucifixion of the Son of God. Fire and brimstone will feel great compared to that agony.
Do you have a new day? Thank God for it. It's another opportunity for repentance.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: January 14, 1999.
Copyright © 2013 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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