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 who believes in Him is not condemned [judged]; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has 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 did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." He enlarges on this assurance in chapter 12: "If anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge [condemn, Greek] him; for I did not come to judge [condemn] the world but to save the world" (vs. 47).
How then is the one who rejects the gospel "condemned" or judged? The next verse explains: "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him--the word that I have spoken will 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 "not receiving" [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 talents and the sheep and goats, Jesus harshly berates the down-and-outers" (Matt. 25:14-30, 31-46). 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 Him to an open shame" (Heb 6:6, King James Version). 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.
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