Don't judge yourself...hope in Jesus

We know we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ (1 Cor 3:13; Rom 14:10). Paul said saints will judge the world (1 Cor 6:2). This obviously includes judging situations in the church (1 Cor 5:12; 6:3-4). Also, ministers will be judged for their work (1 Cor 3;12ff). Obviously we will be judged by our King.

Our danger is we want to judges our service for God to make sure our service is successful and right. How often does the church hang on to statistics and trust in demographics? How many Christian parents are at the edge of their seats waiting to assess whether they have been good parents or not by how their kids turn out? How many preachers judge using preaching as a marker for their personal happiness? How many Christians think they are either good or bad Christians because of the good or bad they do? To judge ourselves is an attempt to save ourselves.

Paul said, "I will not judge myself. It is the Lord who judges me" (1 Cor 4:3-4). In context he is referring to his ministry as an apostle, but all Christians should take his theme to their lives. It is dangerous to judge our service for God because we can rely on it rather than Jesus Christ. Karl Barth had it right when dealing with this subject. He calls Christians to remember that Jesus Christ is the judge. He is our hope. He calls us to again remember God's grace and our limits. Let me quote him.

"Here again we have a limit which the Christian can neither overlook nor overleap. He cannot overlook it because not even he can conceal from himself the fact that even his most loyal concern and strenuous effort to maintain his existence as a witness of Jesus Christ is always a human work like that of his fellows, so that, although he is charged to fulfil it, it cannot be his business to decide whether this fulfilment is good or bad, valuable or worthless, meaningful or meaningless. Nor can he overleap it, because he could do so only by grasping at that which does not belong to him, seating himself on the throne of Lord, judging both himself and the servants of another (Rom. 14:4), and thus trying to anticipate what the Lord has reserved for Himself. Again, it is an intolerably bitter thing for him to be confronted by this limit. For what courage or confidence can he have in the execution of his service when, even though he has the best possible conscience, he can have no knowledge whether even that which he has done with the best intentions and in exercise of his finest powers will finally be approved as serviceable or rejected as worthless, whether he will be accepted or repudiated in that which makes him a Christian? The severity of the question is to be considered. For the issue is quite simply whether the Christian has any option but in his own most proper concern to be like the poor heathen who optimistically or pessimistically can proceed only with uncertainty into a neutral, ambivalent and therefore obscure future. If he could not hope as a Christian, it would be all up with him. But since he may, all is not lost but won. He must not hope in himself. He must not hope that as a worker in the Lord’s vineyard he will finally do enough at least to assure his promotion, not perhaps cum laude, but at any rate rite. He must not hope in a friendly or not too exacting world which might finally hold out the prospect of a magna or insigni or even summa cum laude. He must not be distracted by such illusory possibilities. The Christian hopes in Jesus Christ, in Him alone, but in Him confidently. For He alone, but dependably, is the origin, theme and content of his hope, as of his faith and love. Can it hope in Him as the coming Judge? Yes, in Him as such, since as Judge He is the same as the One who then came in His resurrection and who is now present in the enlightening power of His Spirit. Not an unknown judge of fable, but He who is well-known to the Christian comes as Judge of the quick and the dead and therefore as his Judge. Not the Christian himself, nor the contemporary world, nor posterity, but He will judge and decide concerning his Christian witness, whether it is good or bad, valuable or worthless, meaningful or meaningless, gold, silver, precious stones, or wood, hay, stubble. He will judge and decide concerning the sincerity of heart and integrity of mind with which he has discharged it. There can be no doubt that His judgment is the future of the whole world and therefore of the Christian too."

The full and real work of Jesus

For a few hundred years now, Christians have had tunnel vision when it comes to the work of Jesus. We have learned the habit of thinking that truths such as Jesus’ cross and resurrection, reconciliation, being saved, the new birth, justification, and eternal life are something for personal salvation only. We are in the tunnel, we look to the end and all we see is Jesus’ gospel in connection with my individual salvation.
Does Jesus redeem us? Yes! Augustine told us to behold the incarnation of our Lord who became a personal man and understand his love for us personally. For who else can unravel the twisted and tangled knottiness of our foul sin which marred God’s image in us. It is your sin Jesus came to forgive. It is you he came to cleanse. Jesus our Lord came to save his people from their sins. And all of us as baptized members are personally members of his one body. Our personal salvation is part of Jesus’ real work. But if we think Jesus’ real work of redemption only includes our salvation from hell and flight to heaven we don’t have the whole story. What about life & creation?
Rather than having a tunnel-vision-gospel, we need to have a bible-vision-gospel. And that comes out in the Colossians 1:15-20 passage, particularly v.20. What brings Paul to make this astounding statement that changes our whole outlook about the end? He understands the real person and work of Jesus!
Read v.11-14. God our Father has qualified us to receive the inheritance of his kingdom and he has taken us from the Kingdom of darkness to put us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins.
But who is Jesus. Read v.15-20. Jesus is God and man! Here, as in 1 Corinthians 8 and Philippians 2 the Shema contains Jesus. Here O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one! He is the very image of God, the revelation of JHWH himself. Jesus is...

Creator. He was the wisdom of God, the Father’s agent of creation. “For by him were all things created…” All things were created through him and for him! This perfectly fitted him to become human at his incarnation. And thus it perfectly fitted him to take the role of v.20 to be the Reconciler of his world.

Lord. Jesus is the first born of all creation. Meaning he is the first to rise from the dead as man in the new creation. He is first, now being the perfect human. Actually the risen body of Jesus is the one bit of this physical world that has already been put right. This why it is right and proper for him to be before all things, the sovereign ruler over creation, the head of the church, the supreme pre-eminent Lord, the judge of the world (Acts 17:30-31).
So Jesus as the God–man has become what he always was; the pre-existent Lord and Creator of the world (God). But he has also become the human Lord of the world. You can see why in him all the fullness of God dwells. So this world can now see God. Actually the times of ignorance is now over (Acts 17:30). Of course he is eminently, wonderfully perfectly fitted to be the Saviour of v.20.

Redeemer. This is the thrust of v.20. Jesus is the redeemer of his people and his creation. As Creator and Lord it was through him the Father reconciled all things whether on earth or in heaven to himself. Jesus has made peace through the blood of his cross. Through his sacrifice, healing, restoration, forgiveness, and peace between man and God, man and creation, man and man has been made and will be practiced forever.
So the real work of Jesus the Creator, Lord, and Redeemer is to reconcile his own creation and people back to the holy God. To reconcile means to restore to peace and harmony. Jesus real work is to restore sinners by rescuing them and forgiving them, and to restore our created world to its intended place of peace, justice, and harmony.

Understanding and love go hand in hand

Augustine wrote this about hermeneutics in his, On Christian Doctrine. “It is to be understood that the plenitude and the end of the Law and of all the sacred Scriptures is the love of a Being which is to be enjoyed and of a being that can share that enjoyment with us…Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbour does not understand it at all.”

God, and lying to ourselves.

Somewhere in his brilliant writtings Dostoyevsky said, "Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” What can break this aweful sin of turning away from God and ourselves? Only God's grace. He by his revelation in Jesus Christ turns us around to face the truth about him and then we learn the truth about ourselves.
We often say the truth hurts so we hide hurt from ourselves. But can we say knowing God and ourselves hurts? Yes and no. Yes, when God loves us in his Son and turns us around to face him we realize how captured to evil we have really been. Real regret sinks in, and this hurts. But no, in that we are glad to be found out, and be turned around. I think we know even while we are lying to ourselves about our accomplishments and our sins themselves that we need to be turned around by God. When this happens by his grace we are glad.