Self Judgment

t“For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.” -1 Cor. 11:31

The Ghost Rider is one of the most unique comic book heroes I have come across lately and has a very unusual superpower.  Besides for the fact that he is a chain wielding, Harley riding, undead creature with a flaming skull – his power over villains comes into action simply when he touches them.  Upon touching them they will personally experience all the pain they have inflicted on others.  If the villain was a murderer they would feel the pain and emotional anguish of their victims collectively in a moment of time, and the result of the experience would invariably be death.  If there really were such a character roaming the streets, who could possibly survive the touch of the Ghost Rider?  Although most of us aren’t murderers, we are all creatures who look out for our own interests – and all of us have hurt others along the way.  When we are hurt by other people it is easy to demand justice, but when we hurt others our natural tendency is to either ignore their pain or justify ourselves by claiming that our behavior is just human nature.

When it comes to sin, all of us are guilty.  Sin however is not a failure to live up to manmade religious standards, but the failure to walk in love towards others.  The Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, “Love works no ill to its neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” – Romans 10:13 Sin is not a personal preference, but a social disease that is responsible for all the evil in our world today – and every one of us have contributed to that evil.  If the Ghost Rider were to touch any one of us, the outcome of that touch would most certainly be death.  In the same way scripture tells us that the judgment for sin is death and that all of us have sinned.  David wrote of mankind saying, “They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that does good, no, not one.” –Psalms 14:3

When most people think about Christians they think about people who are confident in their own goodness and are quick to condemn others.  Scripture however shows that the exact is opposite true saying, “Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find?”  Most everyone on earth is confident in their own goodness, and they feel secure in this confidence by looking down at people who are ‘worse’ than them.  Instead of taking a good hard look at themselves and their own sin, they find others who have committed worse actions and by the comparison feel justified.  The most tragic thing about this is that the only way to escape judgment  is by judging ourselves – by deciding that we personally are in need of mercy and forgiveness.

The only way to enter into the Kingdom of God is by humility.  The people who come to Jesus are those who have acknowledged their need for a savior, and out of that need have cried out to Him.  Romans 10:9 says, “That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.”  God has purchased our freedom with a great price, and those who deny their own need for that mercy are in effect denying the need for God to have paid the price.  Galatians 2:21 tells us, “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”  Ultimately the only thing that will keep anyone out of heaven is their own pride by choosing instead to trust in their own goodness.  Those that do will be met with the righteous judgment of God, where all the pain and suffering they have inflicted on others will be laid out before them – followed by death.

As Christians we should be the least judgmental people on the earth, because we know there is no goodness in us apart from Christ.  We are fully aware that a perfectly innocent and spotless Lamb laid His life down to cleanse us from the evil we have committed.  Jesus spoke in a parable of a servant who was forgiven a great debt that was impossible for him to repay, who then condemned someone else for a small debt owed to him.  The Master of the servant then rebuked him and sent him to prison saying, “O you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt, because you desired me to.  Shouldn’t you also have had compassion on your fellow servant, even as I had pity on you?” –Matthew 18:33  We are the servant who was forgiven a great debt, and as God has extended mercy to us – we need to extend mercy to others.

Stop Trying, and Start Believing!

“Now the just shall live by faith…” –Hebrews 10:38

Growing up in a mostly white community in the central San Joaquin valley my understanding of ‘diversity’ was limited to a handful of people I knew who represented different cultures.  When my family moved to the Bay Area I was introduced to what real diversity looked like.  The city of San Jose alone represents the most culturally diverse place on earth, with people of nearly every nationality living there.  A diverse place however isn’t necessarily a tolerant place, and the communities were often segregated by race along very distinct lines.  This had the effect of producing one of the most racially conscious places I had ever been in, and it was common to classify people first by their background and then make judgments about them based on local stereotypes.  Something about this grieved me deeply, and I felt the Holy Spirit minister to me, “For the LORD sees not as man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” – 1 Samuel 16:7

I knew that God was challenging me to see people the way that He saw them, as souls first and not according to the outward appearance.  However, knowing the standard that God wanted me to live by only seemed to make me more racially conscious than ever.  I would look at a person and think to myself, “OK… I am not going to look at the outward appearance” – but in the very act of thinking that I was thinking about the outward appearance!  The more I tried to free myself from being racially conscious, the more racially conscious I became.  Feeling like a complete failure I cried out to God in my shame and He spoke to my spirit very clearly, “Stop trying, and start believing!”  Up until that point I had been trying to be like Jesus through my own ability, instead of believing that Jesus and His love were inside of me.  The last several months had proved that it was impossible for me to love the way Jesus wanted me to, and now it was time to let Jesus Himself love through me.

The approach was radically different from what was doing before, because before I needed to focus on the problem to overcome it.  Instead of focusing on the problem, now I was focusing on Jesus – and believing that His love would flow through me whenever I would see anyone.  It was the most freeing thing in the world, and it worked!  I couldn’t boast within myself saying that I had disciplined myself to see people the way God does, because that proved to be an utter failure.  It was only when I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t love like Jesus that I was able to allow Jesus to step up and start loving through me.  Suddenly the message of the gospel became very clear to me, and what it really means when it says that the just shall live by faith.

Many of us view Jesus as only being our Savior at the beginning of our walk with Christ.  It is as if we think the purpose of the cross was to give us a clean slate and a fresh chance to get things right the next time around.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as we are just as much sinners after the cross as we were before it.  In fact sometimes we get even worse in our sin after we come to Christ, because we learn more about the standards that God wants us to live by.  But the good news is that we were never meant to live up to those standards, and we can’t.  The Apostle Paul said, “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am fleshly, sold under sin.  For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do.” –Romans 7:14-15 Paul realized that it was impossible for him as a fallen human to live by God’s Holy standards.

What the world needs more than anything else is Jesus – and He lives in our hearts by faith.  God never intended for us to focus on all sin in the world, but on Him instead!  If the Holy Spirit reveals an area in your life that needs to change, He already knows that you can’t change it on your own.  Just as the children of Israel were tormented by poisonous snakes and couldn’t save themselves, we have no ability to live a righteous life on our own.  But when Moses lifted up a bronze snake on a pole that represented Jesus, they received healing by looking at the image.  Today we receive healing through faith in the power and love of Jesus inside of us.  Romans 5: 17 tells us, “…they which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Christ Jesus.”