Today we like to leave the judging to God. At least half of it. When it comes to pronouncing something as bad, Whoa! leave that to God. But when it comes to proclaiming something as good, anything goes. I’m good, you are good, everything is good fine ok and I have Christian liberty, so how dare you judge me–bad.
The Just Judges or The Righteous Judges is the lower left panel of the Ghent Altarpiece, painted by Jan van Eyck or his brother Hubert Van Eyck between 1430–32. It is believed that the panel shows portraits of several contemporary figures such as Philip the Good, and possibly the artists Hubert and Jan van Eyck themselves. The panel was stolen in 1934 and never been found since. -Wikipedia
The verb form of the word judge means “to form an opinion or conclusion about”. Of course judgements can be good or bad or anything in between. We make these sorts of decision every day, we must. The story of scripture is one of mankind making many bad judgements. Hey this snake sounds pretty good, maybe I will eat the fruit. Hey I’m kind of mad at God, maybe I’ll kill my brother. And on and on. Judging rightly is seen as the quintessential quality of the godly leader. Paul tells us that we in the church have special access to the truth which should allow us to make better judgements than the world I Cor 6:1-11. He is talking about lawsuits which can include any number of areas of human conflict, we should be able to decide and make judgements about everything. There is no aspect of life which Jesus is not Lord over, his Word instructs us in everything for life and Godliness II Peter 1:3.
Yet the postmodern mantra, is “don’t judge me”. But only in some circumstances. We like to leave the bad judgements up to God, “vengeance is God’s, don’t cha know?” But Scripture also refers to God as the great comforter, the rewarder of good deeds. But we have no problem taking over this role. When homosexuality is rampant and sleeping around is common ‘loving’ these people and pronouncing their behavior as fine and these people as ‘good’ people is perfectly acceptable. We pronounce acceptance of any number of clear sins as loving. We commend our fellow man even in the face of blatant sin, declaring that “they are still a good person”, “they are doing the best they can.” But I don’t think we are. We have created a system that insulates us from any real criticism. People who find anything wrong with any behavior are ‘haters’, ‘legalist’, ‘puritans’, etc. Only permitting positive comments “likes” is a sure way to guarantee that our behavior becomes worse and worse.
Making good judgements takes practice and skill. Wisdom is not a theoretical exercise it is like a trade or craft that must be developed. It starts when we are very young and our parents help us to begin making decisions for ourselves. Refusal on the part of parents to push their children to develop this skill can leave them morally helpless. But it’s never to late to start the work of judging rightly. Like learning any subject and applying it to the real world. We will make mistakes, but we must learn from them and try again and again. Fortunately we are not left alone to make every mistake for ourselves. We can learn from the mistakes of others through watching them, or hearing stories of their applied wisdom. This is why the bulk of Scripture is made up of stories. Real people doing real things, they often fail, but we get diving commentary on their failures and successes. There are also many commands, covering areas that are not possible for us to understand. Sometimes God tells us to shut up and listen, simply because he is God and we are not, as he addresses Job or Jeremiah. Paul reiterates this idea in Romans 9.
If we as a people have any hope, we really must take judgement more seriously, we must learn to judge rightly and teach others to do so as well. We must hold ourselves and others to a much higher standard. We must be open to negative judgements from others. We must be willing to speak difficult negative judgements to others. This is biblical Christian living, this is the true mission of the Church. We are saved to good works Ephesians 2:10, that by them we may bless the world, that they may see our light and come to faith.
The Puritans understood this well. They took sin very seriously, corporate sin and individual sin. Our nation was born out of their work at judging rightly. Never in history had so many men, striving to mortify sin, striving to glorify God in all that they did, been assembled in one place. They were free to start over, to renew the tradition of English Christendom, to even a higher standard. We and the world are blessed to this day by their difficult work. If we want the future to be brighter for the world we need to follow their example. What we do on earth has consequences for eternity. While ultimate judgement is reserved for Jesus at the end of days. Judgements we make our binding on eternity. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven, what is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven Matthew 18. So make those judgements wisely, scripturally, boldly as priests of the most high God.
Further Listening: Puritan Sermon Series here.