Tim Maas Retired Quality Assurance Specialist with the U.S. Army

If someone offered you a gift, and told you exactly what you needed to do to claim it, but sent that information to you through a messenger, rather than telling you directly, then if you refused to follow the instructions that the giver conveyed through the messenger, your failure to receive the gift would not be the fault of the messenger, but the decision of the giver, because you did not follow the instructions. 

As Jesus said in the verses immediately following the verses cited in the question (John 12:49-50), "For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent Me commanded Me to say all that I have spoken. I know that His command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told Me to say.”

Jesus was indicating that the words that He had spoken or preached in proclaiming Himself as the only means by which humanity could obtain forgiveness of sins and eternal life in God's presence were not His own message, but precisely what God the Father had ordered Him to say. 

Therefore, if people refused to believe those words, and failed to avail themselves of the salvation that the Father was offering to the world through Jesus, then the judgment that they would incur would not be from Jesus Himself, but from God the Father, since it would be the Father's offer (through the message that He had told Jesus to proclaim) that they would be rejecting.

May 07 2016 • 1 response • Vote Up • Share • Report

Myron Robertson Seeking God's heart

The answer you seek is given directly in the second verse you quoted. But all who reject me and my message will be judged on the day of judgment by the truth I have spoken. Judgment is not a personal event between two people, it is only and ever something between the individual and the standard of God's righteous law. All the judge does is look at the law and look at the individual and see if the requirements of the law have been fulfilled. This includes looking to see if the legal requirements for restoring a sinner to Grace have been met if there has been a violation. This is an aspect of the law Christians always ignore unfortunately because they simply see the law as a list of dos and don'ts and ignore the rest of the law.

The word translated as judge here is krino. This word has a broad enough definition to be a proper translation here, but it has a strong connotation of condemnation, not acquital (both are judgment in this since.) Jesus did not come to condemn, and has no need to do so since the standard of truth by which we are to be compared has already proven our failure to live up to that very truth. 

We see a very similar discussion between Jesus and the leaders in John 5 where Jesus came to a very similar conclusion. 45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

Moses was long dead and could not personally accuse these leaders. We will ignore the fact for now that it was Jesus in his preincarnate form on the mountain dictating the law to Moses, but we will point out that with this statement Jesus does tell us that every one of these laws was a prophecy of the Plan of Salvation and how Jesus would fulfill it. It was these words, not the man himself who was the accuser and condemned these leaders as sinners. There was no need of any particular judge to make this declaration because anyone with a love of the truth can read the words, look at these individuals and see that they failed miserably in meeting the standard of this law. 

It also helps to remember that the law is spiritual (Rom 7:14) but we are carnal, and those carnal lawyers who constantly sparred with Jesus were used to parsing the letter of the law, splitting it further and further with every examination seeking limits, caveats, and loopholes. They had no compunction against adding or removing various clauses as they saw fit. This was a serious sin (Dt 4:2), yet they did so constantly, so that when we read the Sermon on the Mount and other discussions where Jesus "throws out" various laws as many Christians claim, we find that he actually threw out their additions and returned the interpretation to that which He gave Moses on the mountain top. 

These leaders were seeking salvation through the letter of Moses' writings, not through the spiritual truths hidden in the spirit behind those words. Therefore Moses and his words were a condemnation to them, not salvation. Their attitude toward this law was all the proof necessary that they really did not believe Moses, and therefore could not believe Jesus either because he was both the law-giver and the subject of every one of those prophecies. However, any who seek God and his spirit can learn to see the truths hidden in those words and will have no difficulty seeing that truth and that it condemns those who cannot live up to that spiritual standard by the power of the flesh.

December 30 2016 • 1 response • Vote Up • Share • Report

Pamela lynne Kemp

The answer is very simple. Mankind was by judged by God Himself in Genesis 3 when Adam disobeyed God's one command. Genesis 3:22-24 states:

22 And the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), knowing [how to distinguish between] good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take from the tree of life as well, and eat [its fruit], and live [in this fallen, sinful condition] forever”— 23 therefore the Lord God sent Adam away from the Garden of Eden, to till and cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24 So God drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He [permanently] stationed the [f]cherubim and the sword with the flashing blade which turned round and round [in every direction] to protect and guard the way (entrance, access) to the tree of life.

There was no pathway to redemption.

The law was given to Moses so mankind would understand that only God is Ho!y and just how impossible it is to live a sinless life.

Jesus was born and crucified to pay the penalty for all of mankind's sin. And through our acceptance of Christ we can be saved by His grace through faith. 

The final judgment is not based on whether our sins tip the scales for or against us but rather whether our names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

December 30 2016 • 0 responses • Vote Up • Share • Report