Whatever you believe about Jesus, I am assuming you occasionally dip into my posts because you share something of my fascination with him. The book I wrote over a decade ago began this section with the words: Jesus was the only sinless man who ever lived, and was therefore the one most entitled to make a judgement on someone else's behaviour - but he refused to do so.
Over the last decade I have deconstructed many elements of the evangelical theology I used to sign up to but always struggled to defend. The first crack in the edifice came with the realisation that evangelicalism's preoccupation with the saving of individuals from hell was not what Jesus taught (Jews are ambivalent about the existence of heaven and hell), and is also a pretty poor motivation for doing the one thing Jesus coached his disciples to do. This led to the need to rethink the meaning of sin. I have already written a series about this question, so I'm not going to go any deeper now but, as I re-read the words that originally introduced this section of my blog series, I realised that my beliefs about sin no longer require Jesus to be sinless in order for his death to satisfy the wrath of God.1 As I write today, I am elated because belief in a sinless Jesus required him to be perfect, which always made the idea that I could become more like Jesus feel next to impossible.
If we read the Gospels carefully we see that Jesus' refusal to stand in judgement over the woman at the well was no accident. In my discussion about the meaning of John 3:16 in earlier posts I deliberately omitted any reference to verse 17. When I am speaking in public I ask if anyone can quote it, and rarely do I find more than one or two people who recall that it says; “For God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge, but to be its saviour.”
I feel the need to focus on Jesus because of my unerring tendency to create god in my own image. I struggle to think of myself as religious because of the countless number of self-centred and self-serving individuals who have built religious cultures that are resistant to God and have engaged in countless acts, large and small, hidden and notorious, that have caused untold suffering. Yes, I know that is not the whole story and that I could be accused to being terribly negative, but when even those who try and live God’s way seem incapable of getting it right it seems clear the me that the God problem with which I began this paragraph is endemic.
In Jesus' day the religious professionals had things sown up. On one hand they had interpreted the scriptures in such a way that they were able to place themselves on moral high ground. On the other, in an attempt to explain why God's people were living under Roman oppression, sin had to be involved somewhere (else) in the mix. It therefore seemed obvious that, if they were blameless, it must be others who were not. The Pharisees were sticklers for law-keeping because they believed God was.
Jesus refused to play their game because his God was different. He refused to stand in judgement over all but those from whom more was expected: the religious establishment. Jesus explains why later in the Gospel:
Jesus said, "I tell you the truth: the Son can do nothing on his own; he does only what he sees his Father doing. What the Father does, the Son also does… Nor does the Father himself judge anyone. He has given his Son the full right to judge.2
So Jesus has the right to make judgements and yet...
If people hear my message and do not obey it, I will not judge them. I came, not to judge the world, but to save it.3
Of course, this doesn’t mean there is no judgement:
Those who reject me and do not accept my message have one who will judge them. The words I have spoken will be their judge on the last day!4
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It seems to me that Jesus viewed being the world's judge and its saviour as mutually exclusive. He knows he can't be both at the same time and thankfully has no need to try. A form of final judgement may be waiting in the wings but is not for now.5 In the meantime, Jesus' teaching and example stands as the standard by which those of us who seek to please his Father can judge our progress.6
Yet Jesus ministered in a world where judgement was rife. This woman was reduced to coming into the marketplace at midday because of judgements that had been made about her which had their origins in the religious and cultural rules and traditions of her day. Her critics must have felt so self-righteous as they compared themselves to her, completely overlooking the fact that gender roles and expectations might have made it an economic necessity for her to take numerous husbands.
As Jesus stood before the woman, he probably felt freer to be himself than ever he did amongst his own people. No Pharisee would be seen dead in Samaria, and Jesus was probably loving not being surrounded by his own judges, critics and naysayers. More about that in the next post…
Whether or not I will continue to believe Jesus was sinless is not a question I feel minded to give a great deal of attention to. The fact he does not need to be is enough for me right now.
John 5:19-22.
John 12:47.
John 12:48.
This is another question that I don't find it necessary to unpack. Suffice it to say, I believe that whatever form it may take, the idea of someone stern guarding the gates of heaven with a list of 'saved' people on it, is not judgement - it is retribution. If there is to be a judgement all that is needed is for me to review my own life whilst in the presence of perfect love and mourn deeply over certain actions and motivations.
John 9:39.