Human Judgment

Christ the Pantocrator

Monday after Cantate

“You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one” (John 8:15).

To judge according to the flesh is to judge according to the mere appearance of a thing, or to make a decision about a thing based on human reasoning. Speaking to the Jews in this passage, Jesus uses the term “flesh” as He does in Chapter six when He says, “the flesh (that is, the human nature) profits nothing.[1]” This is in contrast to how He uses the same word earlier in chapter six during the Bread of Life discourse to describe His own flesh as real food.[2] This is the way Paul uses the term “the flesh” in his writings. Paul writes in Romans, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells;[3]” And, to the Galatians, “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.[4]” The term “flesh”, as Jesus uses it here refers to the sinful human nature, which lusts against the Spirit, which two are contrary to one another.[5] This is the standard by which the Jews are judging Jesus. They do not accept the works He does, like healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, and raising the dead. They claim that Jesus is doing these miracles by the power of the devil, that He is transgressing the Law of Moses when He heals on the Sabbath, or that He blasphemes when He says that holy Scripture is about Him, He is the only way to the Father, and calls Himself God.

But in the same sentence Jesus says something we might find odd. He says that He judges no one. If Jesus had said that, rather than judging according to the flesh, He judged according to the Spirit, this would be more logical. But Jesus does not say that. He says, “I judge no one.” How can this be true, especially when we Christians confess that He will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead?[6] It is God’s word that judges. Jesus alludes to this type of judgment when He tells them, “It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. I am One who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me.[7]” They should believe what Jesus teaches because in accordance with God’s word, Jesus has two who “bear witness” on His behalf: Himself, and God the Father. God’s word is what judges those who refuse to believe Jesus. Jesus will later tell His disciples, “If anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive my words, has that which judges him – the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.[8]” Christ offered life to His hearers, but their rejection would condemn them (The Lutheran Study Bible 2009, p. 1807).

Jesus says that He is the light of the world, but the Jews are blind to this light because they are judging Jesus, not by God’s Word as they believe in their legalism, but rather according to the flesh. This is not a problem that is unique to them. We people today are just as prone to reject Jesus as our ancient counterparts because of our sinful human nature, and chalk it up to being clever, sophisticated, and modern. But, we have the same sinful flesh to contend with as they, and therefore the same inclination toward sin and away from God. It is true of us as well: in us, that is, in our flesh, there is nothing good. Almost 100 years ago, a man named Pieper wrote about “modern theology”:

The moderns have nothing to offer but human doctrine. Refusing to accept Scripture as the Word of God, they have found it theologically unreliable and have substituted for it as the source of doctrine the human heart, the theological Ego…They are virtually demanding that theology be removed from the realm of divine truth into the sphere of subjective human opinion…we shall have to insist that what the Church needs is God’s theology and that the theology, the doctrine drawn by the theologian from Scripture…is divine doctrine (Christian Dogmatics 1957, p.53).

God’s word is true; it means what it says, and it does what it says. And it says that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day.[9] It says that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.[10] It says that He was the one promised, even going all the way back to the Garden, to come and set the captives free, destroying sin, death, and the devil.[11] It says that when we eat His body and drink His blood as he tells us to, we have the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.[12] It says that when we are baptized into Christ, we put on Christ,[13] our sins are washed away,[14] and we are saved all through the resurrection of Christ;[15] that baptism connects us to His death, and consequently to His resurrection, so it belongs to us.[16] So repent and believe the Gospel. Let’s not judge Jesus according to the flesh, and end up being judged ourselves by His word. Let’s not be too modern to receive the forgiveness of sins and inherit eternal life on the Last Day, for on that Day, all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting condemnation.[17]

Works Cited

Concordia Publishing House. 2009. The Lutheran Study Bible. Edited by Edward A Engelbrecht, Paul E Deterding, Roland Cap Ehlke, Jerald C Joersz, Mark W Love, Steven P Mueller, Scott R Murray, et al. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House.

Pieper, Francis. 1957. Christian Dogmatics. Edited by Walter W. F. Albrecht. Vol. 1. 4 vols. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House.

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[1] John 6:63

[2] John 6:55

[3] Romans 7:18

[4] Galatians 5:24

[5] Galatians 5:17

[6] John 5:28-30

[7] John 8:17-18

[8] John 12:47-48

[9] 1 Corinthians 15

[10] 1 John 2:2

[11] Luke 4:16-22

[12] Matthew 26:28; 1 Corinthians 11:23-29

[13] Galatians 3:27

[14] Acts 22:16

[15] 1 Peter 3:18-22

[16] Romans 6:3-11

[17] John 5:29

Lazarus Raised from the Dead

The Raising of Lazarus

Friday after Exaudi

Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go” (John 11:38-44).

Jesus told Martha that He was the resurrection and the life; now, everyone gathered at Lazarus’ tomb can see the proof. Jesus, the Word made flesh, gives life through the word. His word does the things He says. When God says over the formless void of the earth, “Let there be light!” there is light.[1] When Jesus, through whom and for whom all things were created,[2] tells the dead Lazarus to come out of his grave, he comes out, and by absolutely no effort of his own. God’s Word does what it says. It is creative. It is successful in producing the desired result, that is, it is efficacious.

God’s Word is no less efficacious now. When God’s Word comes to us connected to water in Holy Baptism, promising to wash away our sins and to save us,[3] it does. When we confess our sins, God tells us that He, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.[4] He does so, through the man called to preach and administer the sacraments, our faithful pastor, as well as informally through our brothers and sisters to whom we confess our sins.[5] When we hear the preaching of the Gospel, that while we were God’s enemies, Christ died for the ungodly as the Lamb of God, the ransom for the sins of the world, we know that it is efficacious;[6] it is the power of God to the salvation of all who believe, the means by which the Holy Spirit works faith in all men.[7] When we receive the very body and blood of the Word made flesh for the forgiveness of our sins, that is truly what He gives us - both His body and His blood to eat and to drink, and the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation He has won for us by His death and resurrection.[8]

Lazarus’ resurrection is a foreshadowing of our own resurrection. One day, Jesus will return and call us out of our graves:

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.[9]

Because we have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, His death and resurrection belong to us.[10] In our baptism we have put on Christ. It is God’s guarantee that we will not all sleep, but we will all be raised and changed to have a glorious body, just as Christ does.

For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.[11]

We are made His through our baptism, being born again from above by the power of the Holy Spirit, through water and the Word.

Here, in this fallen world of sin and death, we must endure much that is difficult to bear. Take heart! Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; He was buried, and He rose again the third day.[12] That means that all who belong to Him have the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. So, even if those troubles we experience in the world lead to our physical death, which they all ultimately will if Jesus should delay His coming, we can be certain that God the Father has saved us by what Jesus Christ the Son has done for us on the cross. He who is faithful and true has promised us. So, in Christ, God has turned death from a curse into something that guarantees us life. That is not to say that death is our friend, or we should welcome it, or we should not mourn those who pass from this veil of tears before us. We should, however, recognize that when a Christian dies, he is brought safely to the Lord in heaven, where Satan no longer has access to him, to safely await the resurrection on the Last Day. God has worked all things, including death, for our good, according to His purpose.[13]

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed - in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed.[14]

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[1] Genesis 1:1-3

[2] John 1:3,10

[3] Acts 2:38; 22:16; 1 Peter 3:18-22

[4] 1 John 1:6-9

[5] James 5:16

[6] Romans 5:10; John 1:29; Mark 10:45

[7] Romans 1:16; 10:17

[8] Matthew 26:26-27; 1 Corinthians 11:23-30

[9] 1 Thessalonians 4:16

[10] Romans 6:3-5; Galatians 2:26-27

[11] 1 Corinthians 15:21-23

[12] 1 Corinthians 15:3-8

[13] Romans 8:28

[14] 1 Corinthians 15:51-52

Shall not the Judge of the earth do right?

Shall not the Judge of the earth do right? We tend to think that He won’t. We especially think this when something terrible happens to us, or to those whom we love. Like when your friend suddenly dies. We get angry. He didn’t deserve to die. Why did he die now, and so many other, more terrible people, go on living? People like Nicolas Maduro, dictator of Venezuela, who starves and murders his own people, while his military drives armored vehicles into crowds of protesters,[1] for instance. He seems pretty bad, and he is still alive. Or, there are those two people from Crystal Lake, IL who murdered their 7-year-old son and tried to cover it up by making it look like the child was kidnapped.[2] That was definitely evil. Even if they are convicted of murder, they will live out their days in prison. I’m sure you have your own list of evil people forming in your own mind. Our impulse is to get angry and think these, and any number of other people, should be farther up the queue than a man like Ray Bickel, retired Chicago Cop, who was a loving father and grandfather, a Cubs fan, a loyal friend, a faithful volunteer and tenor in the choir at St. John’s Mayfair, and a general, all-around good guy. What’s going on here? Shall not the Judge of the earth do right?

This verse comes from the second half of Genesis 18:25, which is the middle of the passage where Abraham intercedes to God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah. God tells Abraham that He is going to destroy the cities because of their great wickedness; Abraham begins his famous negotiation: Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would you also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were within it?[3] We know what happens. God says no, and Abraham keeps bringing the number lower, and lower. He ultimately tells Abraham that, for the sake of 10 righteous people, He would spare the city. The angels go to Sodom, they remove Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family, and God destroys the city by raining fire and brimstone from heaven.[4] So, we are to understand that every man, woman, and child in Sodom was deserving of death? The answer is yes. Either that, or God is not righteous.

The point God is making to Abraham is that there isn’t even one righteous person in Sodom. This includes Lot. He isn’t innocent either. Don’t forget, Lot is the man who chose to separate himself from Abraham, through whom God’s promised Redeemer was to come; he is the man whose moral sense was warped in such a way that, rather than distance himself from the wretched hive of scum and villainy that was Sodom, Lot embraced it. This warping manifests itself when righteous Lot offers his daughters up to gang rape by the mob of Sodomites who were seeking to molest Lot’s angelic visitors.[5] In fact,

he had become so attached to what Sodom had to offer that he was reluctant to make a clean break. The angels had to take him and his wife and daughters as one takes little children by the hand and lead them outside the doomed city. They actually had to force rescue on Lot and his family.[6]

Even then, Lot’s wife rejects this rescue; she turns back to look at the city as they flee, and becomes a pillar of salt.

In times of pain, suffering, and loss, we are tempted to blame God for our evil. We lament that an evil dictator is alive, and our friend is dead, and God is unjust. But He isn’t unjust. We deserve the wages we are paid, for we are all sinners, and the wages of sin is death. This is because we are a lot like Lot. We are corrupted by sin; we love this corrupt world, and gratifying the desires of our sinful flesh. We have to be dragged out of our fallen state as reluctantly as Lot was brought out of Sodom. Everyone in Sodom deserved to die, because they were fallen, sinful people. It isn’t injustice on God’s part when men die; we all are fallen, sinful creatures who are subject to death through the one man, Adam.[7] Conversely, Lot did not deserve God’s redemption from the coming destruction, but he was given it as a gift. He didn’t do anything to earn it; he certainly didn’t deserve to be rescued because of how good a person he was. God came to Lot when he was a filthy sinner, and Lot submitted to Him; that is why Peter can call Lot a righteous man.[8]

The point is, that no one is righteous, no, not one.[9] Because of our sin, we all deserve death and damnation; God, the righteous Judge, would’ve been justified in destroying His entire creation and starting over after the Fall, if He wanted. No man, no matter how good, upright, or righteous he is in the eyes of the world, or how loved he is by his family and friends, deserves to be spared death and hell on those grounds. Not you, not me, not Ray, not Nicholas Maduro; Not anyone.

God, thankfully, is a merciful judge, as well as a righteous one. He saves mankind the same way that He saved righteous Lot from the destruction of Sodom. He comes to us and rescues us. Jesus, The Second Adam, came into the world to bear our sin and be our savior. He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. He was delivered up to death that He might quicken, that is, make alive His people. Jesus was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. He comes to us, individually, through His Word, and delivers to us this salvation He has purchased for us on the cross with His holy, precious blood, and by His innocent suffering and death. He comes to save us in the waters of Holy Baptism.[10] He comes to forgive our sins in the eating and drinking of His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper.[11] He comes to us, to create repentance and faith in us,[12] through the Word preached, read, and meditated upon. He comes to us in the words spoken by our faithful pastor who, in the stead and by the command of Our Lord Jesus Christ, pronounces forgives us our sins, and announces the grace of God to us.[13] While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.[14] While we are sinners, Christ comes to us through His Word and Sacraments, forgives our sins, cleanses us from all unrighteousness, and gives us eternal life. The only way we do not get these things is if we refuse and reject them. In the list of things that Ray “was”, the most important thing was omitted. He was a Christian. These are the promises into which Ray was baptized; these are the things that he confessed before men. And, since he was baptized into Christ’s death, Ray has also been united together with Christ’s resurrection.

This is why, even at the death of a loved one, we can have comfort and be joyful. This is something popular American Christianity, of the Joel Osteen/Joyce Meyer variety, cannot do: teach us, as St. Paul writes, to be content in whatever state we may find ourselves, because of what we have in Christ. They point us to health and wealth in this world. They teach us to live our best lives now. It might work for a while, but eventually, we are confronted with sin, and no amount of “thinking good thoughts” will help. Our faith that Jesus, the God-man, has redeemed us, paid for our sins on the cross and declared us righteous, doesn’t mean we will be free from pain and sorrow in this life. To the contrary, Jesus promises us that in this life we will have trouble.[15] He goes on to encourage us to be of good cheer, because He has overcome the world. Satan thought he defeated God when Jesus died on the cross and was buried in the tomb. God, however, raised Him from the dead.[16] Christ conquered death, and because we are in Him by our baptism, death also has no ultimate power over us. The death of our friend looks and feels like a defeat. Be of good cheer, Christ has overcome the world; In Christ, we have overcome it as well. Because God is righteous, merciful, and faithful, we can have faith that He works all things together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.[17] So, in the midst of death and pain, we can joyfully confess with Job:

I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me![18]

A time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear the voice of Christ and come out.[19] Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.[20] Those sons of God through faith in Christ, who have put on Christ in their baptism, have life everlasting because He is the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in Him, even though he may die, he shall live.[21] And on that day,

the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.[22]

Ray, baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, will be raised. You and I, if Christ should tarry until after our deaths, will be raised; all believers in Christ will be raised on the Last Day, in our own bodies, and made to be like Christ’s glorious body, never to experience sin and death again. All this God does for us out of goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us.

For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.[23]

Shall not the Judge of the earth do right? I am profoundly thankful to God that He has given us His mercy, and His unmerited favor in Christ, rather than His justice. Those who wish to have the latter, however, will certainly receive it.

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[1] Llanozap, Fernando. “Video shows military vehicle running over protesters.” cnn.com. https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/04/30/violent-uprising-in-venezuela-juan-guaido-nicolas-maduro-crn-vpx.cnn (accessed May, 2019).

[2] Associated Press. “The Latest: Illinois couple charged in young son’s death.” foxnews.com. https://www.foxnews.com/us/the-latest-illinois-couple-charged-in-young-sons-death (accessed May 6, 2019).

[3] Genesis 18:24

[4] Genesis 19:12-29

[5] Genesis 19:1-11

[6] Jeske, John C. People’s Bible Commentary: Genesis. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1992.

[7] Romans 5:12-21

[8] 2 Peter 2:7

[9] Romans 3:10-12

[10] Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38-39; 22:16; Romans 6:3-5; 1 Corinthians 6:11; Galatians 3:27; Colossians 1:13-14; 1 Peter 3:18-22;

[11] Matthew 26:28

[12] Romans 10:17; Acts 5:31; 11:18;

[13] John 20:21-23;

At the beginning of each communion service, the people confess their sins, and the pastor responds with the absolution: Upon this your confession, I, by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God unto all of you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. The Lutheran Hymnal. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1941.

[14] Romans 5:8

[15] John 16:33

[16] Acts 13:30, 30; Romans 10:9

[17] Romans 8:28

[18] Job 19:25-27

[19] John 5:25-30

[20] Daniel 12:2

[21] Galatians 3:26-28; John 11:12

[22] 1 Corinthians 15:52

[23] 1 Thessalonians 4:9-11