Judge Jesus

A woman is thrown down at the feet of Jesus. A group of men accuse her of having been caught in the very act of adultery. They say that, according to the law, she should be sentenced to death. And they want to know what Judge Jesus has to say.

Jesus stoops down and begins to write in the dust.

We have no idea what he might have been writing.

Perhaps he wrote down words like lust, judgmental, greed, hypocrisy. Maybe he wrote a question: Where’s the man who must have been caught in the act of adultery with this woman? Perhaps he just doodled to give himself time to think or calm down.

What the men wanted, what they demanded, based on the law, was punitive justice. They wanted her crime punished. They wanted her stoned to death.

But Jesus was about to deliver a body blow to their collective spiritual gut.

Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.

One by one the accusers dropped the stones on the ground and walked away.

Now alone with the woman—who was, remember, guilty as charged; whose sin, remember, was punishable by death—Jesus asked her:

Is anyone left to condemn you?

No one sir.

Again, she’s guilty. The law says she should be punished (punitive justice). And she has neither confessed anything nor has she repented.

And Jesus says:

Neither do I condemn you.

Incredibly, he lets her off the hook! No repentance! No confession! No promise from her to do better next time!

Only grace!

Now go, and sin no more!

Rather than dishing out punitive justice, rather than punishing her, Judge Jesus holds out a radically different form of justice:

Restorative justice.

He doesn’t condemn. He doesn’t punish. Instead, through the power of forgiveness, he puts her back together and gives her a brand-new start.

He reconciles her to himself.

He puts to right what she put to wrong.

And all of it an act of unrequested, unearned, undeserved, unexpected grace!

Hell demands a God of punitive justice.

Grace declares a God of restorative justice.

Judge Jesus stands on the side of grace.

For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. (2 Corinthians 5:19)

For God in all his fullness
    was pleased to live in Christ,
20 and through him God reconciled
    everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
    by means of Christ’s blood on the cross. (Colossians 1:19-20)

According to what righteousness will Christ judge when he comes and is manifested as the Son of man-judge of the world? Surely this righteousness will be no different from the righteousness he himself proclaimed in his gospel and practiced in fellowship with sinners and the sick! Otherwise no one would be able to recognize him. The coming Judge is the one who was put to death on the cross. The one who will come as Judge of the world is the one ‘who bears the sins of the world’ and who has himself suffered the suffering of victims. Jurgen Moltmann

Punitive Vs Restorative Justice Comparison

Punitive Justice                                                       Restorative Justice

•  God is angry                                                            God is gracious

•  God is fair                                                                 God is gracious

• Problem: Sin as behavior                                        Sin as broken relationship

• Solution: Punish behavior                                     Restore the relationship

• Justice: Punitive                                                        Restorative

• Way out: I accept Jesus                                            Jesus reconciles me to God

God’s answer to sin is not punishment, but reconciliation.

Judge Jesus does not dispense punitive justice but uses restorative justice to welcome us home.

Here comes the Judge! And that is good news.

You can reach me at Tim@TimWrightMinistries.org

How Can You Believe in a God Who Sends People to Hell?

I want to start off with a question of my own as we jump into this big, tough issue:

Why is a belief in hell—an eternity of horrendous torture mandated by God—the litmus test for true Christianity?

I was born into and raised in the Church. And like the overwhelming majority of Christians, I believed in heaven and hell: That those who believe in Jesus, no matter what kind of people they are, will go to heaven; and that those who reject Jesus, no matter what kind of people they are, will fry in hell.

Admittedly, it seemed to make sense. God, in Jesus, has made it possible for us to live in relationship with God. That relationship is one of grace and forgiveness. If we choose to reject that overture of love we’ll live with the consequences—forever.

But as I began to wrestle with my understanding of the character of God, I realized that my starting point was wrong. I recognized that the starting point for God’s character is not that of an angry judge but that of a radically gracious parent. And if that’s the true character of God, the issue of hell becomes increasingly problematic. If God truly is lavishly and recklessly gracious, then how can that same God be capable of creating such a horrific eternity for those who might reject that grace?

For a while I tried to say that hell is, in essence, an act of love. Love forced is not love but abuse. A loving God will not force God’s self on us. If we chose to reject God’s act of love in Jesus, God will love us enough to respect that choice. God, out of love, would not want to force us to spend eternity with him.

But still… it didn’t answer all the questions:

• Is my rejection of God’s love stronger than God’s love for me?

• Does my free will usurp God’s grace?

• Will the God who goes to the cross for us finally give up on us?

• Is God’s grace bound by human time and space?

Or, as my friend, the late BJ Thomas, put it in one of his songs: I wonder why the pure in heart… they have to have a judgment day. I wonder what the Lord has made… that he plans to throw away.

 One blog post will not solve the problem of hell.

 But I want to suggest a starting point by going back to the story of the Prodigal Son which I referred to in another post.

 The Context: Jesus is caught red handed in the act of eating with the wrong kinds of people: sinners and tax collectors—those the religious leaders had written off because they believed God had written them off. No self-respecting Jewish Rabbi would debase himself in such a way. By eating with these people Jesus was in essence treating them as friends and equals. And in the process, ceremonially defiling himself. In response to criticism from the religious elite, Jesus tells the story of a father of radical, reckless grace.

 A quick summary:

1)    The younger son asks for his father for his inheritance early bringing shame onto the father, his family, and his village. Strike one.

2)    The younger son takes his money to a non-Jewish (unclean) land and wastes it all there on wild living. Strike two.

3)    The younger son ends up feeding pigs (unclean animals) for a gentile (an unclean person) in order to survive. Strike three.

Culturally, this younger son has gone beyond the point of no return. He is now considered dead to the village and his family with no way of redemption. Story over!

A major point: When the son decides to head home, he does not go home, as we often assume, repentant. He goes home defiant. He goes home with a scheme in place to manipulate his dad. He wants his dad to hire him in the hope that he can work off his debt, weasel himself back into the family, and receive his inheritance all over again when dad dies. This young man is still dead! He still rejects his dad’s love.

What does this have to do with hell?

Should the villagers catch the son walking into the village they will beat him up and banish him (to hell) from the community once and for all.

But notice what the dad does. And remember, this son is defiant. This son still rejects his father’s love!

The father (representing God) runs to this son who deserves only punishment and condemnation—and rescues him with grace.

• He throws his arms around his son to protect him from the mob.

• He puts the family robe around his shoulders.

• He puts the ring of sonship on his finger.

• He puts shoes on his feet.

• Then he throws a party for him!

All this for a son who, to that point, has rejected his father’s love!

As the father says to the older brother later: This son of mine was lost, but I found him. He was dead. But I made him alive again.

The grace of the father proved stronger than the rejection by his son.

The picture Jesus paints of God in this story is not one of a God who condemns people to hell but who runs to hell-condemned people and graces them with life. God runs to dead people—people who can neither reject or accept love—and raises them to life!

Theologian Jurgen Moltmann says it this way: According to this Christian view, neither God nor human beings decide about hell, but Christ alone: ‘I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and hell’ (Rev. 1:18). What is Christ going to do with ‘the keys of hell’? ‘Christ hath burst the gates of hell,’ says Charles Wesley in his Easter hymn. So all its gates are open. Hell is no longer inescapable…  (In the End, the Beginning—the Life of Hope. 2004)

Or as John says it in his Gospel: For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:16)

Does God send people to hell?

The Cross says:  For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. (2 Corinthians 5:19)

The Cross says:

You were lost but God found you.

You were dead but God through Christ raised you to life.

You are the one clothed in the robes of grace.

You are the one wearing the ring of sonship/daughterhood.

You are the one wearing the shoes of forgiveness.

Because God’s grace will always have the final word…

And that word is life.

More next time.

You can reach me at Tim@TimWrightMinistries.org

The Patent Unfairness of God

Jesus’ primary way for answering the question: What is God like?—apart from the cross—was through the telling of provocative, compelling, jaw-dropping stories; stories that shocked and delighted his audiences again and again.

Take, for example, this story:

Imagine…You’re an employee of a small business consisting of 60 full and part time workers. You’ve been there since the beginning: investing blood, sweat, and tears into making the company go; enjoying the fruits of success; and taking pay cuts when times were tough. Over the years you’ve seen employees come and go but a few of you have been the foundation of the company from the start.

One day the boss calls you all together. You have no idea why. Without saying anything, he has you line up in order of years served beginning with the newest employees. He explains that it has been a very good year and he wants to say thanks through a bonus.

He starts with the newest of the part time people and hands each of them a check for $1000. Your heart starts pounding as you think to yourself: If the new part timers get that amount, what am I going to get? 

He continues to make his way through the line handing out checks but the amount is always the same.

Then he comes to you and the three others who have been there from the beginning. The boss takes a moment to thank you publicly for your support and hard work and says that without you the company would not exist.

And then he hands each of you a check for $1000.

How would you feel?

On the one hand… grateful for the surprise bonus?

On the other hand… miffed? Angry? Hacked off by the obvious unfairness of it all? Like you’ve just received a slap across the face?

That second response is the one some workers had in Jesus’ story about the Vineyard Owner (Matthew 20:1-16). They’d put in a full day’s work, having been promised a full day’s wage. But throughout the day more and more workers were hired to join them in the fields, with the final batch starting work one hour before quitting time.

At the end of the work day, 6 pm, the foreman called all of the workers together to pay them. Starting with the last ones hired—those who had only worked an hour!—he handed out the same pay to all of the workers: a full days wage, no matter how many hours the laborers had worked!

The men who had put in a twelve-hour shift were livid. They said to the foreman: These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat!

I’m guessing most of us would side with these guys in their anger and sense of outrage. It’s patently unfair to be treated that way.

And that’s precisely Jesus’ point. He uses this maddening story to say something radical about God.

What we think we want is a God who is fair. However, a fair God has to weigh us in the balance, judging our every action and motive. That makes God judgmental, condemning, and angry, having to treat us as we deserve. And we end up mimicking that kind of God, nitpicking over who deserves what from God’s hand.

But Jesus tells us that God is nothing like that. God is patently unfair. God is a God who dispenses grace to all of us recklessly and lavishly—and equally unfairly.

No matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done, no matter when it happens in the scheme of things, God’s grace is given to all of us free of charge. In patently unfair amounts. And that’s radically good news… for all of us!

Jesus says that God is a God of radically unfair grace who recklessly and lavishly throws that grace around to anyone and everyone! That God only and always treat us with that kind of grace.

For those of us wondering if God’s grace includes us, this story serves as God’s great big yes!

And that picture of God changes everything when it comes to how we see God.

Connect with me if you’d like at Tim@TimWrightMinistries.org