Who Is God? (A Condemning Judge?)

Of all the images we have in our minds about who God is, one of the most common ones is God as a judge.  It’s like we hold scenes from Law & Order in our heads.  The typical picture looks something like this.  We see a gray-haired, humorless God sitting in his black robes behind an elevated judge’s bench just waiting to declare our guilt and prepared to sentence us with a severe punishment for all the awful things we’ve done throughout our lives.

What a terrible specter, if it is true.  Imagine standing before an all-powerful God with no defense before His unstained, perfect presence.  What hope would you have beyond condemnation?  With that image of God, who wouldn’t live in fear?

But is it true?  Is that who our God is?  And how can we know?  

As we saw last week, to know if this is who God is, we need to look no further than Jesus Christ.  As Jesus said to his disciples, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)  Or as he said later, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)  So the character we find in Jesus is exactly the same as the character of his Father.  What we see Jesus doing and saying is exactly what God the Father is doing and saying.  In fact, Jesus said so on more than one occasion. (John 5:19, 8:28, and 12:49)

So back to our question.  Is God the terrible judge that we described at the beginning? For the answer, let’s take a look at how Jesus treated “sinners.”

Imagine getting caught committing one of the worst sins you could possibly commit. Imagine the embarrassment.  Imagine the shame.  What treatment would you expect from most people? Sympathy?  Unlikely.  Compassion?  Ya, right.  Condemnation?  That’s more like it.

But what treatment would you expect from Jesus?  Let’s turn to one of the best known stories in John’s gospel to see firsthand.

“At dawn he (Jesus) appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.  The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.’” (John 8:2-4)

Now it can’t get much worse than that.  It wasn’t that the teachers of the law and the Pharisees had heard that the woman had committed adultery; it would seem that they actually caught her in the act! How do you live that down?  And not only that, but it wasn’t just any Joe or Susie that caught her.  It was the most important and respected people in Israel’s society, ones with the moral authority to damage her standing in her community, if not worse.  And as if that’s not bad enough, it’s also possible that they may have paraded her in front of Jesus and the crowd in the same condition they found her in.  Could it be more humiliating than that?

Let’s continue now and see what transpires next.  “‘In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’”  They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.” (John 8:5-6)  

As the text clearly indicates, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus.  What they said about the Law was correct.  It did call for the death of anyone caught in adultery. (Leviticus 20:10)  But they weren’t so interested in what they Law said as they were in what Jesus said.  They wanted to discredit him before the crowd.

For our purposes, we’re interested in Jesus’ response too.  As a reminder, how Jesus treats this woman is how God would treat her.  His response will give us a huge glimpse into the heart of our Father.

“But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.  When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’  Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.” (John 8:6-8)

Jesus’ answer was both crafty and wise.  It’s not as if the Law reserved the death penalty only for those who committed adultery.  There were many other parts of the Law that also called for the death penalty.  It’s possible that many of those anxiously waiting to throw the stones were themselves guilty of breaking laws that called for death.  Even if not, they certainly were guilty of sin.  If nothing more, Jesus was certainly calling for a heart of compassion.  So with Jesus’ words, we receive the first hint of who God is – a compassionate God.  But there’s more to come.

“At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.  Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’  ‘No one, sir,’ she said.  ‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’” (John 8:9-11)

Based on Jesus’ own words, what would we now say about God?  Is He the black-robed, condemning judge that so many people fear?  Absolutely not!  Remember, Jesus said he only did and said the things he saw and heard his Father do.  So if Jesus did not condemn her for her adultery, then neither would his Father.  And if God wouldn’t condemn her, then what sin could you possibly commit that would cause God to condemn you?  Doubt? Cheating?  Denial?  Murder?  If He would condemn you for your doubt, He certainly would have condemned Eve, but nowhere do the Scriptures provide even a hint that she stood condemned.  If He would condemn you for your cheating, then He definitely would have condemned Zacchaeus for all the people he had cheated out of their money.  Yet Jesus show him grace, stayed at his house, and declared that salvation had come to him. If your denials could cause Him to condemn you, then Peter would have never stood a chance after denying Jesus three times.  But John records an incredible encounter of love between Jesus and Peter just days later.  And if God would condemn you for murder, then where would that have put Moses, David, and Paul?  All three were murderers yet all three became great servants of God.

There is no sin too great for the love and grace of God.  God is not a condemning judge. If you are in Christ, you have no reason to live in fear.  Now you may point out that Jesus told the adulteress to leave her life of sin.  Some would interpret this as a warning that the wrath and judgment of God awaited her if she didn’t stop sinning.  That is not at all what Jesus is saying to her.  Filled with a heart of compassion, Jesus is simply urging her to stop a practice that is not good for her.  Adultery, like all sin, has natural consequences, none of which are positive.  As the Scriptures tell us, the wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23) Nothing good has ever or will ever come from practicing sin.  So like a loving parent who doesn’t want to see his children do self-destructive things, Jesus wants her to abandon that way of life, which is not life at all.

So no matter what you have done, you are never out of the reach of God’s essential grace. He’s not looking over you with a gavel in His hand ready for you to cross a line for which there is no recovery. Instead, as we see with Jesus’ treatment of the adulteress, He is constantly seeking to assure you that you do not stand condemned.  Leave that twisted view of God behind.  See Him as He really is – a God who loves you with all His heart and wants you to know His love and life beyond all else.