The Names and Titles of Jesus

 

Judge W 28/10

“I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” John 3:30

Making fair judgements is a difficult task, yet the bible helps us here with those cherished words by the prophet Micah “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

Through the incarnation, this principle is personified in the person of Jesus Christ, and his claim to being judge in itself was self effacing. The qualifying element of the living presence of Jesus is love, his relationship with the father and with us as he exercises Justice with Mercy and Mercy with loving Justice. I found the words of Fred Buechner most helpful when considering Jesu as Judge. 

“We are all of us judged every day. We are judged by the face that looks back at us from the bathroom mirror. We are judged by the faces of the people we love and by the faces and lives of our children and by our dreams. We are judged by the faces of the people we do not love. Each day finds us at the junction of many roads, and we are judged as much by the roads we have not taken as by the roads we have.

The New Testament proclaims that at some unforeseeable time in the future, God will ring down the final curtain on history, and there will come a Day on which all our days and all the judgments upon us and all our judgments upon each other will themselves be judged. The judge will be Christ. In other words, the one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully.

Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ's love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ's love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering that Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.” - originally published in ‘Wishful Thinking’. A Theological ABC. Frederick Buechner published by Harper and Row 1973

Thou Judge of quick and dead.

Before whose bar severe,

With holy joy, or guilty dread,

We all shall soon appear:

Our anxious souls prepare

For that tremendous day;

And fill us now with watchful care,

And stir us up to pray:

To pray, and wait the hour,

That awful hour unknown,

When, robed in majesty and power,

Thou shalt from heaven come down.

Oh, may we all be found

Obedient to Thy Word--

Attentive to the trumpet’s sound,

And looking for our Lord!

Oh, may we thus ensure

A lot among the blest;

And watch a moment, to secure

An everlasting rest!

Charles Wesley