Judge Not...

About this Episode

In this episode we talk about the powerful temptation to judge other people, which most of us give in to all the time.

Our launching point was one of Bill's blog posts: https://www.residentexile.com/single-post/2017/07/08/As-You-Judge.

We also quote Jason Micheli: http://tamedcynic.org/the-worm-at-the-core-of-the-apple/.

This is the full context for the Karl Barth quote we reference:

This fact that God has here come amongst us in the person of His Son, and that as a man with us He exercises judgment, reveals the full seriousness of the human situation. In this judgment God obviously has something to say to man which apart from this direct confrontation with God he is unwilling to say to himself, and caught in this unwillingness he cannot say to himself. Man has obviously given himself quite a different account of himself than that which he is now given by God. It obviously was and is something strange to him that he, for his part, can be in the right and do right only in subjection to the judgment of God. Obviously the righteousness of God is something strange to him as the measure of all righteousness, and therefore God Himself is a stranger. Obviously he for his part is estranged from God; although as the creature, the human creature of God, he is V 4, p 220 p 220 appointed to know God, although he is as near, no, nearer to God, than he is to himself, and therefore can and must be truly acquainted with Him. Obviously he does that which in the knowledge of God he could never do: he sets up his own right against God; he measures himself by this right; he thinks that measuring himself by this right he can pronounce himself free and righteous. He wants to be his own judge, and he makes himself his own judge. All sin has its being and origin in the fact that man wants to be his own judge. And in wanting to be that, and thinking and acting accordingly, he and his whole world is in conflict with God. It is an unreconciled world, and therefore a suffering world, a world given up to destruction.

It is for this reason—the fault and evil are evidently great and deep enough to make it necessary—it is for this reason that God Himself encounters man in the flesh and therefore face to face in the person of His Son, in order that He may pass on the one who feels and accepts himself as his own judge the real judgment which he has merited. This judgment sets him in the wrong as the one who maintains his own right against God instead of bowing to God’s right. We will have to explain this when we come to speak of sin as such. For the moment it is enough to maintain that because it is a matter of the appearance and work of the true Judge amongst those who think they can and should judge and therefore exalt themselves, therefore the abasement of the Son to our status, the obedience which He rendered in humility as our Brother, is the divine accusation against every man and the divine condemnation of every man. The whole world finds its supreme unity and determination against God in looking for justification from itself and not from God. And as a world hostile to God it is distinguished by the fact that in this way it repeats the very sin of which it acquits itself. In this way that which is flesh is flesh. And for this reason the incarnation of the Word means the judgment, the judgment of rejection and condemnation, which is passed on all flesh. Not all men commit all sins, but all men commit this sin which is the essence and root of all other sins. There is not one who can boast that he does not commit it. And this is what is revealed and rejected and condemned as an act of wrong-doing by the coming of the Son of God. This is what makes His coming a coming to judgment, and His office as Saviour His office as our Judge.

Barth, K., Bromiley, G. W., & Torrance, T. F. (2004). Church dogmatics: The doctrine of God, Part 1 (Vol. 4, pp. 219–220). London; New York: T&T Clark.