Worldly Judgment to Righteous Judgment

By Jo-Anne Leroux

There are two types of judgment; righteous and unrighteous.  Righteous judgment comes out of Love and is purposed to bring reconciliation to God.  Unrighteous judgment is fear-based and is purposed to preserve and gratify self.   The former brings life; the latter brings death.  We need to know the difference between the two because as Saints, we are called to judge the world.  “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?  And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases?  Do you not know that we will judge angels?  How much more the things of this life!” 1Corinthians:6:2-3  We have an awesome responsibility.

During the time of His ministry, Jesus preached to the unsaved and unsanctified.  He warned the people “Judge not, that you be not judged.  For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.  And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?  Mathew 7:1-3 NKJ  As we discussed in the teaching on self-expression, settled judgment is an attribute of life lived out of the soul.

When we judge from the source of our soul, we separate from the object of our judgment.  This manifests as either condemnation or exultation of ourselves or others.  We are superior or inferior to that which we judge.  We justify ourselves independent of God.  We rationalize and minimize to validate our judgment.  As we act on this, we strive to bring life to our circumstances, but fail.  This is the essence of dead works… works that fail to bring life.

Recently, we had a young African pastor on retreat with his Canadian wife, whom he met on a mission trip.  His heart’s cry was that the charity organizations supplying aid to Africa would stop.  “The aid is killing my people,” he said.  “They won’t work.  The land is perfectly good and no one will farm it.  They all want to wear suits.  They feel they are inferior to the white man and the suit is a status symbol.  He told us the Africans have become so dependant on the white man that the governments will go so far as to fake a disaster just to get more aid.  And we thought we were helping.  The same dynamic applies to our personal relationships. 

In our fallen nature, our attitude toward pain is wrong.  We judge pain, either physical or emotional, as a bad thing.  Pain of any kind is unacceptable and must be alleviated.  We pity those we see in pain and conversely, feel sorry for ourselves when we hurt.  Pity gets confused with compassion.  Pain, however, alerts us that something is wrong and needs correcting.  Without pain, we would not know. 

Let’s look at some of the things we do to avoid or alleviate pain.  We take drugs, which mask but won’t cure an ailment.  We protect our loved ones from suffering consequences for their actions, and block a change of heart.  On a global scale, our decisions are driven by economic insecurity or fear of lack.  We are in world grain crisis and Canadian farmers are happy they will get more money for their wheat.  To our farmers, their personal security supercedes their concern for a starving world.  Apparently, the decision to grow corn for ethanol caused the crisis.  It’s cheaper than gas.  One man’s gain is another man’s pain.  But let’s not judge them.  We can all come under that flag.  Romans 2:1-3  With worldly judgment, an effort to solve one problem often creates another.  Have you noticed? 

Righteous Judgment
Can we concede that we cannot judge rightly in the flesh no matter how hard we try?  We can’t make judgments independent of God and expect life-giving results.  Jesus said “I can of Myself do nothing.  As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.”  John 5:30

To judge rightly, our spirit, which has come to life at salvation, must supercede our soul.  Our spirit must be Lord of our hearts.   When our spirit is Lord, our soul is subservient.  We lay down our agendas and acknowledge that we are not God and need His guidance.  We accept adversity as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as we wish it to be.  We trust that God will make all things right if we surrender to His will.  It’s a place of neutrality and rest.  In this place of rest, we can commune with God and receive His wisdom.  We can discern truth and know by the Spirit what action to take and when.  We can judge rightly and love unconditionally.    

As believers, Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit to empower us to make the shift.  “I will send Him to you,” Jesus says in John16:7.  Verse 8 says, “And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”

God’s conviction is not punishment.  Conviction brings the truth into our awareness so we can make a choice for God or against Him.  In the world system, we are deceived and living in the dark.  So we operate unconscious of our sin nature.  As my life played out, I was unconscious that I’d modeled my mother and thus perpetuated the generational curse of sin until the Lord opened my eyes.  Do we need a Savior!  Neutrality does not mean unloving, but an absence of worldly judgment that enables us to Love.   We no longer need to control situations; need to correct what’s wrong; or need to manipulate outcomes.  If we’re not neutral, however, we can discern truth and be judgmental. 

To judge righteously, we need to be healed of past hurts and delivered from the influence of evil spirits.  Although the Lord can sovereignly do this, he often uses his saints to minister to each other.  “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” James 5:6  Deliverance often instantly follows confession as our sin comes to light.  If, however, we don’t experience victory, we may be confessing sins that are manifesting out of a deeper root sin.  For example, rage is a manifestation of a deeper core issue which is unconscious. 

Ideally, we seek another Christian more mature than us to take the speck out of our eye, one who is walking in the light.  Many people have helped me over the years, some more mature than I, and some not.  If we seek God with all that is in us, he will use anyone and anything to bring us home.  I’ll never forget Charlie.  Charlie was a skid-row drunk attending the same A.A. meeting early in my sobriety.  (Had I remained on that road to hell, I was headed there too.)  I can’t recall what I was struggling with, but I was miserable.  As any good intellectual, I was trying to figure out why I couldn’t let go and let God.  As I sat in the meeting that day sharing this, Charlie piped up, “Well quit trying!!”  I sat there in shock.  “But of course!  Trying is the direct opposite to letting go.”  I surrendered.