Merciful Judgment
Luke 6:36-42
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 6:36-38 37 “Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… As you know, we don’t preach politics from the pulpit here at Divine Savior. We don’t concern ourselves too much with what the secular government is or isn’t doing right. The reason is because we are not called by Christ to set up or to seek out a godly society or a glorious earthly kingdom in which we are to live. As you will recall, those in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day wanted our Lord to do that, and it is as misguided now as it was then.
We are called, however, to be godly citizens in the midst of this depraved society. We are to, as St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life” (Phil 2:14-15).
That “word of life” does speak to the things going on around us. It does, for example, address the depravity and perversion of men pretending to marry other men or women pretending to marry other women, as well as those men and women who think that they are the opposite of the gender with which they were born. That “word of life” also address the lawlessness of modern-day rulers and of judges who pervert justice. And it addresses the perversion of a world that calls good evil and that calls evil good and that celebrates and takes pride in the evil in which it wallows.
Part of our “shining as lights” in the world is to reveal the light of God’s judgment against such things. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God” (I Cor 6:8-10).
But there is a difference between revealing God’s judgment and passing your own judgment. There is a difference between announcing God’s condemnation against all sins for the purpose of bringing the sinner to repentance and pronouncing your own condemnation on certain cherry-picked sins for the purpose of making you feel good about how righteous you are because you don’t think you commit those particular sins. There is a difference between speaking to your neighbor out of mercy and love and speaking out of self-righteous arrogance, spite, and uppityness. In our Gospel for today Jesus issues some earnest instructions to those who follow Him. It is our Lord’s Divine instruction for us children of light living in a godless world.
Today’s Gospel reading begins with the words, “Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” Well, why should we be merciful? If we go back one verse, and we find this: “You will be sons of the Most High. And your Father is kind to the unthankful and the evil.” So, if you are sons of God the Father – children of light – then be “like Father, like son.” Imitate your heavenly Father’s mercy.
And that begs the questions: how is God the Father merciful? How has He displayed His mercy to the unthankful and the evil? First, He is merciful in how He provides for all mankind. He makes His sun shine on the evil and the good. He provides food and nourishment, crops and harvest, rain and shelter, health, and necessary skills to all people everywhere, even to those who don’t acknowledge Him or worship Him or thank Him. And He does it out of mercy, because without Him, the whole world would perish.
How else is the Father merciful to all? He has sent out His truth to all men: His truth in nature and His truth in His Word. God is merciful in revealing, both biologically and Scripturally, that marriage is to be between one man and one woman, that the family is to be ideally composed of a father and a mother and children. God is merciful in proclaiming His holy Law, His Ten Commandments, because there is great benefit in keeping them. God is also merciful when He, in His Word, explains what sin is and when He accuses and charges all of mankind with sin, because it is only by acknowledging our sins that we can ever be saved from them.
Further, the Father’s mercy is shown in sacrifice – His sacrifice, the sacrifice of His only begotten Son on the cross for the sins of all men, even for the unthankful and the evil. That sacrifice was made out of pure mercy and grace; it was made out of God’s desire to reconcile sinful men with Himself through the cross of His Son, because “God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)
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And then our Lord gave specific instructions about how to put that kind of mercy into practice. “Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.” Believe it or not, this verse from the Bible is the only verse that some people know or ever want to know. Just try referring to certain things as sins that God’s Word refers to as sins. And when you do, you will hear from those who practice those sins, as they will say, “The Bible says, ‘Judge not,’ so you’re sinning by telling me that I’m sinning.” And then you get to reply, “So, you’re judging me for judging you? I thought you weren’t supposed to do that.” In reality, those who use the Word of God this way are blind to the truth and want to remain blind. Sadly, their condemnation is deserved.
Of course, the same Bible says, “You shall…” and “You shall not…” Or, “If your brother sins, rebuke him” (Lk 17:3). Or, “Beware of false prophets” (Mt 7:15). Or “He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20). All of that most certainly requires a certain kind of judgment.
Dear friends, we can and must judge between right and wrong, but we must only do it on the basis of God’s Word, not on the basis of our personal feelings. We must only do it on the basis of fact and knowing all the facts, not on the basis of some snippet of information we think we know. And we must only do it with the loving goal of turning a sinner from the error of his way. And we must only do it as one who recognizes himself or herself as a sinful human being who deserves nothing but judgment and condemnation from God, throwing ourselves on God’s mercy in Christ alone.
It is important to understand that certain vocations actually require a certain kind of judging and condemning. God Himself most certainly judges. A human judge in a courtroom is supposed to judge and, often, condemn. A law enforcement officer sometimes has to make an on-the-spot judgment on someone – to shoot or not to shoot – as does a soldier on the battlefield. Fathers and mothers are called to judge and, yes, punish their children. And pastors and bishops are called by God to exercise and to pronounce spiritual judgment in His name, to forgive sins or to retain sins. Imagine what the world would be like if Jesus’ words “Judge not” meant that all forms of judging were to cease.
There is, however, a form of judging that is evil, and people do it all the time. It is all over the media and the internet, and it grows very naturally in the corrupt human heart. This kind of judging comes from pride or hatred, not from mercy. This form of judgment happens when someone pretends to know what is in another person’s heart. It happens when we set ourselves up in our heart as righteous and as the model of perfection, and then look down our nose at all the people around us who don’t live up to our standards. It is the “pointing of the finger” that forgets that three more fingers are pointed right back at you. That has no place among the children of the light. Repent of that.
Instead, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you.” That’s just another form of being merciful. Children of light, children of God are to be characterized by a spirit of generosity and by a readiness to forgive. That is what our heavenly Father is like, and we have been born again to this Father by His Holy Spirit who works in us to mold us into the image of our Father, which is the image of our Brother, Jesus. Here in God’s kingdom there is no room for greediness or stinginess or grudges.
To spur us on, Jesus even adds a promise: “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” Let that serve as an encouragement to you. Everything you have has been given to you from above as a solemn trust, to be used as your heavenly Father directs you to use it. That includes giving to those in need, and giving generously. But your heavenly also Father promises that you won’t run out, you won’t be lacking. He sees His Spirit working in His children to produce good works that flow from faith, and He will see to it that you are rewarded for it.
And, of course, the greatest blessing our Lord has bestowed upon us is our salvation – that all of our sins, however big or small or however many they may be – all of them are paid for through Christ. His willing, obedient, and perfectly accomplished suffering and death in our place on His cross is all the payment that is ever required. His “It is finished!” is our certain hope of knowing we are free from the eternal penalty of our sins.
And, as we are already blessed to know and believe, Christ delivers the benefits of His suffering and death through His most blessed Gospel preached and the blessed Sacraments of Baptism, Absolution, and Supper. In and through those divine gifts He strengthens and sustains us in this life while we await deliverance not only from these sinful bodies but this sinful world as well, looking forward, as we say in the Creed, to the life of the world to come.
So, how do we Christians continue to be merciful in a world that is so wicked and that hates us so much? Only by continually remembering that we, too, by our deeds, have earned God’s wrath and punishment, and that it was only the grace of God that moved Him to send His Son for us, to be hated by the world and crucified for us. It is only the grace of God that has cured us of our blindness and brought us into His kingdom of light by giving us the gift of faith. As Jesus said, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. The world may hate you, but your Father loves you and has chosen you out of the world to be His dear children.
Dear fellow redeemed, that is your inspiration to confess God’s truth boldly, no matter what the consequences in this world may be. And it is also your inspiration for living as children of light in this godless world, and as you get to be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
