Sitting In Judgment On God

"...All this most horrible injustice ever, perpetrated by the religious leaders of Israel...judges who themselves were criminals and a seeming criminal who is himself the real judge. His majesty, His innocence, His silence is wondrous. They condemn themselves. They damn themselves.

And so will you if you wrongly judge Christ. There is no escaping that. If you wrongly judge Christ, mark it, He will rightly judge you. Unbelief, impenitence, independence, standing apart from Christ will condemn you just as it condemned them. There is no escape. All men render a verdict on Christ. They did and so do you. And it is a verdict that has massive consequences for eternity.." 

John MacArthur 

Some time ago I spoke similar words to these when my mother was in the audience. Her reaction was to accuse me of anti-semitism
because I was critical of the religious leaders of Israel.

I understood why she felt that way because she had grown up during a time when a madman had taken upon himself to rid the world of 'the Jewish problem'. Hitler justified his actions by calling Jews, "Christ-killers".

However, the accusation of anti-semitism whenever you are critical of the Jewish leaders of Christ's day is specious at best and only deflects from the real message contained in the above quote from John MacArthur.

The point is that all of us who reject Christ's message of salvation by grace apart from works are sitting in judgment on Christ. We do so to our own peril. It reveals the same arrogance as those religious leaders that unjustly condemned Christ to crucifixion because of the threat that He posed to their assumed authority.

The point is that no of us experience God's salvation without first experiencing the guilt of wrongly judging that we have anything to offer God. Until we discover that we are cast entirely on His mercy, we will never know the meaning of His grace.

smc