20.1 You Are Judges

The final two levels of mental/spiritual operation are judging and creating. Judgment is simple; it is the quality or act of making a decision between two or more possibilities, choosing one and disregarding the others.

We judge inside of every waking moment. Do I get up or do I stay in bed a few minutes longer? What clothes do I wear today? Shall I have eggs or yogurt for breakfast? These are simple judgments, but they operate the same as much more complex or consequential judgments. Consider this far-reaching judgment between two made by a ruler. “Do I declare war or do I negotiate for peace?”

The Process of Judgment. The process of judgment is the same whether for something simple like breakfast or something vast and terrible like war. All judgment is made out from a list of preferences, facts, and momentary desires. This list is called the “criteria” of judgment. Any judge in a court of law must write out a full explanation of the “reasons” for his or her judgment. “This is the criteria I used in making my judgment.”

The list of criteria for choosing what to eat for breakfast is small and simple. But the criteria I use to judge what thought will come into the next line of this text and the words I will use to express that thought is much more complex and very different in nature. I exercise judgment over every word and thought appearing on this page.

Judging for Creating. Judging and creating go hand in hand. Weaving my thoughts together into a flow of meaning is the act of creating. But choosing which thoughts go where is an act of judging. Creating works with what has been chosen by judgment, while the things rejected by judgment quickly vanish away. This operation is the same whether in writing a book or in building a house or in operating in the emergency room or in teaching a college course. My writing course worked well because I exercised my students in the flow of judging and creating – how to use all the facts to create something personal, new, and effective.

The Authority of Judgment. When Jesus said, “What do you want?” Or even more, “What do you want Me to create in you?” He was demonstrating an incredible quality of God towards humans. Jesus was saying, “I will do the creating, yes, but you will make the judgments.”

Jesus was demonstrating that God has given all authority to humans, that God does not force Himself on anyone. The phrase “through faith” is God honoring human judgment.

“Let it be to you according to your faith,” means, you are the judge, you decide. “Let it be to me according to Your Word,” then, is the act of a decided judgment, giving God freedom to synergeo with us.

Awaiting Human Judgment. The original name for God in Hebrew was Elohim, which means “the Judges.” When David said, “You are gods,” it is the same word, meaning, “You are judges.” Judgment is the quality that makes us most like God. Judgment is the quality that makes us equal with God.

When Jesus said, “What do you want,” He was saying, “God respects you as a person, equal with Himself, and He awaits your judgment.” All things await human judgment. God designed the original setting as an arena of judgment. Inside the garden, He placed two trees and out from the garden flowed a river out to all the earth. Man, then, was set in that arena as the judge.

Two Forms of Judgment. The two trees in the garden were, in effect, two forms of judgment. As the judge, Adam also was given the entirety of creating his own list of criteria for judgment. Then, once Adam made his decision between the two, the river would flow out carrying the “creative” effects of his decision, whether a river of life or a river of death. “Death” can even be considered an act of creation, for it perverts everything good created by God and turns it away from Him, that is, it re-forms every created thing it touches.

Adam’s criteria for judgment, then, as he made his decision, was very specific and has become quite clear to us. Everything in Adam’s list was either outward appearance or immediate gain.

Learning Good Judgment. Now, before continuing, I want to say this about the entire concept of judgment, that it is of critical importance. Think of the decision to get out of bed. A child who does not want to go to school will make a judgment based on outward appearance and immediate gain. A father providing for his family will make his decision to arise immediately when he hears the alarm based on the substance of need and long-term gain.

Learning good judgment in every arena of life is essential to human development, and understanding judgment and how it works is essential to any human endeavor. If we had the space, a full study of judgment would be right.

Limiting our Study. Since we do not have the space, we must limit this look at human judgment, inside our overall question of “what is man,” to the most important parts of judgment. The most important parts of judgment are different from the daily decisions of work, yet they are the most powerful elements in creating a universe of life.

In other words, the judgments I make in designing and building a house, though a worthy study, are different from the two most important parts of judgment. Those two most important judgments we make every moment are first, judgment of self, and second, judgment of others. The story we tell ourselves about ourselves, that is, our “soul,” comes entirely out from these two judgments together. Thus we create our own story by judgment.

Two Arenas of Judgment. The next lesson in this chapter is the judgment of self, titled “Giving an Account.” And the third lesson is judgment of others, titled, “Judging to Life.”

I am typically very strict on the length of these chapters, but because this topic of human judgment is at the center of human authority and the destiny of everyone and everything, I choose, by judgment, to make this one chapter longer. In the remainder of this lesson, then, I want to continue to set the stage for finding understanding regarding these two most critical judgments, judgment of self and judgment of others.

Adam’s wicked and devastating judgment was made entirely inside of these two all-encompassing arenas of judgment.

Two Lists of Criteria. Jesus gave us the two lists of criteria that can be used in these two most critical arenas of human judgment. No other lists of criteria are available other than these two lists.

You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. And yet if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent Me. – 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. – If anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day (John 8:15-16; 5:30; & 12:47-48 – all NKJV).

Flesh versus Word. The first list of criteria for judgment, the one chosen by Adam, is judging “according to the flesh.” The second list of criteria for judgment, the one chosen by Jesus, is “according to what I hear.”

We can infer, from all that Jesus said, the two groups of criteria in each list. Judging according to the flesh means judging by a list of criteria drawn from outward appearance and from short-term sensual gain. “What I hear,” however, means Word out from Father. Therefore the criteria Jesus chose was to judge by the word of substance out from God and by long-term gain, that is, the Father’s desire.

Adam’s Judgment. Two opposing lists – appearance versus substance and short-term gain versus long-term gain. Adam looked at the appearance of the greatest, most beautiful, and wisest creature; then he looked at the ugliest, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, hanging in agony, naked and exposed. Adam chose visible superiority and lost the knowledge of God.

Adam looked at the COST of long-term gain, life for all creation; then he looked at the advantage of short-term gain, control over this woman whom he despised. Adam chose the sensation of immediate control, an illusory and pretending sensation, and lost a universe of life.

Actions and Aspects of Judgment. We will make these two lists of criteria very practical to ourselves in our judgment of self and our judgment of others.

Next, I want to bring in several specific ways to understand judgment that I developed in the chapter, “Sent as Judgment” in A Highway for God. Drawing from the study of Moses’ Tabernacle, I laid out four “actions” of judgment. Following that, I laid out four “aspects” of judgment. I will expand briefly on each.

The four actions of judgment are (a) to speak Christ, (b) to see good, © to set in place, and (d) to call by name. The four aspects of judgment are (a) judgment defines, (b) judgment separates, © judgment transforms, and (d) judgment gives life.

Judgment of Self, First. Now, let’s establish a principle of God. – Nothing true can go out from us except it first be true inside of us. Let’s place this principle fully into our precious union with Christ, however. – Jesus, the only True, cannot be known by others through us (in power) except He first be fully known by us (in weakness).

Judgement of self, then, is far more important than judgment of others, for if we do not know how to place the Lord Jesus upon every particle of our lives and being, how can we know to place Him upon others? For that reason, we will point these basic outlines of judgment towards ourselves in order to understand them.

To Speak and To See. To speak Christ is to judge the beginning of something by its completion in the end. We are a mess when we begin to speak Christ, but we do so through faith against the outward appearance we imagine to be not-good at all. But God knows only completion, that is, the fullness of Christ. To speak the mess is to speak what God does not know.

To see good is the costly part of judgment, for here is where we give thanks inside of and for the sake of all. Here is where we bear the agony of joining what we don’t like together with God inside our souls. But as we do, our seeing changes, and what we thought was a mess turns into the wonder of Christ Jesus in our eyes.

To Set and To Call. We cannot know what we are, we cannot know what anything or anyone is, until we set that thing into its place. We judge our place to be with Father, therefore we walk beneath, lifting others up. As we do so, as we share the Father’s Heart, the knowledge of what we are as humans changes dramatically.

To call by name is to call the personal essence of a thing into its being known by all. To hear Jesus call me by name is to judge myself as part of the expression of the Father. To call my own name as the expression of the Father is the completion of my transformation, and yet no outward appearance has changed. It is the veil that has been lifted from my eyes, that is, from my judgment.

Speaking Curse and Seeing Evil. Paul said that Adam knew God and that Adam was NOT deceived. That means that when Adam gazed upon the tree of life, he understood what David knew in Psalm 22, a complete mess of a man, crying, “I am a worm and no man.” What Adam did not stop to consider, however, was that it is this wreck of a man, stumbling from Gethsemane to the cross, who has won our hearts to a God who is meek and lowly.

It also means that when Adam gazed upon the tree of knowledge, he understood the lying perversity of the serpent. Yet Adam placed his value upon the outward beauty and craft. But when Adam judged himself by the serpent, his immediate transformation was that he became ASHAMED of his outward appearance. Adam spoke curse and saw evil.

The Passage of Judgment. Even after decades of being Christians and seeking the Lord, we were still found inside of Adam’s ruin, speaking curse against ourselves and seeing the course of our lives as evil. And so this passage of judgment through which we have passed, speaking Christ concerning ourselves, seeing all things good by the costliness of giving thanks, placing ourselves with the Father, that we might share His Heart, and calling ourselves by His name, is all a RUN out from Adam’s horror.

We have chosen the outward appearance of a man under a cross he cannot carry as the substance of our Father, and we have chosen all the Word that this Man is as our long-term gain. This is the passage of our judgment of ourselves.

To Define and to Separate. Judgment is the defining of what something is. A dictionary is a book of judgment, for it shows exactly what a word means in distinction to all other words. A dictionary includes synonyms of a word with the exact difference in meaning among them. This is judgment, detailing what a thing is and what a thing is not, the precise outline of its boundary.

Separating one thing from all other things is also the meaning of judgment. And so, just as judgment determines what a thing is, it also determines what it is not. Humans think, “I know what I am – this is me.” Part of that is true and part of it is not. Judgment determines the real me. This is God’s purpose for the world. It is in fleeing from a worldly identity that we determine what is not me.

To Transform and to Give Life. The primary transformation of anything is peace followed by joy. This is the fruit of giving thanks. Transformation is not a human becoming something entirely different; it is the rest of giving thanks in full acceptance that, “Yes, I come out from my Father, and He shares my life with me.” The thing that changes is the seeing. We are calling this change ‘metamorphy.’

Finally, judgment gives life; judgment brings life to all. When judgment has completed its work, when we have judged ourselves to completion, we will know only ”Father with me through Jesus.” And that is LIFE. Jesus spoke words of JUDGMENT upon the cross. – “Father, forgive them.” Judgment that does not result in LIFE is not the judgment of God.

We Judge by Christ. These two different ways of understanding judgment, the “aspects” and the “actions,” clearly overlap. They are not meant to be exclusive to each other, but rather, two slightly different ways of understanding the same thing.

I think you can see that this lesson and this chapter are a turning point in this text, that it is here that the proving takes place, of what we are as true humans just like the Lord Jesus.

God placed all authority into our hands. Jesus said that the Father judges no one. He also said that He does not judge, but that the words He speaks are the judgment. We are the judges, and we judge ourselves first. We refuse to judge ourselves by cursing; we judge ourselves only by Christ.