There’s a church I pass every morning on the way to work that has a sign out front where they can do a couple of lines of a changing message. Right now they’re advertising sign-up for summer day-care, but the message prior to that was “Jesus: Savior and Judge.”
It’s clear from the name of this church (which isn’t affiliated with a mainline denomination) and from other messages they’ve had that this place is fairly conservative theologically. My question is – Jesus as judge? I thought that was more his father’s role?
How common is the understaning of Jesus as judge, and what might that mean, exactly?
(Note for context: I am not a Christian; I do have a PhD in sociology of religion, and I did teach Religion in America for several years – but that was a couple of decades ago, and my area of expertise was marginal groups. I fully admit that I’m very weak on the Bible and Christian theology.)
Jesus’s earthly ministry was one of forgiveness and atonement, bringing people back to God. But the traditional understanding has always been that at the Second Coming, Jesus returns as Judge.
In connection with all this, it’s probably important to remember that mercy is an act of judgment – an act of “tempering the wind to the shorn lamb.” There’s a quote from somewhere in theology that “Perfect judgment is perfect mercy” that is appropriate in this regard.
One Biblical reference to this is in the 4th chapter of 2nd Timothy:
Are there others? Is this where the idea originated?
(I suppose the sign’s message could have been referring to the idea that we are judged according to how we respond to Jesus, but that’s stretching it.)
According to Matthew Chapter 25, in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, it’s the Big J doing the field work to separate out people into two groups:
Clearly it’s the Son (Jesus) that is mandated with the task of judgment, in the name of the Father.
In a somewhat off-topic aside: why are goats typically held up as the allegorical opposite of sheep/lambs in Christian texts? When you get right down to it sheep and goats are pretty similar (or maybe that’s part of the point). I mean, you’d think it’d be a contrast between sheep and wolves or something.
