“The Judged Judge”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, November 9, 2025
Reading: Romans 8:31-39
Friends, I’m glad to be back with you after some weeks away, first for guest preachers like Shad K and our church’s moderator Kimberly Heath, and then for travel. You’re in such good hands when I’m away I need to thank you for having me back, and to thank Dayle and Elaine and Joanne and others for their leadership.
Blessings for Remembrance Day. I love this holiday. I knew it only as Veterans’ Day in the US, when we honoured the living who served. But here in Canada the focus is more on those not present. The 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month is the moment the Great War ended, and we began to mourn all that was lost, and those who would not grow old. No hoorah celebration, just gratitude for duty well-done, and prayer for a day when there will be no more need for war. Lord, bring that day soon.
I was in Israel last week, prayed for you all at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Our group learned about a religion about which I knew nothing—the Druze, d-r-u-z-e Druze, a minority of some two percent of the population in Israel with more in Syria and Lebanon. Druze don’t admit new members, so if your parents aren’t both Druze, you can’t join. They believe in reincarnation. They don’t mark graves, since when a Druze dies they’re reincarnated, so their cemeteries are communal graves without stones. But we saw a commemorative memorial for Druze who’d died defending Israel. How come? ‘Oh, the government came to us and asked for some place to commemorate those lost defending the country.’ Think about this—it’s so important to remember war dead that the Druze did something for their country that their religion doesn’t ordinarily allow. In this space, those we’ve lost in war are etched into the very stone that surrounds us. Lord, bless their names and memory forever.
We’re in a series here at the church that’s a sort of Advent to Advent. Advent is the time when we put ourselves in the position of ancient Israel waiting for a messiah, a world longing for redemption. We decorate in the cool colours of blue and purple. Hymns drop into minor key. We long for a saviour and to see the world made right. Advent usually starts around December 1st and its Sundays up until Christmas focus on the themes of joy, peace, hope, love. Nice themes. But do you know what the church focused on for centuries in Advent? We had one Sunday of Advent each for death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Ooh, those are juicy. So, this year we decided to give you both the regular Advent in December with peace, joy, and love and all that, and also to have a pre-Advent on those more medieval themes. You heard about death last week from pastor Dayle. The next two weeks you get heaven and hell. And today, judgment. Buckle up.
Anybody ever been afraid of judgment?
Our pre-modern ancestors certainly were. When life was short, when most children didn’t survive childhood, many women didn’t survive pregnancy and most of the rest of us didn’t survive disease, we were aware of how much longer the afterlife is than our present life. And so, our forebears worried a lot about the day of judgment, and where exactly they would spend eternity. This is not something that overly concerns folks in our day, or if it is we’re not doing much about it. Gallup polls pretty consistently show that more people believe in hell than go to church. That is, folks think there’s a hell but aren’t doing much to avoid it. Maybe it’s just for people we don’t like, not us.
Medieval churches had a prominent place for Christ sitting in judgment. This would be in a dome over the worshiping congregation, or over the doors to the place. Somewhere prominent to show us all we’re in real trouble. Angry Jesus. I mean, really angry. For real, so, so angry. These marvelous images remind me of the “Deep Thoughts” Saturday Night Live used to have. Sort of faux spiritual sentiments like this. ‘A child asked her mother why it was raining. Because God is crying. Why is God crying? Probably because of something you did.’ In our day we have shifted our spiritual focus away from angry Jesus to buddy Jesus, one who is nothing but our pal 100 percent of the time. Who’s right? Our Christian ancestors? Us? A little of both? Neither?
It’s not that we’re over judgment though. Social media is there mostly for us to judge one another, especially the younger and more insecure we are. Look at her, she looks fat. Look at him, he’s an idiot. Look at them, they’re ridiculous. Pathetic. If you’re not on social media, rejoice. It’s a place people go to feel worse about themselves and the world. In modernity we feel like we’ve gotten over the hangover of mean religion denigrating us, but we’re harder on each other and ourselves than the church ever was.
We tell ourselves this story in modernity: you can be anything you want. It’s not true, of course. No matter how hard I tried I wasn’t going to make the NBA. Wrong physique. A successful minister friend said his advantage over his peers growing up in England was he realized younger than they did he would never play in the English premier league. He got busy studying. This myth powers modernity by separating us from the limitations of race, class, family, history. That’s good in some ways. But it’s a kind of crushing pressure we put on our younger generations. If you’re told you can be whatever you want if you put your mind to it, and things don’t work out, who’s to blame? None but us. If our ancestors failed at farming, well, that must’ve been God’s will. But if we end up a failure, it’s our own fault and no one else’s. That’s the dark side of the self-making myth no one talks about. But our anxious age feels it.
Someone I love visited a monastery once. He mentioned to the monk who showed him around that he had a test to study for. Ah, the monk said. But isn’t the only real test that counts the last judgment? Someone wise said if you fear God, you won’t fear anything else. But if you don’t fear God, you will fear everything else. Our medieval ancestors may have been oppressed by heavy-handed religion, angry Jesus, judgment day, all that. But we’re oppressed by something much more severe. Our own expectations and others’, no matter how unreasonable. A cartoon depicts the waiting room in hell. The person at the window explains to a new arrival, ‘we used to torture people. Now we just hold them up against their own expectations. It’s much more fun.’
St. Paul’s letter to the Romans is a masterpiece on the subject of judgment. It’s Paul’s greatest and most important letter. One of you suggested we have a series on Romans next spring and I’m about ready to oblige. If you don’t want Romans speak soon or ever hold your peace. And suggest something else. Someone wise noted that every significant revival in the history of the church has started with renewed attention to the epistle to the Romans. It’s the nuclear core that fired the New Testament church, it brought about the conversions of Martin Luther, John Wesley, countless more. And the chapter you just heard, Romans 8, is my desert island chapter of the Bible. If I got only one chapter for the rest of my life it’d be this one. We read it at funerals for a reason. It’s our heartiest hope in the face of death. It does show there is only one test we ought to worry about passing: judgment day. And Jesus Christ has already passed it for us.
Paul in Romans imagines a courtroom. And we’re in the dock. This is bad news. Who wants all their failures splayed in front of all the world to see? Every commandment we’ve broken. Every other person we’ve failed to honour. Everything done in the dark, held up to the light. A friend was lamenting someone who got away with crimes and died peacefully in bed. I suggested that maybe there’s another judgment coming that won’t be so selective. But don’t let me boast! Scripture somewhere warns we’ll be held liable for every idle word. That is, every useless thing we’ve ever said. Gulp. I do words for a living. Not a few of them have been idle. We’re mostly pretty good people in here, I think. Not too many serial criminals, repeat offenders, folks “known to police” as CBC puts it. But I don’t know, if I’m in front of someone uniformed crossing a border or pulled over, I get nervous. I want them to like me. When I’ve been in court for traffic tickets (don’t judge me! You been there I bet!) I feel this pit of guilt in my stomach. What if, deep down, we’re actually worse than we think, as bad as we think we are when we’re hardest on ourselves? Civil courtrooms aren’t so hard on us as we are on ourselves.
A prison chaplain heard a prisoner explain why he was innocent. So, he said let us pray. “Lord bring justice for my brother.” The prisoner interrupted. No, padre, I said I was innocent of this crime, but I’m not altogether innocent, don’t pray for justice in general. There’s a lot I’ve done the law doesn’t know about. Justice is a high bar. Are we sure we want it?
So, Paul imagines a courtroom. And there’s a judge up there. Sitting with authority over proceedings, our fate in their hands. There’s a prosecuting attorney over there primed to make a case against us. We have an attorney too. Are they good enough? We don’t know. How will this turn out? Our future is at stake.
More seriously now, a friend of mine’s father was probably too old to be driving anymore. But he still was. I get it—who wants to lose their autonomy, their ability to go where they want when they want? He made a mistake and caused a crash, like any of us might, only his was severe—someone in the other car died. Not intentional, but horrifying. Suddenly he’s charged, as the law mandates, with vehicular manslaughter. It’s in the news, in the courts, you’re financially ruined to get enough legal protection to see that you’re not ruined even worse. I knew my friend’s dad as a sweet old man. But you know what he was now? A murderer. Didn’t mean to. But can’t undo it. And the world is forever reduced by the too-soon loss of the other person. No courtroom can make up for that. At best our justice is proximate—reacting to harm done with the best justice we can manage.
So, you’re in court. The judge is up there with the wig on (I know judges don’t wear the wigs here in Canada. This is a British court. Ours should wear the wigs. I digress). The crown prosecutor is over there reciting your misdeeds. Your lawyer’s suit doesn’t look as nice you’d hoped. Your fate is in the balance. And what does Paul say?
If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else?
Suddenly the judge isn’t just a terrible authority with your fate in her hands, ready to crush it. It’s God who gave Jesus for us. Who would give anything to get us back. Not the grim face of someone who might intone, “may God have mercy on your soul,” but the lover of our souls. And we look over at the prosecuting attorney, the one who knows the worst things we’ve ever done. Paul says this:
Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
The one who is supposed to be against us is actually Christ, dead and raised for us. Right now, Jesus Christ is praying for all of us. For his whole world to be made right. He’s not against us. He’s more for us than anybody could be. And our lawyer? Paul says in the passage right before ours:
26 The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Our defender is not just the lawyer in the shabby suit who was the best we could afford. It’s the Holy Spirit whose job, day and night, is to advocate for us to the Father. The Father who is already for us. This courtroom is packed. Our judge is God. Our accuser is Christ. Our defender is the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Trinity has our fate in hand, and he is nothing but for us. And this is the best good news that has ever been imagined.
Most of us, I think, when we imagine how we might be judged, think that we’ll have a ledger of our good deeds over here. And maybe a list of our bad ones over there. And we figure our good ones may outweigh our bad ones. At least we hope so. You might have heard that the president of a certain country to our south mused out loud about his prospects for heaven recently. He said this, in his usual eloquent way:
“I'm being a little cute. I don't think there's anything that's going to get me into heaven. I think I'm not maybe heaven-bound," Trump said. "I may be in heaven right now as we fly on Air Force One. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven.
More introspection than we’re used to from the Donald. Notice he stacks up his good deeds against his bad. But that’s not how this salvation thing works. When God looks at us, he sees only his Son, Christ. And the Spirit is making us as good as Christ is. If we just stand before God with our own record, we are lost. But if we stand before God with Christ’s record, I like our chances, don’t you?
Here’s the gospel: the whole thing in a sentence. Christ repairs everything we’ve ruined. Everything. There is no ruin we can make of things that Christ can’t unruin. And he will. I promise you. Paul exults this way:
In all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It's actually too small a question to ask how we will be judged as individuals. Christ promises this: I am renewing all things. Everything I bothered to make in the first place; I am remaking it by my resurrection. We may be surprised to find ourselves in Christ’s heavenly presence one day. We may be even more surprised who else we might find. Karl Barth was asked whether we would see our loved ones in heaven. He replied, “Not just our loved ones ...”. Right now, the Son prays for us, the Spirit prays for us, to a God who is all ears. Good luck escaping that.
Is there anything we have to do? If Christ has already done everything? Sure. A lot. Salvation requires our whole life. But here’s just one thing to start: we have to give up our seat on the judgment committee. If God alone is our judge, and he is judged in our place on his cross, we are in no position to condemn anybody else. This is why Jesus commands us not to judge. Of course we make judgments (plural) all the time, we can’t escape that. But we know we’re not in the final judgment seat. Christ alone is there. And his judgment is altogether mercy. It’ll take the rest of our lives to stop swapping God out and placing ourselves in the seat of judgment. But we’d better do it. When John Bradford saw prisoners on their way to the scaffold, he famously said “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” I am no better or even different than the worst person. Good thing we have a God who is altogether mercy.
I’m struck every year when we read the names of those who laid down their lives on European battlefields for us. More recently in Canada we’ve asked people to serve in Afghanistan, in the UN in faraway places. They’re so, so young. Please spend a moment looking at their faces in the pictures in our boardroom. At the pictures of worship services in here before they deployed. We used our kneelers back then, and some number are kneeling, others sitting. I wonder what they’re thinking. I wonder what happens to their youth in the years they are away. The stories are known to God alone. And you know who’s working desperately, overtime, to save them, and all the rest of us? The God of the universe, the only God there is, who raised Jesus, who prays for us now, and for all creation. He is about to make all things new. Very soon. Amen.