THESE are the two alternatives for every child of man, One or other must be your portion and mine. There is no third lot, no middle class, for any. They both hang on one Man, the One who being God deigned to become man, that we who were dead in sins might believe on the Son of God and live through Him, the living and life-giving One; or, if we reject Him, we cannot escape His judgment as Son of Man.
Man could not rise to God. It was Satan's temptation to become as God, knowing good and evil; it was man's ruin. But God in boundless grace can come down to man; and this He did in His Son, the woman's Seed, to give life eternal to man dead spiritually, not of course to those who refuse Him but to such as believe on Him whom God sent in love for this purpose. It is Jesus who speaks and this is what He says: —
“For even as the Father hath life in Himself, so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is Son of Man.”
Too well we know that man left His sinless estate to become as God. Alas! it was to do his own will independently against God's will. But the Eternal Word, the Son, became truly man, yea, God's bondman to do His will at all cost, not only that we that believe might live through Him, but that He should die for us, the propitiation for our sins. Is not this love? Not that we loved Him, but that He loved us; and His love creates love in all that believe. We love, because He first loved us.
Yet we could not love after this divine sort, so alien from the fallen and sinful creature, without life divine. But life we receive in receiving Jesus the Lord. For he that believes has life eternal, as is expressly said and repeated in all manner of equivalent terms. No one heard of such a gift as this before Jesus came and was rejected at least in spirit as Messiah. But His rejection as the promised King of Israel was answered even before the cross by unveiling His glory as the Son of God in the highest sense, and His grace in giving life eternal to him that believes, be he who he may,—"whosoever believeth." What indiscriminate goodness! Yet, when received, most separative and exclusive!
To believe on Christ is not only God's way, but the sinner's when in the light he sees Christ and himself as never before. It is the best and only true way in which a poor lost soul honors the Son as be honors the Father. He hears the Son's word, and believes Him that sent the Son. He is quickened by the Son, and confesses Him Lord. He has life eternal, does not come into judgment, and is passed out of death into life. It is not merely that he will not come into "condemnation," as the Authorized Version says. The Lord says that he does not come into "judgment." How could it be otherwise if already he has life eternal, and is justified by faith? Were life conditional, and justification temporary or transient, we might conceive the blessedness precarious. But not so: the Lord always speaks of it as unchanging for the believer; and this is the way in which first he honors the Son.
But is it not written here that "all may honor the Son?" Undoubtedly too it shall be and must be; as surely as "he that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father that sent Him." How then are the unbelievers, how are men that did evil, to honor the Son?
They availed, and still avail, themselves of His humanity to slight and scorn Him. Had He appeared in His own glory as Son of God, they must have fallen down appalled, prostrate and dead before Him. But because He became a real man in all grace and humility, though never ceasing to be God, they dared to spit in His face and crucify Him. Therefore to vindicate His glory and punish every degree of dishonor to Him, the Father judges not personally, but hath given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. Authority to execute judgment He gave to Him, because He is Son of Man.
In the nature for which blind unbelief despised or neglected Him He will sit in judgment. From emperors to slaves with all between, male or female, learned or unlettered, Jews or Gentiles, men white or black, brown or yellow, there is no difference: all will be judged. They dishonored Him who laid aside His glory to make known and do the will of God in love for sinners, and tasted death even on the cross for every one, though they only the more mocked Him for it. But He will judge them all; and that judgment will be as lasting as the life they missed in refusing Him. Those who believed did thus honor Him by their faith and by the fidelity to His word and will which it ensures. Thus they need no judgment to enforce the truth, as they in fact honor Him as they honor the Father. Yet will they surely give account to Him, be manifested before Him, and receive according to what they did in or through the body; but this will only be judgment for those who submitted not to the Son, and thus had the wrath of God abiding on them.
Consider then the wondrous perfection of our Lord in the position of man here below, as indeed above also. Whatever might be His divine right, as for example in quickening whom He will even as the Father, He emptied Himself, becoming man, and a bondman; further He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea death of the cross. So here He receives from the Father whether to have life in Himself, or to execute judgment. He puts His own personal title in abeyance to God's glory. His delight as man is to be nothing but a bondman, and in grace or in judgment to receive all from God in self-abnegation, and do all to His glory, not to His own. It is a dangerous lie against the truth to regard this submissive place as His in the Godhead, but rather as the perfection of the subjection He undertook as man. Here theology ancient and modern is totally at fault. To make science of revealed truth is to lose its life, power and authority, if not to turn it into poison. The blessing is through faith and to faith. Judgment awaits unbelief.