Mark 16:16 Jesus said: “He who has believed [in Me] and has been baptized will be saved [from the penalty of God’s wrath and judgment]; but he who has not believed will be condemned.”
Contrary to the wishful thinking of the self-deluded masses, condemnation is very much a part of real love. Remember God “did not send Jesus to condemn the world” BECAUSE THE WORLD WAS ALREADY FULLY CONDEMNED. There was not need to re-condemn the already sin-condemned world.
John 3:16–18 “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has ALREADY BEEN CONDEMNED, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
Father God sent Jesus to show us the heart and nature of HIMSELF. He sent Jesus to bring the sword of truth. Real truth is CONFRONTATIONAL; real truth brings WAR and DIVISION, not rainbows and unicorns, peace and love.
The tares will hate the truth and try to kill the truth. The wheat will love and respond to the truth. The Sheep will hear Jesus’ voice and respond in time to it. The Goats will not and will go to their already condemnation.
In the Bible, God calls His believers, not just saints but authorized and empowered AMBASSADORS. As such we speak the truth of God in the love of God to our neighbor — meaning to anyone and everyone we encounter.
The world needs “reconciliation” to God in Christ because it is LOST, it is DEAD, and it is ESTRANGED from the heart and life and love and truth and goodness of God! It is estranged from and devoid of any actual goodness. It is a condemn world in which exist the damned, because they have not chosen to receive the forgiveness, the life, the grace and the salvation that Jesus Christ IS and already accomplished FOR them and AS them. We need to be righeous IN CHRIST, precisely because on our own we are unrighteous and condemned. Only someone who loves you will tell you this inconvenient truth.
2 Corinthians 5:19–21 “…that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s trespasses against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
And also:
“For we are to God the sweet aroma of Christ, among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one [the perishing], we are an odor of DEATH and demise; to the other [the saved], a fragrance that brings LIFE. And who is qualified for such a task? For we are not like so many others, who peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity (authenticity), as men sent from God.” — 2 Corinthians 15–17
Be careful to not present HALF the Gospel. And be careful to not confuse love with mere niceness and pleasantness, like America (especially) wants to do.
What is real love?
Love is that which does the greatest good to the beloved. This is the key. What stimulates and blesses the most DEPENDS ON the condition of the heart of the beloved. Love thus expresses itself by uplifting and NURTURING the humble/contrite/broken who admit their need for God. Likewise, love CONFRONTS and DISRUPTS the hard heart in denial of their condemnation status, to bring them to the truth of their massive and dire need for WHO Jesus is and WHAT Jesus did to save them from their state of condemnation before a Holy and Just God.
Jesus IS the heart of the Father God and IS the love/grace of God. And the life of Jesus clearly shows this love in action — either CONDEMNING the hard heart, or RESTORING the brokenhearted. (1) The proud NEED to be shattered, disillusioned and disabused, stripped of all self-righteousness and delusion (denial, rationalization, etc.). (2) And the shattered NEED to be restored to communion with God (through faith in Jesus of course).
With the goal of blessing most the beloved, love employs more than one strategy for best stimulating the deepest benefit and growth. This is what real love does and what the Gospels show us over and over. Jesus responded to the deepest need of the person based on their heart status: that is true love. He discerned their core issue or need, and then demonstrated whichever love-strategy they needed most. Accept no substitutes for REAL love. Real love will do anything it possibly can to provoke, help and encourage the beloved into maximum beauty of being.
If you need this unpacked more, the book “Bold Love” is an excellent resource, as is the book “Beautiful Outlaw.”
Jesus always told the truth: no whitewashing, no wishful thinking. No justifications or rationalizations. Pure truth in pure love is what Jesus lived out 100% of the time.
He called some “sons of hell”, and to some “you are forgiven” DEPENDING on their heart status. In each case, this is LOVE speaking the TRUTH. We are called to live and serve others with this real love, just as Jesus did.
Matthew 12:37 “For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” (because as the Bible says elsewhere, your words speak out what is in your HEART)
And also
Matthew 23:33 “You reptilians! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”
This is what love speaking truth looks like when confronting an evil HEART. The world system of wishful thinking, anti-truth, fake love and pride resists this core reality.
God is looking at your heart very clearly. Live with the loving fear of the lord in wisdom and obedience. Because LOVE, God’s love, looks like OBEDIENCE to Father God.
There is therefore now no CONDEMNATION to those that are IN CHRIST JESUS. For the law of the Spirit of God, the law of the LIFE of God (in Jesus’ blood) has SET YOU FREE from the Law of Sin and Death (Romans 8:1,2) that condemns all those who have not abandoned their stubborn and fierce self-will and surrendered fully to Jesus as Savior and Lord of all.
If you are not in Christ Jesus, your sins are still condemning you, disconnecting you and lying to you about yourself. LOVE will tell you the truth about that. Only in light of truth and reality you can make a WISE and INFORMED decision.
God has not sent Christians to go “condemn the world.” There is no need to condemn the world when it is already condemned. That is like making a nuclear bomb even more powerful, when all that does is make that which has already been reduced to rubble bounce even higher.
You cannot “condemn MORE” that which is already fully condemned. Your own sins already have and will condemn you. There is ONE AND ONLY ONE WAY out of this state of deadness, lostness and condemnation. That is the total work of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus lived in full union and harmony — love / trust / obedience — to Father God. You cannot please God. Your nice intentions are meaningless to make God either life or approve of you because your intentions are POWERLESS to be TRULY good. Your intentions are PRISONERS of the fallen flesh. (Romans calls it being a slave and instrument of unrighteousness) That which wants to do as it pleases without regard to God, God’s heart, God’s word, and God’s law. These are all ONE and the same (echad).
The world KNOWS they are under condemnation. They try to live in DENIAL of this core truth. They build elaborate justification, self-justification systems to AVOID this reality. But the very fact that their lives are built as entertainment centers to COMPENSATE for the condemnation of sin, shows you that the reality of condemnation for sin is in fact at the core of their being! THIS explains why the lost of this world REACT so severely to any even HINT of condemnation and their favorite selective verse “do not judge” is twisted out of context on a regular basis.
God IS your judge. The Judge of all. God has STANDARDS for relationship. No SPECK of unrighteousness can get into heaven. God is looking for HIMSELF in us. He created man in His own Image. And he wants to see his heart/nature/being/life REFLECTED in us — we are literally His image inside time and space. We are to mirror God. We are to be God’s hands and feet in this universe. God will judge all souls and beings based on if they are in union with Himself — His righteousness, love, justice, truth, etc..
There is only ONE way to not fall horrible short of God’s standards. That is to be “in Christ Jesus”. The life of Jesus is PRECISELY and EXACTLY what God’s standards for relationship look like, lived out!
The New Testament has MUCH to say about being “in Christ”. Go read, look up, and research what God through the New Testament is telling us about escaping condemnation through being “in Christ.”
