Isaiah 11:2-4
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding
The spirit of counsel and strength,
The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And He will not judge by what His eyes see,
Nor make a decision by what His ears hear;
But with righteousness He will judge the poor,
And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth
In our 21st century world, judging by what we see is actually quite an established and verified practice. It means you've actually experienced something, not just heard about it through the grapevine. In a more familiar sense, when we actually see someone do something, we're much more likely to cast judgment on their character then if we just hear about it.
But God is far different. He doesn't hold to our standards of human reason. He not only refuses to judge by what He hears, but He also refuses to judge by what He sees.
Instead, God judges using a completely different scale - His own righteousness. So what if He's seen me, the worst of all sinners, betray Him time and time again? So what if He's heard of my failings? When the world would quickly cast their judgment as "GUILTY", Christ holds up His hand to stop the court case. And at His movement, Satan flees. Because on Christ's hands are the marks of His righteousness - the righteousness that judges me and finds me holy, just as He is holy.
Evidence-based practice? I think not. Based on the evidence, I am toast. I have nothing on my side to speak for me - my good works are faulty, my attempts at holiness are failures. But I have a God who is on my side, and He scatters all the evidence against me and replaces it with the evidence of His perfect character.
3 comments:
I'm so glad that God's eyesight is so much clearer than mine!
christy: I appreciate your thoughts here! Can I disagree with you? :P
To say that God examines the evidence of Christ's righteousness on our behalf in lieu of the evidence against us doesn't mean that God has discarded the "evidence-based practice" model. A straight-up rejection of the evidence seems paramount to rejecting the truth: unjust.
The text in Isaiah appears to be a prophecy of the Messiah. To me, it seems that the text could mean that the incarnate Messiah would not judge by what his "human" eyes would see... but would allow the Father (who sees everything) to give him the judgement.
God extends beyond the boundaries of our reason, but that doesn't mean he operates on a totally different logical plane. Truth is truth.
I figured someone would disagree for that very reason, and I completely understand what you're saying. It's not that I disagree, but I was referring to our human understanding of reason and logic, not God's. Certainly, when God looks at the evidence and see's Christ's righteousness, He's not stepping outside the bounds of real evidence. But to our eye, it certainly looks like it.
Post a Comment