Claim #4:
John 5: 22 “For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son:”
When Christ Jesus made this declaration, he was again telling us that He is God. Judgment is God’s domain. Indeed, the Old Testament tells us that it is the Lord God Who is the judge of all the earth (Gen 18:25). In telling His audience that all judgment had been committed to Him Christ made an unashamed claim to deity.
Let me explain; in America, it seems that no two judges agree on anything. On legal rulings, one has one view, and another has quite a different judgment. This is commonplace! But notice how Christ Jesus claims that God had turned over all judgment to Him.—He’s, therefore, saying, “As God sees things, I see things, I have the mind of God in all things and in every detail.” This again is a claim to deity! Jesus is claiming that God has committed all judgment to him and is, therefore, saying that God is perfectly confident that their judgment is and will be one and the same. There will be no disagreement between them, nor can there be for they are one!
The genius of turning over all judgment to Christ is this, Jesus is both fully human and fully God. He is the sovereign Christ uniquely positioned to see all things from both sides. Remember this, there will be a man on the Judgment throne of God, albeit the God/Man, but a man nonetheless. It will be a man before whom all the nations of the earth will be commanded to appear. This perfect man was, in His life on earth, subject to all the frustrations of human limitations and, therefore, will fully understand all whom He will judge. And in this we see Divine astuteness, for someone, in that day, might complain and say, “What right has God to judge me! He’s never walked in my shoes!” Then someone says, “Ah but yes, He has walked in them. He knows what its like to be human with all its frustrations and disadvantages.”
If anybody had disadvantages in life it was the Lord Jesus! He started his life in a cattle shed in a feeding trough for animals. As an infant the political powers tried to kill him, forcing His family to become refugees in Egypt. He knows all about being rejected, misunderstood, and betrayed. He has gone through the full gamut of human experience. In fact, His life was so filled with suffering that he is called the man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3).
But He is not merely a man, He is the God/Man and being that He is God, it means that He knows all the facts and all the motives for all the actions of those He is to Judge. He sees the hearts, the secret plans and goals and the hidden intentions behind what is said and done. What a perfect Judge he will make.
This claim to have judgment entrusted to Him is a very powerful claim to Deity. In 1 Chronicle 16:33 we read that Yahweh “cometh to judge the earth.” What Jesus was saying was, “By the way folks I’m the one who is going to be the end time judge—I’m Yahweh” We can’t ignore this kind of thing! Either this man Jesus is God or He’s nuts.
It should also be noted that Jesus carried this teaching of being the end time Judge all the way through to the end of His ministry. Listen to what he tells his listeners shortly before the cross. He says,
“When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. (Matthew 25:31-33).
Christ’s claim of being the Judge of the whole earth, therefore, once more exposes the ignorance of those who make the silly claim that nowhere in the Bible did Jesus ever say He was God.
And that’s the Gospel Truth!