s
life without undergoing that judgment. Thus our Blessed Lord Himself;
in John v. 24, says, "_Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth
My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and
cometh not into judgment_" (for that, and not "_condemnation_," is the
word used by our Lord),--"_cometh not into judgment, but hath passed
out of death into life_." That would seem to mean that the faithful
man has already passed over out of death, and all that belongs to
death, sin, and guilt, and judgment, into life; and therefore when the
judgment comes he can have no part in it, cannot come into it at all,
because he is acquitted already through the faith in Him who bore his
guilt and took away his sin. And similarly, again, a few verses
further on, ver. 29, our Lord says, "_An hour cometh in which all that
are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall
come forth: they that have done good unto the resurrection of life;
and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment_." That
is, I suppose, the one shall rise into eternal life,--into the full
bliss of the heavenly state, and the others into the condition,
whatever it be, which the judgment shall decide. Of course I am fully
aware that I have not quoted these texts as they are read in our
English Bibles. The matter stands thus: the word which I have rendered
"_judgment_" is the word always meaning judgment--the word occurring
in the very next verse where our Lord says, "_As I hear, I judge, and
My_ judgment _is just;_" the word used also above in ver. 22, where He
says, "_The Father committed all_ judgment _unto the Son_." In those
two places, because there was no difficulty, our translators kept the
word "_judgment_." But in these other two which I have quoted, because
there was an apparent difficulty, they changed "_judgment_" in one
verse into "_condemnation_," and in the other into "_damnation_,"
without any reason or right soever. Indeed, in the latter of the two
passages, not only is this so, but the whole sense is broken up by
their unfaithfulness. Our Lord having mentioned the resurrection of
judgment, proceeds to vindicate the justice of that judgment: "_As I
hear, I judge: and My judgment is just, because I seek not Mine own
will, but the will of Him that sent Me_." So that the difficulty,
which man's meddling with the Bible has tried to remove, does exist in
the Bible as it came from God. And we must try to see thro