He is Able to Save...and Destroy

There is one Lawgiver,
who is able to save and to destroy.
Who are you to judge another?
James 4:12, NKJV

God has made me no man's judge, nor is any man judge over me. Each of us answers to God, whether we have done good or bad, right or wrong, and God is our judge. Satan is our accuser, pointing his crooked finger while he rages vehemently against us, showing our faults, our flaws, and our failures to God. I'm sure he loves to enumerate my sins in heaven. "Look down there at what ol' Stafford's doing now, God! He really deserves to be fried to a crispy critter. He's transgressed your righteousness. He's trampled on the blood of Christ. He's taking advantage of your grace! Get Him God!" He would be right in his accusation, and God would be right in His judgment if He blotted me out because of my sin.

Except I have an Advocate with the Father who pleads my case, standing there at the right hand of judgment where He ever lives to make intercession for me, Jesus Christ the righteous, who was wounded for my transgressions, bruised for my iniquities, chastised for my peace, and by whose stripes I am healed. He bore all my sins in His body to the tree, the Cross of Calvary. He took the handwriting of transgression that was against me, the accusations of the devil, the condemnation of my sin, and nailed it to the cross, to be remembered no more. And when I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive me of sin and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness.

Bring the charges; God has justified. Go ahead and condemn me; Christ has died for me and risen from the dead! I may be a wretched man sometimes, bearing a body of death on my back that serves to corrupt me, but there is no condemnation for me if I am in Christ Jesus! He has set me free from the law that condemns, for He came to save!

Why then, is it so easy for me to point the finger at someone else and speak like the accuser of the brethren? Why is it such a simple thing for me to pass judgment on other servant's of God?

I'm not talking about proper church discipline, handled the way Christ intended for us to handle those issues. I'm not talking about rebuking false teachers and false prophets, or correcting those in sin. I'm not talking about standing up for truth and contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. Those are all things we have the responsibility to do, though we must be governed by love while we do it. What I'm talking about is much more sinister.

Who am I to point the finger at another servant of God and say, "I don't like the way you're doing things; you must be wrong!"

Who am I to look with plank-obscured vision and offer to assist another with the speck of dirt in their own eye?

Who am I to determine what God has said or not said to another who is seeking only to obey what they've received from God?

Who am I to set the standards for anyone else and demand that they live up to me?

I'll tell you who I am: NOBODY! I have no right to do those things, to say those things, to question another's service and devotion to the Lord. I have no authority to sit in judgment, or worse yet, condemnation over the life of another. I have no power, knowledge or responsibility to determine who will make into God's heaven and who will be consigned to a devil's hell. Those things lie within the purview of God and God alone.

It is God who makes the rules, and God who decides when the rules have been broken. It is God who calls rule breakers into question and determines their fate. It is God who judges, who condemns. It is also God who acquits. And there is only one measure He uses for judgment. All are guilty, all have transgressed and fallen far short of His excellence, all deserve condemnation and death. But the standard that God uses, the measure of God's judgment, is found between the nail prints in the hands of Jesus. That is the line, and it is a line of blood.

Justified through the blood, because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we stand pardoned for our sins. Without the blood, we condemn ourselves in our sin. The choice is ours; the judgment is God's. And He who is able to both save and to destroy will do what is just and right and fair.