Just

In John 5:30, Jesus said, "My judgment is just..."  Well of course it is, one might say, because he is the divine Son of God.  One might say that, but Jesus did not say that.  He did not say his words were just because he simply couldn't help being right or because his divine nature gave him such an advantage that poor judgment was simply out of the question.

To the contrary, the Bible said that Jesus was "tempted in every way, just as we are" (Heb 4:15), which means he sometimes wanted to do otherwise than he actually did.  There were times when his want to and his did do were at odds.  He wasn't simply a divine being sailing smoothly through this life without struggle, "rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Phil 2:7).

Jesus had to face the challenges and desire of this world just as you and I in order that he could "leave an example that you [and I] should follow" (1 Pet 2:21).  His judgment was not arrived at in a vacuum of divinity but rather was hammered out in the challenges of humanity.  His judgment was just not because he was other than us but because his motivation was other than himself.  Specifically, Jesus said, "My judgment is just for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me" (Jn 5:30).

We see this dynamic in play as Jesus prayed in the garden shortly before going to the cross: "Abba Father...take this cup from me.  Yet, not what I will, but what you will" (Mk 14:36).  His judgment is just because his motivation for making a judgment was advancing the Father's will instead of self-promotion.

This being true, the path for you and I to make just and good judgments is to first set aside our personal desires and to seek out the Father's will.  And, rather than just speculate on what God might want or do, I believe we ought to turn to prayer and the pages of the Bible asking, "What did God say?"

You may feel like retaliation but what did God say?  You may want to take something that doesn't belong to you but what did God say?  You may not want to pay your taxes but what did God say?  Do you see how this works?  Simple huh?  Not necessarily easy because our humanity gets in the way and because we may not be certain of what God actually said about a given instance.  But the path to just judgment is a simple one: Seek out God's will above our own.  Jus' Say'n.