JUDGMENTS: "HE IS A GOOD MAN"
(Message by Tanny Keng)
1. Judgments
a) People are always making judgments. You do it, I do it, we all do it. Good judgment is one of the qualities of successful people. Jesus warned against making false or hypocritical judgments. He encouraged people to "judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24).
b) Jesus himself was being judged by people, and needless to say their judgments were varied. In the Gospel of John you can find several judgments of Jesus. It was even said, “He has a demon”!
2. "He Is A Good Man"
John 7:12
12 There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, “He is a good man”; others were saying, “No, on the contrary, He leads the people astray.”
a) We turn to the general public's opinion of Jesus. It was somewhat divided. Some thought Jesus was leading people astray. However in the eyes of others in the multitudes, Jesus met with approval. "He is a good man" (John 7:12). We suppose this is not much more than an unofficial version of Pilate's judgment. Jesus is a good man, he's not doing any harm. We can hardly criticize this approval of Jesus. It does, however, fall short of faith. Plenty of people who are not Christians would recognize Jesus as a good man, even perhaps as one of the great lights among men. So while we must agree with the assessment that Jesus was a good man, our faith must go much further than that.
b) Jesus once responded to someone who addressed him as "Good teacher" by asking him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:17-18). Jesus was trying to get this man to go beyond the popular judgment that Jesus was, more or less, a good man, and to become a believer that Jesus was “good” to the point of divine perfection. Jesus was saying, if we might paraphrase him, "The only one who can truly be judged good is God, so if your judgment of me as good is going to mean anything worthwhile, you will have to believe that I am God."
The End ...
1. Judgments a) People are always making judgments. You do it, I do it, we all do it. Good judgment is one of the qualities of successful people. Jesus warned against making false or hypocritical judgments. He encouraged people to "judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24).
b) Jesus himself was being judged by people, and needless to say their judgments were varied. In the Gospel of John you can find several judgments of Jesus. It was even said, “He has a demon”!
2. "He Is A Good Man"
John 7:12
12 There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, “He is a good man”; others were saying, “No, on the contrary, He leads the people astray.”
a) We turn to the general public's opinion of Jesus. It was somewhat divided. Some thought Jesus was leading people astray. However in the eyes of others in the multitudes, Jesus met with approval. "He is a good man" (John 7:12). We suppose this is not much more than an unofficial version of Pilate's judgment. Jesus is a good man, he's not doing any harm. We can hardly criticize this approval of Jesus. It does, however, fall short of faith. Plenty of people who are not Christians would recognize Jesus as a good man, even perhaps as one of the great lights among men. So while we must agree with the assessment that Jesus was a good man, our faith must go much further than that.
b) Jesus once responded to someone who addressed him as "Good teacher" by asking him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:17-18). Jesus was trying to get this man to go beyond the popular judgment that Jesus was, more or less, a good man, and to become a believer that Jesus was “good” to the point of divine perfection. Jesus was saying, if we might paraphrase him, "The only one who can truly be judged good is God, so if your judgment of me as good is going to mean anything worthwhile, you will have to believe that I am God."
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