“Judge me by your righteousness, O Lord my God. Do not let them gloat over me.” (Psalm 35:24 GW)
“If there is any thought at which a Christian trembles it is the thought of God’s ‘judgement’. The ‘Day’ of Judgement is ‘that day of wrath, that dreadful day’. We pray for God to deliver us ‘in the hour of death and at the day of judgement’. Christian art and literature for centuries have depicted its terrors. This note in Christianity certainly goes back to the teaching of Our Lord Himself; especially to the terrible parable of the Sheep and the Goats. This can leave no conscience untouched, for in it the ‘Goats’ are condemned entirely for their sins of omission; as if to make us fairly sure that the heaviest charge against each of us turns not upon the things he has done but on those he never did—perhaps dreamed of doing.
“It was therefore with great surprise that I first noticed how the Psalmists talk about the judgement of God. Judgement is apparently an occasion of universal rejoicing. People ask for it: ‘Judge me, O Lord my God, according to thy righteousness’ (35:24)
“The reason for this soon becomes very plain. The ancient Jews, like ourselves, think of God’s judgement in terms of an earthly court of justice. The difference is that the Christian pictures the case to be tried as a criminal case with himself in the dock; the Jew pictures it as a civil case with himself as the plaintiff. The one hopes for acquittal, or rather for pardon; the other hopes for a resounding triumph with heavy damages.”* – C. S. Lewis
God,
Thank you for your righteous judgment in this world. Thank you that you do judge people according to our hearts and our works. Thank you that when you see your children, you see us through the blood of Jesus Christ, our Savior, and do not give us what we deserve, but you give us grace. Today we ask that you would remind us of your grace when we judge ourselves too harshly, but lovingly convict our spirits where we need to confess and repent. And we pray that you would always, always protect your children from the evil and fears around us, and free our hearts to love, faith, joy, hope and praise. We ask in Jesus’s name, AMEN.
“Lo, the hosts of evil round us
scorn the Christ, assail his ways.
From the fears that long have bound us
free our hearts to faith and praise.” – Harry Emerson Fosdick, “God of Grace and God of Glory”
*From Reflections on the Psalms
Reflections on the Psalms. Copyright © 1958 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1968 by Arthur Owen Barfield.