John 5:24 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”
In the above quoted passage of scripture our Lord Jesus has very clearly stated that the saints will not come into judgement, for we have already passed from death into life. Some use this passage of scripture to teach the error that the saints will never be judged. A better translation of the word “judgement” in this passage however is the word “condemnation”, for as we will see in this section although the saints will not be condemned, nevertheless they will be judged. The reason the saints will not be condemned is because they have already received eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. You will recall that in the previous section we quoted the passage where our Lord spoke about the resurrection of condemnation, and we said that that resurrection pertained to all the unbelievers who would be raised at the end of the age to incur their final judgement of condemnation. And so it is that judgement of condemnation that our Lord is referring to when He says that His saints will not come into condemnation, because they have already passed from death into life.
John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (17) For God, did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (18) "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
In the passage of scripture quoted above our Lord Jesus has made it very clear that those who believe in Him will never be condemned. In other words the saints will not perish with the world, for they have already received everlasting life. And so we see that the point remains, that once we have believed in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour we have passed from death to life and we are no longer subject to the unbeliever’s judgement of condemnation. Jesus Christ died for our sins and all that He requires of us to be saved is to simply believe in Him and confess Him as Lord. When we do this our spirits are born-again and we are made alive in Christ, and the gift that we receive from God is eternal life.
Michael E.B. Maher
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