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“The Coming Judgment”
Categories: Bulletin Articles, M. W. Bassford
When we study the Bible, it’s easy for us to read it through 21st-century eyes and forget that it describes first-century events. Things that are not particularly important to us today often were very important to them, and we can find ourselves overlooking significant Scriptural themes because they aren’t relevant to us.
Consider, for instance, the ministry of John the Baptist as presented in Luke 3. It is certainly about preparing the way for Jesus, which we commonly recognize. However, to an equal extent, it is about warning the people that they need to repent because of the judgment that is coming. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees,” John warns in Luke 3:9. “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
We might be inclined to read this as a generic warning about the consequences of disobedience, but it is anything but. The fire here is not the fire of hell—at least, not directly. Instead, it is the fire of God judging the physical world once again. We see similar language in Isaiah 29:6, where, like John, Isaiah is warning God’s people to fear the fire of His judgment.
Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in the Assyrian invasion of 701 BC (another event which we do not properly appreciate), and John’s prophecy would be fulfilled when the Romans crushed the Great Revolt of the Jews in 70 AD. Just as the former was “a day of the Lord”, so too would the latter be. God would judge His people for their sins, particularly the sin of betraying and murdering the Messiah whom He had sent.
Even though it is always offstage, the fall of Jerusalem to the legions of Titus is one of the central events of the gospels. We can’t understand the ministry of John without bearing it in mind, and to a large extent, we can’t understand the ministry of Jesus either.
Paul tells us in Galatians for that the Son came in the fullness of time, but there is also a sense in which He came in the nick of time. As was so often the case in the Old Testament, the sons of Jacob were on a collision course with disaster, and like the prophets of old, Jesus came to attempt to turn them aside: from their hypocrisy, from their self-righteousness, and from their conviction that the kingdom of God meant earthly dominance for His people. Many of the Lord’s calls to repentance that we read generically are, like the warnings of John, specifically about the dangers of opposing Rome.
Fundamentally, the Old Testament is a story of failure. The Israelites received the Law, broke it, and did not repent even in the face of predictions of doom. During the ministry of Jesus, the tragedy will be played out one last time. Despite all of His wisdom and power, the Jews will choose death instead of life. Their leaders will choose King Caesar over the King of heaven, only to be destroyed by Caesar for their faithlessness 40 years later.
Out of this disaster, much good would spring, especially for us. Without the cultivated olive branches being broken off, we could not be grafted in. However, neither should we forget the violence and the significance of the breaking.
