I do not condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world. There is an image in the popular imagination of God as kind of a cosmic traffic cop. The rules of the road are out there and if you don’t follow them God will come get you. Jesus contradicts that image by proclaiming that his work is saving, not condemning. God isn’t out to get us but to be with us. To my way of thinking that means that judgment day does not consist of God seated on a throne seeing if we measure up to the divine standard. Rather, judgment is something we do to ourselves. If we are the kind of person who will accept the love and mercy of God we are saved. If we are the kind of person who insists on going our own way it is not God who condemns us but we who condemn ourselves by refusing to let God love us.
