OUR Savior allowed Himself to be led into the “Hall of judgment”.
What is this?
Is the “hall of judgment” not His Father’s house? Is not all judgment from God? Is it not God Who maintains justice? When a people advance so far in civilization, that a “Hall of judgment” is opened, is it not a blessing bestowed upon that people?
See it, in days of insurrection and mutiny; when violence dominates and blind passion has free play; for then the “Hall of judgment” is closed and the judge does not occupy his bench. Then fire from hell breaks out to the surface. Think of Paris in 1870. Then all devils are let loose.
And no sooner has insurrection been checked, and the power of mutiny broken and brutal violence been foiled, than the hall of judgment opens its doors again, the judge resumes his seat upon the bench of honor and the scales of justice balance again in his hand.
And when there is light and life in the Hall of judgment, the better citizens freely draw breath again and malefactors tremble.
The “Hall of judgment” in the midst of the world is therefore very really a Divine something. An holy institution to which cleaves something of the honor and omnipresence of God. There are “gods” who sit in the Hall of judgment and God is in the midst of them, says the Scripture.
With God everything is settled according to “Justice”.
The interest at stake, is not merely to cleanse and sanctify us, and to render us blessed. It is not merely to treat us medically and to heal us. Neither to fashion us ethically and to fill us with a new and holier life. No, with God and thus likewise with the creature, that enters into dealings with the living God, it is before everything else the question of justice.
Of the right.
For God the Lord is a God Who is conscious of Himself, Who knows what He wills, and thus has expressed His will and His life in ordinances and commandments and institutions, and has drawn lines throughout all creation and appointed each a limit and measure, and has ordered for all creatures a way wherein they should serve Him and exist for His sake.
Were God the Lord an unconscious divine Being, without will and therefore without commandment, it would suffice us, to receive new life from Him and to be healed of our wounds.
But since everything in God is conscious will and hence everything operates after His ordinances, there is a right, i. e. a law, which determines what is due to God from His creature, and now that right must operate as surely and as certainly, as a star moves in its divinely appointed course.
HENCE that right also before God is inalienable. He extends the dominion of that right even so far, that He reverences it with respect to Satan, to the fallen angels, and in behalf of those who will to be lost.
God, because He is God, may not, and will not overcome simply by His greater power, but will conquer only by the right and according to the right.
In this lies also the only sufficing key for the explanation of Jesus’ suffering.
In that world into which Jesus enters, there is a right. A falsified, a distorted right, be it so. But always still a right, that has an house of its own, has its own barristers, and in which the deeply sunken world preserves a maintenance of its honor.
And now Jesus surely will and shall make that world a prey, and win for Himself those that have been given Him of the Father, but after the earthly rule, this also must be done according to the right.
Now God the Lord had so directed it, that there was some understanding of right extant among all nations, but that there was only one nation among which right (law) had obtained a noble and more pure development. And that people were not the Jews, but the Romans.
Thus a condemnation according to Jewish law would have availed nothing.
In Israel there was a God-given right, and from this an institution of justice had been derived.
That Divine right was holy, and according to that right the Man of sorrows was Israel’s King and Lord.
But according to the derived institution of human justice Jesus could be cast out by the Jews, but could not be sentenced to death by their law.
And therefore God had so ordered it, that the heroes of law, i. e. the Romans, were present at the time in Jerusalem; in Jerusalem had authority in hand; and maintained the exclusive title, to administer capital punishment.
Thus in Jerusalem there was not merely “a” hall of judgment, but the best hall of judgment conceivable on earth. A hall of judgment wth a Roman as a judge.
Therefore reads an article of our Christian faith, that He: “Suffered under Pontius Pilate!”
For that Roman in that hall of judgment was Pilate.
That “suffered under Pontius Pilate” is the Church’s confession of faith in the leadings of God.
And into that “Hall of judgment” the bearer of our sin enters, though He knows that there the sentence of death awaits Him.
Death or life; Jesus wills “right”.
“Right” in that house where the man sits who has authority, because that authority has been given him of God.
Jesus loves the Father eternally and because God is right and lives by right and doeth according to right and aims at right, Jesus can not stay away from the right, even though that right shall consume Him in death.
And this He did, that He might lead you into the house of eternal right, i. e. the house of His Father.
This He did, that He might establish a house of judgment in the mansion of your own heart, and that there he might place the discerner of thoughts again upon the seat of honor.
Yea, this He did, that in His church on earth also He might institute a place of refuge for the right of His God.
Tell me, reader, has your heart, your home, your church, become such a “hall of judgment”?
Do you also, with that deep penetrating elasticity, for God’s sake, though it operates against yourself, love the right?