Question:
Answer:
John 12:47 “And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.”
John 9 39 And Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.”
40 Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, “Are we blind also?”
41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains.”
Matthew 10:34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”
In all three the passages above we have Jesus speaking. In the first one, He says that He has not come to judge, but to save us. This same message is given in John 3:17. The second passage seems to contradict the first one, but in fact verse 39 says, as given in the Message Bible, “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense of seeing, will be exposed as blind.”
This means that the very presence of Jesus polarizes people, as the final passage says. Jesus gives a message, and people choose whether to believe it or to reject it. Two camps form, those for Jesus (mostly the common people of His day) and those against Him (the Pharisees and religious leaders of His day). In a way this is judgment, not as we normally see judgment, but two camps form, as in the last day judgment, the saved and the lost, the sheep and the goats, the righteous and the wicked.
So, the John 9 passage does not contradict the first passage, it just gives us a different “judgment”, automatically forming two groups, one for God and the other for the devil. It is not Jesus as the Judge, proclaiming who is saved and who is lost, but His presence causing those who have been spiritually blind, to be able to have spiritual insight. And at the same time, those who have been publicly saying that they have spiritual insight, will be seen to be what they actually are, spiritually blind.
I hope that this makes sense to you, and does not confuse you further. The Bible is God’s Word, and is never contradictory, so if it seems to be, we have to look for the true meaning.
God bless!
