John 3:18

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

            In the last passage Jesus explained that He did not condemn the world but came to save it, flipping the idea of the religious leaders from condemnation to redemption. Condemnation is an important aspect to understand as this represents judgment—as in the legal passing of sentence on someone. What Jesus meant in these passages about condemnation was this idea of legal judgment of guilt. This was not why Jesus came as He explained in the last verse. He did not come as the judge but as the redeemer. This next verse further explains why He came, and it is not the reason most people would think.

            Jesus started the verse by explaining more how those who believe in Him are not condemned—they do not have a guilty verdict passed on them. This highlighted the legal aspect of the whole redemption process. The reason someone can be born again and enter into the kingdom of God is belief in Jesus.  The one that believes in Jesus—His life, death, and resurrection—is deemed not guilty legally. Jesus was explaining that this simple act of belief or faith makes the person right before God. Paul further explained this in Romans 4 by saying “and to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). Faith in Jesus clears the debt, and Jesus’ righteousness is credited to the believer’s life.

            There is a second part to this, though. Jesus said He did not come to condemn the world and that is because the world is already condemned. Jesus needs to be understood in His full context. It is not just that He did not come to condemn the world but also to save it and the reason the world needs to be saved is because it has already been judged guilty. Anyone who does not believe is already condemned. This can be flipped around and mean the same thing—that we are already condemned until we believe in Jesus. This belief is not just that Jesus lived but that He died to take away that guilty verdict for people and that He rose again. At the end, Jesus gave the reason why they were condemned already which was because they did not believe in the Unique Son of God. In essence, they did not believe in God.

            For Christians, it is hard sometimes for us to accept the idea of imputed righteousness from God. This is the idea of Jesus’s righteousness being credited to our own lives. We live in fear of sin or falling back into our old ways and this causes us to sin more. We must live without fear of this in our lives as Jesus has made us free from condemnation not to constantly have sin issues but to live out the fullness of our lives. We must continue to grow, and this happens in community with other believers, reading the word of God, and a healthy prayer time—not by being paralyzed in fear of sin. We recognize we are not made righteous by our own action but by the actions of Jesus, so we must cast aside our arrogance and lean on Jesus and the Holy Spirit to maintain us throughout the rest of our lives.

            For non-Christians, you are condemned by your own actions and there is no hope for you to make any defense to save yourself. There is hope, though, and that is to believe in Jesus who will make you right before God. This is not just a faith that Jesus existed but a faith that He is who He said He was—God who came to this earth, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for your sins, and then rose again. If you believe this, then you will no longer be deemed guilty but righteous because of what Jesus did.