Equalizer

The Final Judgment is usually imagined as a single universal courtroom in which every human being appears in exactly the same position: everyone stands before the Judge, everyone is examined, and everyone receives either a favourable or unfavourable verdict.

But the Gospel picture is not so simple.

Jesus sometimes speaks not merely about receiving a favourable judgment, but about not entering judgment at all.

This distinction is easy to miss because the two ideas are often treated as if they meant the same thing.

They do not.

Luke 6:20–26 is often read as a simple symmetrical contrast. The poor are blessed, the rich are cursed; the hungry will be filled, the full will hunger; those who weep will laugh, while those who laugh will mourn.

At first sight, the passage appears to describe one single rule of reversal.

But the structure is more complicated.