The Resurrection and the Judgment
Gospel Reflection for Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025
I want to pick up where I left off last year. Last year I wrote about Christ being equal to the Father. His divine nature is a necessary reality when looking at the message of today’s Gospel. In speaking of His equality with God, Christ foretells and promises the resurrection of the body.
“Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself. And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.” John 5:25-29
This sobering statement from Our Lord reveals numerous truths that all branch off of His divinity. The Father, as the source of the Godhead, gives the Son the authority to both resurrect humanity and call them to judgment. It is important that we understand what is being said here.
First, the aspect of resurrection is immensely important. Christ speaks multiple times on the coming resurrection and how He is the resurrection and the life. This is a main theme of St. John’s Gospel. The power to raise the dead is solely a divine power. This claim of Christ is what triggers the Jews hearing Him to accuse Him of Blasphemy since He “Made himself equal to God.”1 Only God can raise the dead since He alone is the author of life. For Christ to claim this power as well, it places Him on equal footing with the God of the Israelites.
Christ does not stop there, however. He dives deeper into His divine authority by claiming for Himself the authority to judge those who He raises from the dead:
“Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son… I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just…” John 5:22; 30.
Only God is the judge. And only God is truly Just. Christ takes both of these attributes to Himself.
Our Lord does reveal that it has been given to Him to judge mankind because He is the Son of Man. This is an important fact. Christ’s authority to judge comes from His divinity, but the mode by which He judges is through His humanity. What I mean by that is that He judges in His humanity since it is according to His humanity that He suffered and died. Perhaps this is why we hear this Gospel during Lent, as we prepare to observe His passion, death, and resurrection.
Christ’s judgment is based on His sufferings on our behalf. He retains the wounds in His glorified body so that when we stand before Him in judgment, His passion is the witness of His judgment.
St. Thomas teaches to this end:
“Hence it is becoming that Christ should judge in respect of his having authority over men to whom chiefly the last judgment will be directed. Now he is our Lord not only by reason of the Creation, since the Lord he is God, he made us and not we ourselves (Ps 99:3), but also by reason of the Redemption which pertains to him in respect of his human nature. Wherefore to this end Christ died and rose again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living (Rom 14:9) … And as by redeeming mankind he restored not only man but all creatures without exception—inasmuch as all creatures are bettered through man’s restoration, according to Colossians 1:20, making peace through the blood of his cross, both as to things on earth, and the things that are in heaven, it follows that through his Passion Christ merited lordship and judicial power not over man alone, but over all creatures, according to Matthew 28:18, all power is given to me, in heaven and in earth.”2
The Angelic Doctor teaches that Christ merits the authority to judge according to His humanity because of his passion. His sacrifice was so pleasing to the Father that in His humanity, He is given the authority to judge man, whom He is the head of.
St. Thomas continues:
“Christ would not have sufficed for the redemption of mankind had he been a mere man. Wherefore from the very fact that he was able as man to redeem mankind, and thereby obtained judicial power, it is evident that he is God, and consequently is to be honored equally with the Father, not as man but as God.”3
This statement gets right at the heart of today’s Gospel. It is given to Christ to judge mankind because of the merits of the passion. But those merits are only able to be had because Christ is first and foremost, God. Had Christ only been human, His suffering and death, no matter how filled with Charity, would not have sufficed for the redemption of the human race, simply because as a finite creature, He would not be able to repay the infinite debt incurred through sin. But, because Christ is firstly a divine person, who then assumes a true human nature to Himself, His sacrifice on the cross now has infinite value. Thus, according to His divinity, Christ has a natural authority to judge man and according to His humanity, He has a merited authority to judge man.
To this end, Christ sits in judgment over the whole earth. As the Gospel says today, we can either rise to a resurrection of life or to a resurrection of condemnation. Let us ask God to orient our hearts to Him throughout the remainder of this Lenten Season so that at the end when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, we might be found worthy of the resurrection of life.
John 5:18.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Supp. q. 90, a. 1.
Ibid.