Don't Judge Yourself Unworthy

What a statement, warning, and reality that we all need to heed!  From this verse, we can understand that it is possible for people that God wants to and can make worthy of the Messianic Kingdom to come and the New Heavens, New Earth, and New Jerusalem to judge themselves unworthy of it. The Word that His Son died for the punishment of our unworthiness and rose again to give testimony of our future honor and eternal life can be rejected and contradicted even though we don’t desire the alternative.  It is quite a paradox.

To understand this verse a little better, let's go back and see how Paul and Barnabas arrived at this bold pronouncement. We know from the gospel records that Yeshua was sent to the house of Israel, not to the Gentiles.

Now we know Yeshua was not legalistic about this because He did end up healing the woman's daughter when He perceived her faith based on her answer.

But the principle remains.  The promises of atonement, the resurrection, inheriting the land of Israel forever, and the coming of a Jewish Messiah that would save them from their enemies were only promised to Israel, not the nations.  Go back and read every covenant very carefully, including the New Covenant, and you will find that these covenants are specific to Israel.

This is also why it is vitally important for Gentiles to understand they are grafted into the salvation of Israel, not the other way around.  But I digress from this because that is not the thrust of this article.

The issue is that Yeshua came to the Jewish people to bless them by fulfilling the covenant and promises made to them in the Tenakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings).  

Although He did allude to His disciples that the Word would eventually go forth into the whole world…

And that He did die for the sins of the whole world…

The message would be to the Jew first…

So when we get to this point here in Acts 13 when Paul and Barnabas finally pronounce to the Jewish leaders (not the common Jewish people, but the leaders.  Many tens of thousands of Jewish people did believe Yeshua was the Messiah. Acts 21:20) we must understand how much the Word had already come to them and how many times they had contradicted and rejected the Word of God’s grace, mercy, and salvation to them.

There is the obvious rejection of Yeshua in the gospel, but beginning in the book of Acts we see this continued rejection also.  Peter preached and confronted many of the Jewish leaders three times in the first five chapters of Acts, four times if you include his Shavuot (Pentecost) sermon.

After Peter, Stephen is raised up and again delivers the Word of the good news of salvation teaching right from the Tenakh and he dies a prophet's death by stoning.  It is at this point we begin to see the Word begin to move out of the boundaries of Jerusalem and into the outer regions of Judea and Samaria when Phillip the evangelist preached in those regions, and then comes the salvation and call of Saul, aka Paul.  The reason for his calling is very, very specific and that is to take the Word of salvation to the Gentiles…

But Saul, like any Jew of his day, would have only thought it right to preach this Word to the Jews in the synagogues, albeit in modern-day Turkey.  So he did, even with this direct call from God by the Holy Spirit to go to the nations.  In the midst of this Peter has a vision that takes him to the house of Cornelious and he witnesses the promised dwelling of the Holy Spirit to the Jews also come to the Gentiles…

Saul (Paul) and Barnabas preached in Cyprus, Antioch, and Perga to those Jews in diaspora and they still rejected the message of God’s grace, mercy, and salvation for them until finally, we get to this pronouncement that they have judged themselves unworthy of eternal life.

I know that was a bit of a history lesson, but it is important to see how we got to this point in the Scriptures because it was not something that happened fast.  It came as a continual rejection of God’s free gift of worthiness for them through His Son and their Messiah.  

The problem was this…  Unbelief that God was greater than their unworthiness and that He was and is able to make them worthy of the gift of eternal life.  They simply could not believe something so free, so gracious, so loving, and so life-giving.  Why?  Because humans don’t think up and generate within themselves this level of love that God shows.  But because they could not and would not believe it, it was not God who judged them unworthy to receive it, but themselves.

Now this is where it gets personal for us, Jew or Gentile.  Even those of us who have made a profession and confession of faith in Yeshua the Messiah.  

Are there times and temptations you believe that you are not worthy to inherit eternal life?  We may look at our past, or even our present and only see sin and failure.  It could be imagined and blown out of proportion by false accusations from the enemy OR it may be absolutely true.  This may lead us to “try” harder or to do things that in our minds would make us seem “worthy”.  We may have heard the good news of salvation, but we conclude it is too good to be true, it's out of reach for us, or we are too far gone.

Sometimes even those who profess faith in Yeshua grovel endlessly, browbeating themselves back into sanctification after sin and failure in false humility because they do not truly believe that if they repent and confess their sin God will forgive them and cleanse them.

So let me ask you a question. Have you in some way judged yourself unworthy of eternal life and blessings from God? Do you look on your merits and self-worthiness as the measuring stick for your right standing before a holy, perfect, and just God, OR do you put no confidence in the success or failures of the flesh and trust solely that your worthiness before God comes through the atonement of resurrection of Yeshua our Messiah?

For some of you, this may actually be an issue of your eternal destination. Either with the Lord in Heaven, the Messianic Kingdom to come, and New Heavens, New Earth, or separated from Him in hell and eventually the lake of fire. I implore you not to judge yourself unworthy of eternal life and believe the lie that there is not a Living God that loves you, created you and is able to make you worthy through the gift of His Son.

For others it may be a warning, exhortation, and discernment to never judge yourselves unworthy of a gift that cost so much and that your Creator and Father so wants you to have.  It should sharpen our discernment and help us to realize that we need to resist and reject any thought that would want us to conclude that even in the face of our previous professions of faith. It’s a truth that should cause us to repent of any roots of unbelief that we recognize because unbelief is absolutely evil and enmity with God.  Don’t be fooled, unbelief is not harmless, but causes us to depart from God.

Let’s continue on and not make the same mistake and fall for the same wile of satan’s kingdom.

As always, blessings from us here at Ammudim Teaching Ministries. We love you and therefore are committed to always speaking and teaching the truth the best we can, even when it's hard, because we know it is what is best for us all and is not nearly as hard as the alternative which is believing a lie.

I hope and pray you are challenged, and encouraged, and your path is more clear with this insight and others we teach.

Blessings,
David