Uche was ten the first time he saw his father at work. It was the long vacation, his mother had travelled to see her sister in Onitsha, and there was nobody at home to watch him, so his father took him to the High Court and sat him on the back bench of Courtroom Three with a bottle of Fanta and strict instructions not to move.
At nine o’clock a door opened behind the bench and a court official called out. Everybody in the room stood up. Lawyers in black gowns, police officers, a woman with a baby on her back, a thin man in handcuffs: all of them rose to their feet. Uche stood too, because everyone else had. Then his father walked in in his robe and wig, and sat down in the high chair without looking at anyone. The room was silent until he nodded.
Uche watched him all morning. He heard his father ask questions that made grown men stammer. He heard him say “Objection overruled” in a voice he had never heard at the dinner table. Just before lunch he watched him send the thin man in handcuffs to prison for three years. The man’s mother cried out from the gallery and was led outside.
What nobody in that courtroom knew was that Uche had a secret. Two weeks earlier he had taken a thousand naira from the drawer in his father’s study to buy a football, and he had told his mother that a friend’s father had given it to him. He had been carrying the lie around like a stone in his stomach. And now he had seen what his father did to people who broke the law. That night he lay awake picturing himself in the dock, his father looking down at him from the high chair, the room standing as the sentence was read.
He did not sleep much. In the morning he went to the study before he could lose his nerve.
I will tell you what happened in that study before we finish. But first I want to ask you a question that many sincere believers have never quite answered. When you come to God, which room are you walking into?
The verse that seems to say the opposite
Before we go any further, we should face the passage that seems to stand in the way of this teaching. If we are going to speak about God as Father and not as Judge, we must be honest enough to hear what Peter wrote to believers:
And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
Peter does not hide God’s role as Judge. He writes to Christians who “call on the Father,” and in the same breath he describes that Father as the One “who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work.” God has not resigned from His holiness. He sees every life clearly. He shows no favouritism. Nothing done in secret escapes Him. Any teaching that makes the Father into a sentimental figure who no longer cares how His children live has stopped listening to Scripture.
But notice the order of Peter’s words. He does not say, “If ye call on the Judge.” He says, “If ye call on the Father.” The relationship comes first. The judging belongs to the One these believers already address as Father. And then, before he finishes the sentence, Peter explains how they came to be able to say that word at all: “ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold... But with the precious blood of Christ.”
The fear Peter speaks of is the reverence of children who know what their redemption cost. It is the seriousness of people who have been bought out of an empty way of life, the “vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers,” at the price of the blood of God’s own Son. Such people do not treat holiness lightly. They also do not cower before God as if they were waiting for a verdict. The price has already been paid. The Lamb was “without blemish and without spot,” and His blood was precious enough to settle what silver and gold never could.
So Peter is not describing a believer standing in the dock, hoping the evidence will go his way. He is describing a child living in the Father’s house with deep reverence, because he knows the Father is holy and he knows what it took to bring him home. That reverence is healthy. It keeps us honest. But it lives inside the family, and it grows out of gratitude for redemption.
The Father has handed judgement to the Son
Jesus said something that changes the whole way we think about this subject. After healing a man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath, He faced fierce opposition from the religious leaders, and in His reply He described His own relationship with the Father:
For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
“For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son.” That does not mean the Father has stopped caring about righteousness. It means that the Father has placed all judgement in the hands of His Son. Every question of guilt and verdict now runs through Jesus Christ.
And what did the Son do with that judgement? He took it upon Himself. At the cross, the judgement that belonged to us fell on Him. Isaiah saw it centuries before it happened: “the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Paul puts it in a single sentence: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Judge stepped down from the bench and stood in the dock in our place.
That is why verse 24 can say what it says. The one who hears Christ’s word and believes on the Father who sent Him “hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” Look at the tenses. Hath everlasting life: present possession. Shall not come into condemnation: a future verdict already settled. Is passed from death unto life: a completed transfer. The believer’s case is not still pending. It has been heard, and the sentence was carried out on Calvary.
PunchlinePaul says the same thing in Romans: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Now. Not after you have improved. Not on the days when you feel close to God. Now, for everyone who is in Christ.
Many believers live as though prayer reopens their case every morning. They review yesterday, identify a few improvements, and hope these will outweigh the failures. Even their thanksgiving becomes a nervous preparation for asking whether God will permit them near. They are standing in Courtroom Three every day, waiting for the room to rise. But the courtroom has been closed for them. The case was settled at the cross, and the Judge Himself paid the penalty.
Who is left to condemn?
Paul uses courtroom language deliberately in the climax of Romans 8. He imagines a trial and asks who could possibly bring a successful charge against God’s people:
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Follow the logic of the questions. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” The highest court in the universe has already declared itself on our side. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” If the Father gave His Son, the greatest gift, He will not now withhold lesser kindness from those for whom the Son was given.
Then the prosecution is called. “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect?” Paul’s answer is short: “It is God that justifieth.” The only One with the right to bring the charge is the very One who has declared us righteous. “Who is he that condemneth?” And the answer comes in four rapid statements about Christ. He died. He is risen. He is at the right hand of God. He makes intercession for us.
There is an accuser, of course. Scripture calls Satan “the accuser of our brethren... which accused them before our God day and night” (Revelation 12:10). His accusations are often accurate as far as the facts go. He reminds you of what you said in anger, what you did in secret, what you promised and failed to keep. But his case has no standing in the court of heaven, because the One who sits at the right hand of God is not listening to the accuser. He is interceding for you.
So when an accusation rises in your mind, do not try to win the argument by presenting your record. You will lose that argument every time. If the accusation concerns something you have actually done, confess it honestly. If someone has been hurt, go and address the hurt. But do not conclude that admitting the wrong means you must abandon Christ as your righteousness. It is precisely because He is your Saviour that you can stop pretending.
Suppose a believer has spoken cruelly to his wife in a moment of frustration. The assurance of Romans 8 does not tell him to dismiss the injury. It gives him the courage to admit it without excuses, to ask her forgiveness, and to learn a different way of responding. He can come to the Father honestly because Christ is his righteousness. He must also take responsibility for the person he has wounded. A man who believes he is still on trial will defend himself, minimise what he did and blame the circumstances. A man who knows the verdict is settled can afford to tell the whole truth.
NuggetThe courtroom has been closed for every believer. The Judge stepped down from the bench, took the sentence Himself, and now receives you as Father.
What a father does that a judge cannot
If God is our Father, does He no longer correct us? He certainly does. But His correction belongs to a completely different category from a judge’s sentence. Hebrews makes the point to believers who were suffering and tempted to lose heart:
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
The word translated chastening comes from the Greek word for child-training, the whole process of bringing up a son or daughter. It is the word you would use for what happens in a home, not in a court. “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” The motive is love. “God dealeth with you as with sons.” The relationship is family.
Think about the difference. A judge passes sentence to satisfy the law. When the sentence has been served, his connection with the prisoner ends. He does not follow him home or care whether he grows into a better man. A father corrects for the sake of the child’s future. He disciplines precisely because he intends to remain involved. The writer goes on to say that earthly fathers chastened us “after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). The goal of the Father’s correction is that we share His character.
Paul makes the distinction even sharper in his letter to the Corinthians: “But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Corinthians 11:32). Chastening is the very opposite of condemnation. The Father corrects His children so that they will never stand where the unbelieving world stands.
This means that correction, when it comes, is evidence of belonging. Proverbs said long ago that the Lord corrects “even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (Proverbs 3:12). Delight and correction live together in a good home. A believer who feels the Spirit’s conviction about a habit, an attitude or a relationship is not being prosecuted. He is being parented.
We need to be careful at this point, because this truth has sometimes been misused. Not every painful event in your life is God’s discipline. Scripture does not give us a full explanation of every illness, every loss or every act of human cruelty, and we should be slow to claim that we know why a particular hardship has come. Job’s friends were confident they knew, and they were wrong. Nor may any leader justify humiliation, manipulation or abuse by calling it the Father’s discipline. God’s holiness must never become a religious cover for another person’s misuse of power. If someone is harming you and calling it correction, that is not the Father’s voice, and you should seek safety and trustworthy help.
The Father’s discipline has a recognisable shape. It aims at holiness. It deals with what is true. It leads toward life. “Nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11).
Fear that has torment
Some believers know all of this in their heads and still feel a cold dread whenever they think of God. They sing about His love on Sunday and spend the rest of the week bracing for punishment. John wrote to people like that:
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
“Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.” John does not say the day of judgement has been cancelled. He says believers may face it with boldness. The Greek word is the same one used for the free, confident speech of a citizen who has every right to be heard. How can anyone be bold about judgement? John’s reason is startling: “because as he is, so are we in this world.” We stand where Christ stands. His standing before the Father has become ours.
Then John names the problem directly. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment.” The word torment is connected to the idea of punishment. The fear John has in mind is the dread of a person who expects to be punished. It is the fear of the dock, the fear Uche felt lying awake after his day in court. John says that this kind of fear has no place in a child who knows the Father’s love.
This is different from the reverent fear Peter spoke of. Reverence draws near with care. Dread keeps its distance. Reverence takes God seriously because He is holy and good. Dread treats Him as dangerous and unpredictable. A child who reveres his father will listen to him carefully and avoid grieving him. A child who dreads his father will hide from him, lie to him and stay out of the room.
So how is dread cast out? Not by trying harder to stop feeling afraid. John points us back to the love itself: “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us.” Fear loosens its grip as we keep looking at the love that went to the cross for us. “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). His love is the starting point, and it is what changes the atmosphere of our hearts.
If you have lived with this kind of dread for years, especially if it was shaped by an earthly father whose presence meant danger, be patient with yourself. Fear that was learned over a long time may take time to unlearn. Keep returning to these passages. Let faithful believers walk with you. Where the fear is deeply rooted in painful experience, wise counsel and professional support can be part of how the Father brings healing, and seeking it is not a failure of faith.
The Son shows us the Father
Where do we get our picture of God’s character? Many of us have assembled it from fragments: a frightening sermon here, a harsh parent there, a few verses read out of context, and our own guilty conscience filling in the gaps. Jesus offers a better source. On the night before His death, Philip asked Him a simple request:
Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then , Shew us the Father?
“He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” If you want to know how the Father relates to sinners, watch the Son. We must not imagine a merciful Jesus on one side and an unwilling Father on the other, as though the Son had to persuade a reluctant God to be kind. The Son came from the Father, revealed the Father and carried out the Father’s saving purpose. The tenderness of Jesus is the tenderness of God.
So watch Him. A woman is dragged before Him, caught in adultery, and the religious leaders demand a verdict. They want Him to play the judge. He stoops and writes on the ground, and one by one her accusers leave. Then He asks her, “Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?” When she says no one has, He answers, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:10-11). Notice that He does both. He refuses to condemn her, and He calls her to a changed life. The relationship comes first, and the transformation flows from it.
Watch Him with lepers whom others would not touch, with tax collectors who were despised, with a thief on a cross who had nothing to offer but a request. Watch Him with Peter after the denial, cooking breakfast on the shore and asking, three times, “Lovest thou me?” He exposes sin without making cruelty a mark of holiness. He tells the truth without exploiting weakness. His authority is real, and His compassion shows how that authority is exercised.
That is what your Father is like. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He did not tell them to begin with “Your Honour.” He taught them to say, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9). Reverence is there: hallowed be thy name. But it is the reverence of family. And when He wanted to describe how willing God is to answer, He pointed to ordinary parents: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matthew 7:11).
Coming to the throne of grace
Hebrews brings us to the practical question of how we actually approach God. The writer has just described the word of God as sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the heart and discerning its thoughts and intentions. Nothing is hidden. Every creature is “naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” That could sound terrifying. But the very next sentences change the atmosphere entirely:
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
We are already known completely. That is a relief. It means pretence is unnecessary. You do not need to arrange your prayer so that your weakness looks respectable. God already knows what you are trying to explain. And through Jesus, our great High Priest, the throne we approach has become a throne of grace. The One seated there is not looking for reasons to convict you. He is offering mercy for what you have done and grace for what you must now face.
Elsewhere Hebrews describes the gathering of God’s people with remarkable language. We have come “to God the Judge of all,” and in the very next phrase, “to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (Hebrews 12:23-24). Abel’s blood cried out from the ground for justice. Jesus’ blood speaks a better word. It speaks of justice already satisfied and of sinners already welcomed. We do not approach the Judge of all on our own. We come through the Mediator, covered by the blood that has answered every charge.
This should change the way you confess sin. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Faithful and just. Forgiveness for the believer is not God bending the rules out of soft-heartedness. It is God being just, because the penalty has already been paid. Confession, then, is not a defendant pleading in court. It is a child telling the truth in his father’s house.
None of this removes accountability. Paul writes that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Believers will give account of how they have lived and served. That day concerns the evaluation of a life and the giving of reward, not the question of whether the believer belongs in God’s family. The question of condemnation was settled at the cross. The question of faithfulness remains, and it should make us careful with what has been entrusted to us. A son belongs in the house and is still answerable for how he lives there.
Perhaps you have avoided prayer because you are disappointed in yourself. Perhaps a run of difficult weeks has made you assume the Father has withdrawn His care. Begin with Christ’s finished work, not with the state of your emotions. Your feelings need care, but they cannot give you a better place to stand than the Son. You may still have a hard conversation to face after you pray. Mercy does not erase your responsibilities to people. It gives you the strength to meet them.
So what happened in the study?
Uche knocked, went in, and stood in front of the desk. His father was reading the newspaper in an old singlet, his reading glasses low on his nose. There was no wig and no robe. Uche put what was left of the money on the desk, about three hundred naira, and told the whole story in one breathless rush: the drawer, the football, the lie to his mother, and the man in handcuffs. Then he waited for the sentence.
PunchlineHis father was quiet for a long moment. Then he took off his glasses, folded the newspaper and said, “Come here.” Uche walked round the desk, and his father pulled him close.
“Uche, listen to me,” he said. “In that courtroom I am a judge. A judge asks one question: is this man guilty? In this house I am your father. A father asks a different question: what is happening to my son?”
The matter was not dismissed. Uche paid back the rest of the money from his pocket money over the following months. He apologised to his mother for the lie, which he told me later was harder than confessing to his father. He learned a lesson about honesty that he never forgot. But it all happened in the study, not in Courtroom Three. Nobody stood up when his father entered the room. Nobody read out a sentence. There was correction, and it was firm, but it came from a man who had already pulled him close.
Uche is in his forties now, with children of his own. He told me he still thinks of that morning when he prays. “For years I approached God like a man walking into court,” he said. “I would rehearse my defence before I opened my mouth. Then one day I realised I had been going through the wrong door. Jesus has brought me into the study.”
That is where you stand too. The Judge of all the earth has not ceased to be holy, and you will one day give account of your life. But the question of your condemnation has been settled by the blood of His Son, and you approach Him now as Father. Walk into the study. Say what is true. Let Him pull you close, and let Him correct you there.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- When you come to God in prayer, do you feel more like a defendant in court or a child in the study? What usually shapes that feeling?
- How does John 5:24 change the way you think about your failures from this week?
- Can you recall a time when the Father’s correction felt like love rather than punishment? What made the difference?
- Which part of Jesus’ treatment of the woman in John 8 do you find hardest to believe about the Father?
- Is there someone you have hurt to whom you now need to go, from a place of security rather than self-defence?
This Week
Each morning this week, before you begin to pray, read Romans 8:33-34 aloud and pause after each question. Then begin your prayer with the word Jesus taught: “Father.” When you need to confess something, say it plainly in one or two sentences, receive the forgiveness promised in 1 John 1:9, and then ask the Father one honest question: “What would You have me do about this?” Write down the answer that comes from His word, and carry it out, including any apology or repair that is owed to another person.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that the courtroom has been closed for me because Jesus took my judgement on Himself. Thank You that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Forgive me for the years I have approached You like a defendant, rehearsing my defence and hiding my failures. I honour Your holiness, and I receive Your mercy. Teach me to come to Your throne of grace boldly, to confess honestly, to receive Your correction as the training of a beloved child, and to make right what I have done wrong to others. Cast out the fear that has torment, and fill me with the love that You have shown me in Your Son. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.