Condemnation
Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology [1]
From the standpoint of semantics, condemnation is part of legal terminology. When it is discovered that a crime has been committed, that the law has been broken, the process of investigation may lead to formal charges being levied against a defendant. The process of litigation leads to the outcome, a verdict of acquittal or guilt. The verdict indicates that the defendant is either free from or accountable to the law's penalty for that crime. Thus the result is either vindication or condemnation. Condemnation can refer either to the legal status of liability to punishment or to the actual infliction of that punishment. At times the word is also used in a broader context to refer to negative evaluations of a person by peers or by one's own conscience. This legal process is to some extent the background for biblical language about judgment and condemnation.
In biblical theology, God as creator, redeemer, and lawgiver, is the judge of all humankind. He instituted the family, civil government, and the people of God as institutions governing human relationships. In the Old Testament theocracy God mediated his justice through judges, kings, priests, and prophets. In the New Testament the church's leaders are accountable for administering his justice to the people of God. All this is based on the fact that God has acted to redeem human beings and reveal his will to them. Those who refuse to believe and obey are guilty of breaking his law. Their punishment has already begun and their ultimate condemnation will occur at the final judgment if they do not repent before death.
In the Old Testament rebellion against God began in the garden of Eden ( Genesis 3 ). Our first parents turned away from God's plan, leading to their death and alienation. Yet God patiently bore with his rebellious creatures, and chose Abraham and his descendants to be his special people and mediate his blessings to all nations ( Genesis 12 ). He redeemed Israel from Egypt and gave them a land along with a covenant that set before them the conditions of his continued blessing ( Exodus 19-20 ). God as creator, redeemer, and covenanter stood as judge over Israel and set before them life and prosperity, death and adversity ( Exodus 34:5-7; Deuteronomy 30:15-20 ). Through his prophets he continued to call Israel to obedience, yet his theocratic rulers frequently neglected his justice by condemning the innocent and vindicating the guilty. Eventually God condemned this miscarriage of justice by sending other nations to carry Israel into captivity. Thus the Old Testament generally stresses the justice of God in punishing sinners during the present life, not the afterlife (but see Daniel 12:2 ). To probe this theme further in the Old Testament, one should study the Hebrew words sapat [שָׁפַט], "to judge, " and mispat [מִשְׁפָּט], "judgment."
In New Testament theology the rebellion of the first Adam with its disastrous consequences of death and condemnation for all humankind is more than offset by the obedience of the second Adam, the Lord Messiah Jesus ( Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:22 ). Jesus' sinless life and sacrificial death provide the basis for God's giving life and justification to all who believe in him. God remains just in justifying sinners because of the perfect redemption accomplished by Jesus, the sinners' substitute ( Acts 13:38-39; Romans 3:21-26 ). Those who have been made right with God by faith in Christ are not condemned ( John 5:24; Romans 8:1-4; Colossians 2:14 ), but those who refuse to believe in Jesus are condemned already ( John 3:16-18; Romans 1:18-32; Galatians 1:8-9 ). Unless they repent they face the irrevocable finalization of this condemnation at the resurrection and judgment ( Matthew 25:46; John 5:28-29; Acts 17:30-31; 24:15; Romans 2:5-16; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10; 2:9-12; 1 Peter 4:4-5,17; 2 Peter 2:1-10; Jude 4-9; Revelation 20:7-14; 21:6-8; 22:12-17 ). In the meantime, expectation of this eschatological judgment motivates believers to scrutinize their lives so that they will not be condemned with the world ( 1 Corinthians 11:31-32 ). The discipline of the church is also to be carried out with this eschatological perspective in mind ( 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 ).
To summarize, the theme of condemnation is always seen in the Bible against the background of a just God who creates, redeems, and covenants with his people so that they may live out his justice on the earth. Sinners who come to this God in faith are not condemned, but are expected to live together in a community where justice prevails in the vindication of the oppressed and the condemnation of the oppressor.
David L. Turner
Bibliography . F. Bü hsel et al., TDNT, 3:920-55; H. Buis, The Doctrine of Eternal Punishment ; W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament ; D. Guthrie, New Testament Theology ; J. P. Louw and E. Nida, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains ; L. Morris, The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment ; W. Schneider et al., NIDNTT, 2:361-71.
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament [2]
Not only from the Gospels, but from the rest of the Revised Versionas well, the word ‘damnation’ disappears, ‘condemnation’ taking its place in Romans 3:6 and 1 Timothy 5:12, ‘destruction’ in 2 Peter 2:3, and ‘judgment’ in Romans 13:2 and 1 Corinthians 11:29. The reason is that the process of degeneration, which had begun before the translation of the Authorized Version, linked up the term with conceptions of finality and eternity, originally alien to it, and thus made it no longer representative of apostolical thought. With the exception of 2 Peter 2:3, the same Greek root occurs in all instances, and the context in the various passages is mainly responsible for the different shades of meaning. In the case of the verb, an exception must also be made of Galatians 2:11, where the idea is that the act of Peter needed no verdict from outside, but carried its own condemnation, as in Romans 2:1; Romans 14:23 and Titus 3:11.
Little difficulty attaches to the use of the term in the sense of ‘destruction’ in the case of Sodom ( 2 Peter 2:6), to the reference to the ark as a visible sign of the destruction about to come upon the unbelieving ( Hebrews 11:7), or to the denunciation by James ( James 5:6) of men who unjustly ascribe blame to others and exact penalty for the imagined fault. The wanton are rightly condemned for the rejection of the faith whose value they had learnt by experience ( 1 Timothy 5:12). Sound speech, on the other hand, cannot be condemned ( Titus 2:8). The man who fails to judge and discipline himself is reminded of his duty by Divine chastening; and if that fail, he shares in the final judgment with the lost ( 1 Corinthians 11:31 f.; cf. Mark 9:47 ff.). In Romans 5:16; Romans 5:18 condemnation is the consequence of an original act of evil, and suggests the antithesis of a single act of righteousness, the effects of which overflow to the potential justification of all men; and the freedom from condemnation continues beyond the initial stage of forgiveness and ripens into all the assured experiences of union with Christ ( Romans 8:1).
In several passages the term is involved in a context which to some extent obscures the meaning. The justification of evil as a means to good is indignantly dealt with in Romans 3:8; with the authors of the slander that he shared that view the apostle refuses to argue, but he leaves them with the just condemnation of God impending. That God ‘condemned sin in the flesh’ ( Romans 8:3) has been taken to mean that the sinlessness of Christ was by contrast a condemnation of the sin of man, or that the incarnation is a token that human nature is essentially sinless; but the previous phrases connect the thought with the death rather than with the birth of Christ. For Him as man death meant the crown of sinlessness, the closure of the last avenue through which temptation could approach Him; and in virtue of union with Christ, the believer who is dead with Him is free from sin, though not immune from temptation. In 2 Corinthians 3:9 ‘condemnation’ is antithetical to ‘righteousness,’ and synonymous with ‘death’ in 2 Corinthians 3:7. The argument appears to be that sin is so horrible that the law which reveals it is glorious; a fortiori the covenant that sweeps it out exceeds in glory. ‘This condemnation’ of Judges 1:4 ought grammatically to be retrospective, but NT usage allows a prospective use with an explanatory phrase in apposition. The meaning is that ungodliness of the kind described is self-condemned, as has been set forth in various ways in Scripture (cf. John 3:19, 2 Peter 2:1-3) as well as in Enoch , i. 9 (cf. Judges 1:14-16). ‘The condemnation of the devil’ ( 1 Timothy 3:6) is a comparison of his fall with that of any vainglorious member of the hierarchy. Both being God’s ministers to the people, the similarity is one of circumstance, not necessarily of degree.
R. W. Moss.
King James Dictionary [3]
CONDEMNATION, n.
1. The act of condemning the judicial act of declaring one guilty, and dooming him to punishment.
For the judgment was by one to condemnation. Romans 5 .
2. The state of being condemned.
Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation. Luke 23 .
3. The cause or reason of a sentence of condemnation. John 3 .
Webster's Dictionary [4]
(1): (n.) The ground or reason of condemning.
(2): (n.) The act of condemning or pronouncing to be wrong; censure; blame; disapprobation.
(3): (n.) The act of judicially condemning, or adjudging guilty, unfit for use, or forfeited; the act of dooming to punishment or forfeiture.
(4): (n.) The state of being condemned.
