Judgment
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Κρίσις names the act and process of divine judgment — the moment when God evaluates, decides, and executes a verdict on human lives and on the systems of this world. The word derives from κρίνω (to separate, to judge) and carries both the process (the act of judgment being made) and the event (the moment of its execution).
Reader summary
Full entry for κρίσις (G2920) · Open the biblical lexicon
Κρίσις names the act and process of divine judgment — the moment when God evaluates, decides, and executes a verdict on human lives and on the systems of this world. The word derives from κρίνω (to separate, to judge) and carries both the process (the act of judgment being made) and the event (the moment of its execution).
The BSB source-word alignment has 47 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include judgment (25), of judgment (9), justice (4), judgments (2), . . . (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 5:21. Its strongest book concentrations include Matthew (12), John (11), 2 Peter (4), Luke (4).
Κρίσις names the act and process of divine judgment — the moment when God evaluates, decides, and executes a verdict on human lives and on the systems of this world. The word derives from κρίνω (to separate, to judge) and carries both the process (the act of judgment being made) and the event (the moment of its execution). In the New Testament, κρίσις belongs predominantly to the vocabulary of eschatological reckoning, though it also addresses the quality of judgment in the present.
John's Gospel is the theological center of κρίσις in the NT. Jesus declares that the Father has assigned all judgment to the Son (John 5:22) and that this judgment flows from the Son's perfect alignment with the Father's will (John 5:30). Crucially, John 5:24 reveals that those who hear Christ's word and believe the Father 'will not come under judgment' — they have already crossed from death to life.
The κρίσις that falls on the unbelieving world does not reach the one who is united to the Son by faith. John 12:31 — 'Now judgment is upon this world' — applies κρίσις to the cross event itself: Christ's death is not only atonement but the judgment of the world's ruler. The hour of κρίσις is not only future; it arrived at Calvary. Matthew's Gospel adds the forensic weight of κρίσις: every careless word spoken by human beings will be accounted for on the day of judgment (Matthew 12:36).
This is not legalistic bookkeeping but a claim about the moral seriousness of speech — that words are not throwaway. James crystallizes this with the declaration that 'mercy triumphs over judgment' (James 2:13), pressing readers to understand that how they treat the vulnerable now is directly related to how κρίσις will function for them on that final day. Hebrews 9:27 anchors the eschatological inevitability: it is appointed for human beings to die once, and after that comes judgment.
There is no reversal, no second chance, no escape from the appointment. κρίσις is certain. What changes everything is who stands for the one who hears and believes.
Κρίσις is counted about 47 times in the local NT index, concentrated in John's Gospel and the Johannine letters, the Synoptic Gospels, and Revelation. It operates at two levels: the ongoing process of divine evaluation and the climactic event of final reckoning. John's distinctive contribution is the realized dimension — the κρίσις that the cross effects in the present, not only the κρίσις awaited at the end.
Furthermore, the Father judges no one, but has assigned all judgment to the Son,
The christological center of judgment: κρίσις is not distributed across the divine persons but concentrated in the Son. This is not a limitation of the Father but a purposive commission — the incarnate Son judges because he knows human experience from within. The transfer of κρίσις to the Son is the ground for both warning (he is the judge) and confidence (he is the one who laid down his life for the judged).
Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not come under judgment. Indeed, he has crossed over from death to life.
The most reassuring κρίσις statement in John: those united to the Son by faith 'will not come under judgment' — eis krisin ouk erchetai. The exodus from κρίσις is already accomplished for the believer, not merely awaited. The aorist 'has crossed over' describes a completed passage. This verse forbids pastoral use of κρίσις to terrorize the believing congregation.
Now judgment is upon this world; now the prince of this world will be cast out.
The cross as κρίσις of the world: Jesus announces judgment not as a future threat but as an event arriving at the crucifixion. The 'prince of this world' — the organizing power of the fallen age — is judged and expelled. NT eschatology therefore teaches that the judgment of the world's dominant power has already been accomplished, and its present authority is the authority of a defeated ruler.
But I tell you that men will give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.
Matthew's forensic application: κρίσις reaches into the texture of ordinary speech. Jesus is addressing the Pharisees who have spoken against the Spirit (12:31-32), but the principle widens — no word is morally weightless. Κρίσις implies comprehensive accounting. This passage grounds pastoral teaching on the ethics of speech in the reality of final evaluation.
Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment,
The eschatological certainty of κρίσις: 'appointed' (apokeimai) — stored up, set aside for this moment — describes judgment as a fixed appointment, not an open question. Hebrews uses this as the frame for the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ (9:28): just as death is certain and κρίσις follows, so Christ died once and will appear a second time for salvation. The κρίσις frame makes the atonement's finality intelligible.
For judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
James places κρίσις in direct relation to the practice of mercy: the one who shows no mercy will receive κρίσις without mercy, but mercy itself 'triumphs over' (katakauchaomai — exults over, overwhelms) judgment. This is not a contradiction of grace but its expression: the mercy that saves is the mercy that forms, and the formed person becomes merciful. Κρίσις is not canceled but overridden for those who live in the mercy they have received.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Divine judgment is the NT's dominant theological use, distinct from human judicial decisions.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 49 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
judging, divine judgment
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 5 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 6 selected witnesses from 47 lexical occurrence verses.
Highlights God’s demand for moral righteousness. 1 John 4:17-21
Final evaluative authority vested in the Son. James 5:12
Establishes the Son’s role as final Judge. John 5:19–29
Connects careless speech with divine accountability. Luke 11:37–44
Christian hope addresses the reality of final accountability. James 5:12
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Κρίσις is the New Testament's word for the fact that human life is not self-evaluated. There is an outside judgment, and it belongs to God, executed through the Son. Preachers who handle this word well will resist two failures. The first is to minimize κρίσις into an abstraction — to speak of 'God's evaluation' in a way that floats free of any urgency. The second is to deploy κρίσις as a terrorizing tool aimed at the already-anxious, in a way that contradicts John 5:24.
Jesus himself sets both limits. He announces that all judgment is his (John 5:22) and in the same discourse announces that those who believe will not come under it (5:24). That means κρίσις preaching must always hold both realities: the judgment is real, inescapable, and comprehensive — and the one who judges is the one who gave himself for the guilty. The cross is itself the event of κρίσις (John 12:31): God's verdict on the world's sin was executed on the Son who bore it.
Preaching κρίσις without the cross produces terror without remedy. Preaching the cross without κρίσις produces cheap grace without gravity. The word forces both together, which is why faithful preaching of judgment is simultaneously the most serious and the most grace-filled work a preacher does.
John.5.22
Κρίσις shares its root with κρίνω (to judge, separate, decide) and κρίμα (verdict, sentence). The classical Greek sense of κρίσις as 'separation' or 'decision point' underlies NT usage: κρίσις is the moment when things are sorted out, when the truth about persons and systems comes to light. In medical Greek, κρίσις was the turning point of a disease — the moment when recovery or death became clear.
That connotation of decisive turning-point illuminates John's use: the cross is the κρίσις of the world because at that moment the world's condition and its ruler's fate became irrevocably clear.
The OT ground for κρίσις is H4941 מִשְׁפָּט — the word for judgment, justice, and legal decision that saturates the prophets and the psalms. The psalms speak of God rising to execute מִשְׁפָּט for the oppressed (Psalm 76:9); Isaiah's vision of the servant includes 'he will not grow faint or be discouraged until he has established מִשְׁפָּט in the earth' (Isaiah 42:4).
The NT receives this tradition and concentrates it in Christ: the servant who establishes judgment is the one who bore judgment for others. Daniel's vision of the Ancient of Days sitting in judgment (Daniel 7:9-10) provides the apocalyptic backdrop for Revelation's κρίσις language (Revelation 14:7; 18:10) — the final hour of divine evaluation that the entire prophetic tradition anticipated.
The NT's contribution is the answer to the question every OT reader asks: when the judge comes, on what basis will the verdict be rendered? The answer in the NT is the finished work of the Son, who was himself made κρίσις for the sake of those who believe.
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