9 This point may also be solved from the word itself. You have penal judgment spoken of in the Gospel: “He that believes not is judged already;” and in another place, “The hour is coming, when those who are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” You see how He has put judgment for condemnation and punishment. And yet if judgment were always to be taken for condemnation, should we ever have heard in the psalm, “Judge me, O God”?
In the former place, judgment is used in the sense of inflicting pain; here, it is used in the sense of discernment. How so? Just because so expounded by him who says, “Judge me, O God.” For read, and see what follows. What is this “Judge me, O God,” but just what he adds, “and discern my cause against an unholy nation”? Because then it was said, “Judge me, O God, and discern [the true merits of] my cause against an unholy nation;” similarly now said the Lord Christ, “I seek not my own glory: there is one that seeks and judges.”
How is there “one that seeks and judges”? There is the Father, who discerns and distinguishes between my glory and yours. For you glory in the spirit of this present world. Not so do I who say to the Father, “Father, glorify Thou me with that glory which I had with You before the world was.” What is “that glory”? One altogether different from human inflation. Thus does the Father judge. And so to “judge” is to “discern.” And what does He discern? The glory of His Son from the glory of mere men; for to that end is it said, “God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows.” For not because He became man is He now to be compared with us.
We, as men, are sinful, He is sinless; we, as men, inherit from Adam both death and delinquency, He received from the Virgin mortal flesh, but no iniquity. In fine, neither because we wish it are we born, nor as long as we wish it do we live, nor in the way that we wish it do we die: but He, before He was born, chose of whom He should be born; at His birth He brought about the adoration of the Magi; He grew as an infant, and showed Himself God by His miracles, and surpassed man in His weakness.
Lastly, He chose also the manner of His death, that is, to be hung on the cross, and to fasten the cross itself on the foreheads of believers, so that the Christian may say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” On the very cross, when He pleased, He made His body be taken down, and departed; in the very sepulchre, as long as it pleased Him, He lay; and, when He pleased, He arose as from a bed. So, then, brethren, in respect to His very form as a servant (for who can speak of that other form as it ought to be spoken of, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”?)— in respect, I say, to His very form as a servant, the difference is great between the glory of Christ and the glory of other men.
Of that glory He spoke, when the devil-possessed heard Him say, “I seek not my own glory: there is one that seeks and judges.”
Source: Tractates on the Gospel of John (New Advent)