Photo Credit: “Anxiety” by Micheal Saisi is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
I have recently come across an interesting article in the form of a research paper submitted for course requirements at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2022 entitled simply The Final Judgment. The article was written by Jeffrey Perry and can be found at the following link: https://www.academia.edu/81015839/The_Final_Judgement?email_work_card=view-paper.
Mr. Perry states the premise for this short article in the first paragraph, which is quoted here in full:
A recent Lifeway Research poll cited that 62% of those surveyed believe there will be a time when Jesus Christ returns to judge all the people who have lived. However, because the final judgment is one of the great gaps in Christian knowledge, the fear of the unknown has caused the understanding and anticipation of many to become skewed. Dispensationalism and popular evangelical thought have done further damage to the ideas of this final judgment, leaving the average Christian in various states of confusion and even despair. Various authors have drawn mental pictures, of individuals standing before a heavenly “big screen” on which every sin is displayed for all the world to see. Further, well-meaning pastors and teachers, to promote more intense Christian zeal, have supported an idea of a divine conveyor belt on which a believer will lay all their works, and as they pass through the fire, will bring forth either reward or ashes. Are these teachings true? Is this coming judgment simply a cosmic dentist appointment that must be endured before entering the joy of the Lord? An examination of biblical texts will take steps to show that these pop-culture-flavored ideas are simply not found within the pages of scripture. The judgment seat of Christ will not be a place of fear or embarrassment for the saints of God.
After rejecting the notion argued by some that there are two or even more apocalyptic judgment venues noted in the Bible, the author concludes that the Final Judgment “is the place where all humanity must give an account. (Matt 12:36, Rom 12:36, 1 Peter 4:5, Heb 9:27).” Mr. Perry then asks the question that has frightened and perplexed many believers over the centuries: [H]ow is a reader supposed to reconcile that all humanity, including believers, must give an account for every deed, and even, every idle word (Matthew 12:36) in this day if scriptures teach that the debt of sin has been paid? (Col 3:15).” The author concludes that Christ’s imputed righteousness saves believers from being judged for their earthly behavior since Christ has taken all their sins upon himself on the Cross. The author goes on to observe that “[t]he purpose of the judgment, then, is to be the vindication of the life and works that the believer was sanctified unto. (Eph 2:10) The judgment, for the believer, is the time and place when the faith, once hidden to us and the world, becomes sight before all. It is an event of the vindication and validation of said faith…To put it simply…the final judgment is the resurrection.” Thus, the author concludes: “The believer can have steadfast and sure confidence that the day of judgment holds no fear because the love of Christ has cast it out. (1 John 4:18).”
The author is, of course, correct in his assertion that believers are saved not by their own efforts or behavior but by Christ’s redemptive work on their behalf on the Cross. Indeed, I often hear it observed in casual conversation among Christ-followers that when God “sees” believers at the Final Judgment, God does not see the “filthy rags” (Isaiah 54:6) of their earthly behavior but rather the righteousness of Christ imputed to them; in other words, when God “sees” us, he in effect sees Christ. This is the hope many hold onto in allaying any fears and uncertainty as outlined by Mr. Perry above about the potential terrors of the Final Judgment, and perhaps this is enough. Still, I have questions and concerns, as do, I believe, many Christians.
This argument of imputed righteousness obviating any need for a comprehensive judgment would appear to result in virtually a complete lack of divine accountability for the believer’s earthly actions. This seems at odds with such clear statements of God’s intent to judge each of us according to what we do as expressed, for example, in 1 Peter 1:17 (NLT): “And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as ‘temporary residents’.” This also seems to go beyond a mere “rewards judgment” in which believers may suffer a loss of heavenly benefits or distinctions if their earthly efforts on behalf of the Gospel do not prove durable. Compare Jeka, The Eschatology of 2 Corinthians, A Biblical and Exegetical Study based on 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, (2019) 13-15, which can be found at the following link: https://www.academia.edu/39796544/The_Eschatology_of_2_Corinthians?email_work_card=view-paper.
While the concept of “temporal judgment,” where God admonishes us from time to time for our especially egregious earthly behavior (Indeed, Paul was no stranger to the idea of bodily judgment: for example, 1 Cor. 11:29-34; Partaking of the Lord’s Supper Unworthily, and Romans 1:27, God’s Wrath against Sin), this is hardly the comprehensive evaluation generally envisioned in the Final Judgment. Thus, Christians who are uncertain and perhaps even fearful about their fate at the last judgment may not be reassured by the argument that Christ’s righteousness fully shields believers from the consequences of their actions here on earth. Compare Hussman, The Ministry of Hope, Love, and Peace: An Exegetical Overview of 2 Corinthians 5, (2018) https://www.academia.edu/37650180/The_Ministry_of_Hope_Love_and_Peace_An_Exegetical_Overview_of_2_Corinthians_5?email_work_card=view-paper:
Ultimately, …works in some way play a part in the final judgment. … It is clear from Scripture that a person enters and is preserved in a relationship with God solely by God-given faith in Christ; and still the Scriptures can tell us that “you reap what you sow.” Like so many things in these last days, we let the tension stand while eagerly delighting with Paul in the coming judgment of our Judge.
Moreover, since under Mr. Perry’s approach the Final Judgment takes place in a single apocalyptic event where both believers and non-believers appear, this would seem to require some explanation of what happens to believers between the time of their physical death and the last judgment at the end of the age. This time-gap has led to speculation about some Intermediate State, a phrase which is never mentioned in the Bible, where the disembodied spirits of believers await their “final verdict” and, one hopes, the receipt of their new, eternal bodies. Compare, Hussman, An Exegetical Overview of 2 Corinthians 5:
We note first of all that the Bible simply does not say much about the intermediate state and what a believer experiences between death and the Last Day. We have been given real and powerful words of comfort to provide real hope to every believer, but about this state we cannot say much beyond that. This is in no way a slight against the comfort afforded by immediately being with Jesus after death, but simply an acknowledgment of the biblical witness.
The problem here is that this period of so-called repose may not represent the blissful union with Christ that many scholars have postulated and, in any event, can hardly constitute the full realization of our union with Christ that can only come with our bodily resurrection. For this contrary view, see the late Dr. Anthony A. Hoekema’s excellent book, The Bible and the Future, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Kindle Edition (1994) p. 160, Kindle Edition:
Paul does not tell us exactly how we shall experience this closeness with Christ after death. We have no description of the nature of this fellowship; we can form no image of it. Since we shall be no longer in the body, we shall be delivered from the sufferings, imperfections, and sins which haunt this present life. But our glorification will not be complete until the resurrection of the body will have taken place. Therefore, the condition of believers during the intermediate state, as Calvin taught, is a condition of incompleteness, of anticipation, of provisional blessedness. (Emphasis Added.)
The final and perhaps most vexing problem with this approach of imputed righteousness is that the question of judgment is projected into some vague and distant apocalyptic future, unlike virtually everything else in Christian doctrine, such as salvation, forgiveness of sins, the sacraments, sanctification, all of which take place while we are here in our physical bodies on the earth. Indeed, this issue was spotted at the very dawn of Christianity in the first known sermon outside the New Testament: Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, Greek Texts and English Translations, edited and translated by Holmes, Michael W., Baker Academic (3rd ed) 2007, 2 Clement 9, 148,150 (translated by the author):
And let none of you say that this flesh is not judged and does not rise again. Think about this: In what state were you saved? In what state did you recover your sight, if it was not while you were in the flesh? We must, therefore, guard the flesh as a temple of God. For just as you were called in the flesh, so you will come in the flesh. If Christ, the Lord who saved us, became flesh (even though he was originally spirit) and in that state called us, so also we will receive our reward in this flesh.
I would suggest a far simpler and less anxiety-ridden approach to this whole question of the Final Judgment of believers. If this judgment takes place in this life, there is no need for a post-death Intermediate State. Believers receive their eternal bodies immediately upon death and would later accompany Christ bodily in his return to Earth at the end of the age, a view which Christ himself seems to endorse in his own description of the Second Coming, (Matt. 24:31, NIV): “And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” (Emphasis Added.)
The implication here is clear. Christ’s elected saints are not an assemblage of disembodied spirits floating about in some hazy anteroom to heaven, but instead are actively engaged “from one end of the heavens to the other.” Moreover, if believers are finally judged by Christ while on the earth, there is no need for some apocalyptic judgment at the end of the age alongside non-believers. Christians need not be anxious about their eternal destiny since immediately upon their physical death they will be resurrected bodily, just as Christ was as the “firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18), the firstborn among many brothers (Rom 8:29), and the “firstfruits” of those who have fallen asleep, (1 Cor 15:20). For them, there will simply be no more judgment.
See here the correct rendering of the Judgment Seat of Christ passage from 2 Cor. 5:10: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive in our bodies what is due us for what we have done, whether good or bad.” Compare this with the conventional translation, NIV: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.”
This final bodily judgment of believers here on earth contains no hidden traps. It is not about their salvation or eternal destiny. That has already been determined by their faith in Christ and his redeeming work on their behalf. Instead, it has to do with their sanctification, purification, and general preparation for heaven through Christ’s close interaction with them as they go about their daily lives. Judgment for the believer is thus both the outward and inner expression of a joyful, ongoing relationship with Christ, one that is unique to every individual.
The attention of the believer is thus redirected from some vague future, which we simply cannot hope to fathom now, to something far more tangible, understandable and beneficial, that is, our present relationship with Christ. See 1 Cor. 13:12 (NLT): “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”
Here, I feel the need to strike a note of admonition to the scholarly community generally. In their zeal, no doubt well-intentioned, to hammer together various disparate passages of scripture into some reasonable eschatological construct that fully explains the “last days,” they have seemingly forgotten Paul’s admonition as expressed in 2 Cor. 11:3, and here I will quote the King James Version: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” (Emphasis Added.) The Greek text here reads in relevant part ἀπὸ τῆς ἁπλότητος τῆς εἰς τὸν Χριστόν. ἁπλότης is defined (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, by W. Bauer. Trans. and rev. by W.F. Arndt, F.W. Gingrich, and F.W Danker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1979) pp. 85-86) as “simplicity, sincerity, uprightness, frankness.”
Does it strike anyone that the unnecessarily complicated, unwieldy, cumbersome, disjointed, and frankly hard-hearted eschatological construct for believers conceived by theologians over the centuries accords in the slightest with the nature of Christ? In other words, would he impose such a convoluted judgment scenario on his followers? I would suggest that the answer is clearly no.
Thus, Christ-followers need not fret over the Final Judgment, since it is simply part and parcel of their eternal relationship with Christ beginning on this earth and extending into eternity.
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