The Nature of Sin, Pt 10: Judgment
1Corinthians 11:29-32 For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment. Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world.
Romans 2:5-11 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.
1Peter 4:17-18 For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
There are many verses which talk about judging one-another. We will talk about those verses at a later date. This week we will talk about the judgment which comes from God.
The last line in the Romans verse says, ‘God does not show favoritism’. That’s true. He loves his children, He loves the ones who will become his children, and He even loves those who will reject him. And this is important to consider because God wants all his children to enter eternity with him. We know God gave us free will, so we understand there will be those people who will choose to reject God. There really is no easy way to say it except to say those people are doomed. They will not live for eternity with God. At the End they will be condemned and cast away from God. But God does not desire this. No, He wants all people to join him, but He won’t force those who choose to reject him.
To understand these verses, we have to look at a few others which amplify our understanding:
Hebrews 12:14-15 Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
1Thessalonians 5:23-24 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.
Philippians 1:4,6 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy …. being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
2Peter 1:3-9 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
These latter verses have two things in common: they each talk about our life after we accept Jesus as our Savior and they talk about a process called sanctification. When we pair this set of verses with the earlier set we noticed a connection. As we get closer to that great Day, it becomes more and more obvious that God is getting ready to cleanse the world of sin, corruption, and depravity. He is getting ready for the End of Days when those belonging to the world will be judged according to their deeds and cast away from him. But God does not want that to happen to his children. The Corinthians 11 verses point out that He does not want his children to be condemned with the world. When the Corinthians verse says that we should be more ‘discerning with regard to ourselves’ it is talking about the sanctification being described in the latter set of verses. When we accepted Jesus as our Savior we gained eternity with God. Knowing that, our hearts ought to be grateful for the love God showered upon us through the sacrifice made by his Son. We should ask ourselves theses questions: Are we learning to Love? Are we growing in holiness and righteousness?
That love showered upon us by God is a continuing love: He wants us to grow closer and closer to him as we grow in holiness and righteousness. But we have a responsibility to ask ourselves, ‘Are we growing in holiness?’ Here’s the main point: God does not want to lose any of his children to the world system. He doesn’t want any of us to be condemned with the world. We talked about discipline in the last blog and about how God will use circumstances to strengthen our faith and grow us in holiness. This is a similar situation. I have occasionally asked myself, “What the heck is going on?” when circumstances seemed to be piling up around me. In such situations we might think God is judging us. It might be that He is judging us, not in a condemnatory way, but in a strengthening way. In other words, when faced with difficult times, God is calling us to examine ourselves. Did these hard times come about as a result of our own bad decisions? Or maybe we have a sinful habit pattern that brought them about. In any case, God so loves us that He doesn’t want us to stay in our sinful habit patterns and so be condemned with the world. You see, God wants us to learn to be holy through life’s lessons, so we won’t slide back into our old worldly ways. Because if we do slide, we might find ourselves condemned on that last Day.
There is the negative side of this also. If we allow ourselves to slide down that slippery slope; if we are not discerning the Body of Christ, that is if we do not consider the needs of our brothers or sisters, then we may be bringing judgment upon us from God. So then, we always have choices to make: Shall we follow God’s ways or the world’s ways. Both set us out on a path which leads to more choices. So it becomes a matter of decision, and that process has been well described by an American humorist of the early 20th Century, Will Rogers, who said,
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.