Correspondence with a friend about “Eternal judgment”
Correspondence with a friend about “Eternal judgment”
A few serious departures from the tradition we grew up in
Friend:
Was reading Hebrews 6:1-3 this morning which lays out the very basics of the faith.
Repent from any attempts to work toward “goodness”
Have Faith in God’s forgiveness in Christ
Baptism at the start of your allegiance to Christ
Laying on of Hands - to receive the Holy Spirit? And Gifts?
Resurrection of the dead (for those “in Christ"?)
Judgement in the age or everlasting judgement
My reflection is that I have largely [skipped] “judgement” as a primary thing in my toolbox when preaching the gospel and I wonder if I should be rethinking how I communicate the message.
The last persons I’ve been involved in helping to allegiance to Christ were my neighbors in Spain. I spoke heavily of the love of God, of their purpose is spreading that love, and becoming like him. The wife was baptized just before we left and we laid hands on her and prayed for the Holy Spirit. I think she would be able to articulate points 1-5.
But I don't think I shared much of anything about the judgement and that concerns me, as it’s part of the core.
If you were teaching a new person about the faith, how would you discuss the judgement?
Me:
A smattering of thoughts:
“We are not coherent when we applaud justice and jeer judgment” (Dale Allison, Night Comes, which I can loan you via Kindle if you’d like). You can’t have the former without the latter. How do we expect God to deal correctly with everything unless He applies His judgement to it first?
I, for one, look forward to being judged by Jesus. It’s the beginning of how He is going to set me right. It’s the beginning of how He is going to set everything right.
And it dovetails nicely with other parts to the gospel with which you’re more comfortable: “God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30b-31).
It may also help to bring this down to a human level: Social justice warriors belie themselves if they ever say “don’t judge me,” for judgement is the basis of all their work.
See also Psalm 7:6-11.
Friend:
Those are good thoughts and very helpful. If you like Justice, you can't ignore judgement. I think because the nature of the judgement is so complex and confusing it's easier to just ignore. But God will make all things right, and weigh the scales, so to speak, which is good.
One followup. What role does "faith in Christ" have on that day? The righteousness that is by faith, does that change the nature of the judgement? Or is that dealing with HOW we are live right now? IE. we can access christ now, through faith, which can transform us to live as he desires, which will spare us some judgement. Or when we get to the end and all our misdeeds are judged, we pull out a "get out of trouble free" card by appealing to our faith in Christ.
How do you see these working? Faith in Christ and not our works. But then our works being judged.
Me:
First, a brief excursus: It’s not just misdeeds that are judged: It’s our good deeds, too. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). See also Ephesians 6:7-8, among other places. “Judge” is not (or should not be) always be synonymous with “judge negatively.” For example, I judge the work you’ve done for the people of DiamondBack and G42 to be good.
Now, in reply to your question about the role of faith in Christ (or, as some translators are now favoring and as I will now throw in for fun as a very distracting aside, “the faithfulness of Christ”—wha!?) on the Day of Judgement, I think you’re basically right when you write, “[W]e can access Christ now, through faith, which can transform us to live as He desires, which will spare us some [negative] judgment.”
There is no get-out-of-trouble-free card. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, Jesus, Paul, and John of Patmos are clear that we will all be judged, both good deeds and misdeeds, no exception. There is no partiality with God. And we have all fallen short in at least some measure, so we will all undergo at least some negative judgment. Those of us who fall very far short (God no doubt taking into account each of our starting points) will face much more negative judgment. For those folks, it really will be a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
This is where faith comes in. We “persevere in doing good” (Romans 2:7) by faith in and faithfulness to Christ (cf. Hebrews 11:1-38). It is by right living that we gain “the life of the Age.”
Does the centrality in all this of doing good mean:
that there are paths other than Christianity to a relatively pleasant judgment day for any given person? Of course it does! But those paths, whatever they’re called, are not different paths at their core, for the degree to which they lead to affirming judgment is the degree to which they adhere to God’s Word, that is, to Jesus, whether the people following those paths know it or not (c.f. Emeth following Tash in The Last Battle). Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, whether you call Him by name or not.
that we’re not saved by grace (i.e., a gift)? Of course not! We live and move and have our very being in God. Our very existence is a gift. How much more so our persisting into deathless life after death in the blissful, direct presence of Him whom we’re not even worthy to see! We who are made of dust! That’s saved by grace.
Friend:
Wow. So much here:
Faith in Christ ensures Everlasting life becomes "The faithfulness of Christ ensures the life "of this age". That's a head spin from my evangelical roots.
In light of what you've written here, which I am inclined to agree with, I need another level of clarity as maybe you see it. So I present an example:
Bill lives an ok but mostly selfish life. Most of his works are just for his own gain, he cheats on his wife, they get divorced, he is a lame father but not abusive, he succeeds in business, hordes his wealth, etc. When he is 75 he finds out he has stage 4 lung cancer and has only weeks to live. As he nears the end of his life, he is watching the television when Franklin Graham comes on the screen. Franklin is half way through his salvation message when a malfunction to Bill's breathing tube shuts off the oxygen and he dies a few moments later before the end of the message.
Mark lives an ok but mostly selfish life. Most of his works are just for his own gain, he cheats on his wife, they get divorced, he is a lame father but not abusive, he succeeds in business, hordes his wealth, etc. When he is 75 he finds out he has stage 4 lung cancer and has only weeks to live. As he nears the end of his life, he is watching the television when Franklin Graham comes on the screen. Franklin delivers his message on salvation through believing in Christ and saying a prayer of Faith. Mark is deeply moved, regretting his past sins and trusting in Jesus. As Mark is dying he utters the words that he repents of his sins and asks Jesus into his heart. Then he dies.
At the judgement day what happens to Bill and what happens to Mark. Are their fates identical. Is Mark's any different at all having "come to faith" before the clock ran out?
And if nothing is different, then we really are talking about Salvation in real terms of relationship with Christ that transforms, and the benefit on judgement day will be in the proportion to which we lived out that transformation in the world. No real benefit for just a statement of belief.
Me:
I want to be clear that I’m spitballing. With sometimes forceful rhetoric (as usual), yes. But just spitballing. The rhetoric is just the best way to get an idea across and therefore to have the idea tested. Please push back. I’m ready to be corrected.
Now, onto your question:
You and I have already reviewed the possibility of postmortem evangelism as being at least biblically implied in 1 Peter 3:19, 1 Peter 4:6, John 5:25, Revelation 21:25, Romans 8:38-39, and perhaps 1 Corinthians 15:29, so I don’t need to make the case to you that Bill’s chances of Making It to the Party don’t end with his demise. But your question isn’t about his Making It to the Party. It’s about whether his pre-Party judgment will be less tolerable than Mark’s.
Assuming Bill and Mark are noetic twins and would thus reply identically to Jesus, the answer is no, with the exception that Bill will have to do his regretting in front of the Throne instead of in front of the TV.
To me, 1 Timothy 5:8, James 2:14-26, and, like, the entirety of 1 John make clear that, as you say, there is “no real benefit for just a statement of belief.”
There does, however, remain an urgency to “coming to faith” in this life because it is this life that will be judged. The sooner you repent, the sooner you can get busy Living (or, if you prefer, building out of “gold, silver, and precious stones” [1 Corinthians 3:12]).
And as you’d be the first to say, the statement of belief does have a benefit—provided it does not remain “just” a statement of belief, provided we’re not “believing in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:2), provided the seeds of the Word take strong root in our hearts (Matthew 13:18-23, et al). I don’t need to tell you that our belief in an infinitely kind God who stoops to know us and redeem us and enjoy us and love us is plenty for some people (most people?) to really get going on the narrow gate to Life.
Friend:
Yeah, this all makes sense to me and we've discussed before, but it does seem to run in the face of so much evangelical work. So much effort to talk about "salvation through faith in Christ" and salvation being "from judgement". So many people rejoicing over the sinner prayers prayed on the deathbeds. How did we get here?
One last quick one. So over and over again it talks about "salvation by faith" or that "we are justified by faith" etc. In Romans 4:5 it basically says the opposite of what we're saying here about judgement of our works "You're justified by faith alone, and not by works". So what good is the "justification"? Or what am I justified from by faith alone?
Is this whole business of justification and salvation just misunderstood as to what the benefits are? We say "salvation" as if people agree what that means.
Is the whole thing about "Salvation is relationship with God" which is available to you now through faith, and not through works. So you are not "made right" by your works, you're just made right by your faith in him (leading to relationship with him lest you believed in vain). So go to him, be transformed by him, because how you live matters, you're works will be judged, and you can only live transformed if you have relationship with him.
Me:
I still rejoice over a sinner’s prayer prayed on deathbeds, inasmuch as it represents true repentance from dead works and real trust in God—just not with a “phew!” about the avoidance of hell or annihilation.
I think we got here because as Americans we’re focused on maximizing measurable results. And prayers prayed or hands raised is much easier to measure than love points. Mix in easy transportation, mass communication, and the democratization of hermeneutics, and there you have it. Incidentally, I don’t think the Roman Catholics or the Orthodox have quite the same problem. (They have different ones.)
Now, regarding salvation and justification, Romans 4:5 doesn’t contradict the ideas we (and let’s hope the Holy Spirit) are developing here. It complements them: None of us, not even the best among us, deserves to live forever or to be (eventually) treated as though we have acted faultlessly. That these things will happen to us is 100% the gift of God. To receive this gift, we believe Him, entrust ourselves to Him, and begin to follow Him. In that sense, it’s really not that different from what you and I grew up believing.
All we’re adding is that at some point after the normal course of this life, each of us will have to give an account of what we’ve done, pre-Jesus and post-Jesus both—and that following the words of the New Testament, including those of our Lord, this assessment has an important place in our suite of morally motivating ideas.
Me again:
Allow me a quick revision. What we’re actually adding is that:
we, the people who have already made profession of trust in and allegiance to Jesus in this life, will be part of the Judgment,
everybody gets the get-out-of-trouble-free card after the Judgement, provided there’s true repentance, and
therefore the traditional rejection of postmortem evangelism is in error.
These are our serious departures from the tradition we grew up in.