Judgment 2.0?

In our discussions in the past, we have talked about six principles regarding judgment: 

1. That there is a judgment and everyone is subjected to it. 
2. Judgment is counterintuitive, because everyone seems to be surprised by it—both those with favorable and those with unfavorable judgment. 
3. There can be joy in judgment. 
4. Judgment is a divine enterprise, not a human prerogative. 
5. Judgment is linked to how we judge others. 
6. If you take the favorable judgment and the unfavorable judgment, the quantitative outcome of judgment tends strongly to be toward the positive rather than toward the negative. 

We’ve also noted that Jesus had much to say about judgment, particularly as he approached the end of his ministry. He addressed it in the “Olivet discourse” we have been discussing lately from Matthew 24 and 25. 

Today, I’d like to discuss a new judgment paradigm: That what is judged is simply our willingness to accept God’s grace; or, to put it another way, that our destiny is shaped by our willingness to accept God’s grace. 

Many parables, including the four we’ve been studying from the Olivet discourse, suggest that Jesus knew that grace is a commodity so difficult to accept that it is hard even to give it away. The parable of the rich young ruler makes makes the point most clearly:

 And someone came to Him and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do so that I may obtain eternal life?” And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” Then he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not give false testimony; Honor your father and mother; and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to Him, “All these I have kept; what am I still lacking?” Jesus said to him, “If you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property. 

 And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?” And looking at them, Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:16-26)  

The rich young man was asking how he could earn a favorable judgment that would lead to eternal life for him. The central criteria seemed to be a willingness to relinquish the works of one’s own hand, to relinquish one’s own good deeds and righteous acts and the profit therefrom in favor of faith and trust in God. In short, we must be willing to exchange our own effort for the grace of God. 

The answer Jesus gave the rich young ruler provides another important principle about judgment: That it is not about human goodness, since nothing, Jesus said, is good, but God. It also emphasizes the 4^th principle sated earlier, that whatever the criteria might be, the act of judgment is a divine enterprise, something that only God can do.

A contrasting story to the rich young aristocrat is the story of Zaccheus, a hated tax collector who willingly gave up half of his possessions and was saved:

 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich. Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and he was unable due to the crowd, because he was short in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up a sycamore tree in order to see Him, because He was about to pass through that way. And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” And he hurried and came down, and received Him joyfully. When the people saw this, they all began to complain, saying, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner!” But Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I am giving to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I am giving back four times as much.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”  (Luke 19:1-10)  

Zaccheus was deficient in physical height, hence his need to climb a tree to see Jesus. But he was also deficient in spiritual height. He sought to overcome his deficiencies through his own effort by climbing the tree. Jesus invited him down from the tree and from his spiritual height, such as it was, in order to experience the presence of the judge of all mankind. The short, declarative sentence: “Hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house” is revealing. There was no time to be lost, and it was personal. Grace is urgent, essential, and personal. 

Zaccheus accepted all of this and did so gladly, with joy. It is vital to note that it was God’s grace and presence in Zaccheus’ house, rather than Zaccheus’ willingness to give up half of his wealth, that brought salvation to that house. Zaccheus responded to the grace he was given by willingly passing it on to others, in contrast to the rich young ruler who wanted to hoard what he had been given. 

Last week we talked about fire and judgment—about refiners fire which cleanses but does not destroy, and consuming fire, which is destructive. The Book of Revelation, whence we derive much of our end-time ideas and viewpoints and theology, is full of fire. Revelation talks of a lake of fire, and in several places of everlasting fire. It is our source for an understanding of hell and eternal damnation. It is also interesting that the Book of Revelation is full of metaphors, similes, and allegories. There are hundreds of symbols. But for us, the fire is always real. We can have multi headed beasts with funny anatomy, but the fire is literal. There are horns with eyes, books which are eaten, lions and lambs, horses, winds, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven plagues, seven stars, seven candlesticks…. 

The Book is full of symbols but somehow the fire is always real. It’s easier for us to accept the concept of hell, even an ever-burning hell, than it is to accept grace. Hell is something that we all deserve. It’s a believable place. Grace is unbelievable because it is so utterly undeserved. 

The parables of the end of time that we’ve been studying from the Olivet discourse introduce the concept of outer darkness, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is in fact simply a separation from God. Matthew 13 tells the well known parable of the wheat and the tares. This binary division of good and evil suggests that the parable is about the ultimate destruction of evil, rather than of individuals. After all, none of us is righteous. Romans 3:10 emphasizes: “No, not one.” But neither are all of us tares, completely evil. We all have good and we all have bad, unless of course we reject God’s grace, as we see in the parable of the single-talent servant or the elder son with the prodigal brother. 

Jesus links the end-time fire with outer darkness, as he explains in the parable of the wheat and the tares:

 The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. The one who has ears, let him hear. (Matthew 13:41-43)

The place of wailing and gnashing of teeth is the place of outer darkness, it is separation from God. But make no mistake, separation from God is destructive—as destructive as a blazing fire. We are told specifically and explicitly what separates us from God:

 You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by the Law; you have fallen from grace. (Galatians 5:4)

This is a remarkable passage. Trying to be justified by the law is the very thing that most religions try to help us to do. But this, Paul says, is fatal religion. It seems we need to redefine what the words lawless, iniquity, and evil mean. Lawless is to attempt righteousness by keeping the law yet being utterly unable to do so, utterly unable to keep it. To claim to keep the law, like the rich young ruler, is to make a false claim. It is to repudiate grace. Evil is a repudiation of grace. It is to refuse it, to bury it, and to pronounce it dead. 

Facing the law, mankind has two choices: The first is to embrace the law—to promise God as the Israelites did at Sinai (Exodus 19:8: “All that the Lord has said, we will do” but then be powerless to keep the law. This is the definition of evil. This is the working of iniquity. It is the claim to keep the law but never to be known by God. The second choice is to recognize—as the publican does in the parable of the publican and the pharisee—that we are sinners in need of God’s grace, and utter the words: “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” 

So, too, in the judgment—we have two options: Admit that we are sinners and accept God’s grace, or put our own works into judgment, laying claim to our own personal righteousness as the rich young ruler did. We see this in the un-robed guest at the wedding feast:

 “But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Tie his hands and feet, and throw him into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in that place.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:11-14)

Here we see the the concept of outer darkness again, going our own way—and the judgment is fatal. Electing to choose our own garment and refusing the garment of grace is a deadly choice. It separates us from God and is as destructive as his burning fire. Lawlessness, iniquity, evil itself is then redefined. It is not simply being bad, it is not about not having enough human goodness, it is lawless to place into judgment my own effort, my own piety, and my own right-doing because those are not and will never be good enough. Evil is to claim willingness and allegiance to the law, then not be able to practice it perfectly. It is to fail at trying, yet still refusing God’s grace. It is to cling to the law and its keeping. It is a repudiation of God’s grace. 

That some will cling to the law and its keeping is clearly taught in Scripture. That to do so is evil and will result in separation from God is also taught and consigns to outer darkness, or to the metaphorical flames of a consuming fire, those who do it. Evil will eventually be destroyed, and without the fireproof suit of God’s eternal righteousness and his eternal grace, we will be destroyed as well, as collateral in the destruction of evil. 

The concept of God turning his back on us is a terrifying one. It will result in our finding ourselves in outer darkness. The concept that the judgment is about what we do with grace is borne out in this passage from The Message translation.

 If we give up and turn our backs on all we’ve learned, all we’ve been given, all the truth we now know, we repudiate Christ’s sacrifice and are left on our own to face the Judgment—and a mighty fierce judgment it will be! If the penalty for breaking the law of Moses is physical death, what do you think will happen if you turn on God’s Son, spit on the sacrifice that made you whole, and insult this most gracious Spirit? This is no light matter. (Hebrews 10:26-31) (The Message)

It is a frightful judgment that awaits those who spit on the sacrifice that made them whole and insult the “most gracious Spirit” as some translations say, or to insult the spirit of grace. 

Is there a hell? Are you afraid of it? What does it mean to turn your back upon grace? What are you judged by—what is the criteria? Are we at risk of insulting the spirit of grace? How good do we really have to be to make it into the kingdom? How bad can we be and still get away with it? 

Jay: With regard to the visual of fire tied to judgment, as in the parable of the wheat and tares and throughout the Book of Revelation, the point you made about seeing all the other things in Revelation as symbols but tending not to think of the fire as at all symbolic, is thought provoking. It brought to mind John the Baptist, who was baptizing people when some Pharisees and Sadducees came and harangued him. John said he was there to baptize by water, for repentance, but that someone was coming who would baptize by the Holy Spirit and by fire. 

The congruence of fire and baptism is interesting. We often think of baptism as John did—as an act of repentance. I fully accept that Jesus sacrificed himself for my sins, and now I can be washed clean, my sins can be washed away. But in that human sense, the John the Baptist sense, it uses water—a washing medium, not a consuming medium. Water just washes the sin away, but not the people. Fire consumes sin and devours evil, not individuals. I think that opens up a new lens on works and grace in judgment.

C-J: I agree about the fire consuming. To get rid of a big rooted tree in your yard, you need to burn it for days. I believe that’s the way the Lord works. The iniquity within us is that root, and in order to be transformed—I call it the whitespace, it’s not really seen, but the work is really done in the white space of a narrative. It’s like, “Well, why do you believe in this space? What is this relationship about?” How can you really explain the work of the Holy Spirit between the narrative? It is experiential. It is thorough. It is time consuming. It requires a tolerance for discomfort. Because God is transforming us into something better, giving us a deeper understanding of this monkey of iniquity on our back.

We often will say, “Well, you’re just like…,” or “You favor this or that,” but really God wants to transform us into what we really are in that spirit, and for His glory. And when we are yielded, that’s the only way it happens, when we are willing, like John the Baptist and so many others to recognize that we really are here for just a speck of time and the work that we do here is so profound in terms of being not just a model, but letting people see us, for no apparent reason, do the sacrifice continually of our life. 

It’s not just to go to heaven. I don’t do it to go to heaven, but because I want to be that instrument. I want to be that vessel without having to say a word that something is different here. I want someone to ask me, “Tell me about this relationship” and let God do that work, not me, but to just be the voice and using the narrative that we call holy text to all those examples of people in different times in history. But how it works is always the same. It is always a purging and a transformation. I don’t like to think that God would let any perish.

Donald: It seems that in human terms, we like consequences. “You do this, that happens, you do that, this happens. This is good, that is evil.” I don’t think that grace is something we spend very much time on when we’re talking about spiritual matters within our church group or our faith group. We spend a lot more time talking about the dos and the don’ts and consequences. What is it about us that we just don’t get grace, so we put it over there? It’s like putting aside something that is central to what our faith is about. 

However, there’s all these parts of the Bible that talk about grace but then it talks about the wide and the narrow and judgment and troubling words like “devour.” I don’t know how you balance these two aspects of Scripture, or even if they should be balanced. It doesn’t seem that we spend much time on grace. And maybe it’s just a human thing. We deserve it. We get that in a human way, but we don’t get grace. That’s rare. 

Sharon: I think this argument is, at root, the great controversy. The devil would really like us to see God’s character as fearful and judgmental. And at the root of our walk with Jesus, the devil everyday tries to get us to rag on ourselves. Because grace is just not a human construct. And he has numbed not only the Seventh Day Adventist Church but many Christian churches with the concept that the character of God is flawed and judgmental and we need to fear him. 

For me, there’s no fear at all. It’s a walk with the Savior who loves me, who died for me, and for whom we share grace each and every day—or I would cease to be. So I think that the real villain of this whole argument is the devil trying to reframe the character of God as he’s been trying to do throughout the ages.

Donald: But we’re taught as children in Sabbath School that in the end we can’t escape judgment. That sounds pretty harsh.

Sharon: It does. But I think Jesus came to dispel a lot of that and to reframe it in the context of grace, which his life was all about. Yes, there’s accountability, but that accountability is covered. The battle is in the acceptance of that grace. And that’s because we really are control freaks and we really like to rely on ourselves. The consequences of relying on ourselves for our salvation is literally self-destruction. 

So my premise is that the battle is the Lord’s and all we need to do is walk with him in grace. Yes, there’s all those those conflicting stories, both in the Old and New Testament. But if you really, if you really analyze it, Christ came to turn all of that stuff upside down, and the best thing the devil can do now is to make you fear the savior of the universe. He works every day to make us run from grace, because of our own perception that we don’t deserve it. 

It is not a simple battle, and I don’t have all the answers, and I think we’ll see through a glass darkly until that day. But I have no doubt that Christ gave his life to cover all of my evil. Each and every day I have to choose to walk with him and give him my life, to serve the universe.

David: I’m a little concerned that we keep separating ourselves from God. Talking about having a relationship with him suggests two separate entities. But something we discussed recently in the Bible says we are the temple of God. God lives within us. So how separate are we? It has been asserted that grace is not a human concept, but if we are the temple of God—if a human is a temple of God—then why isn’t grace a human concept? Why can’t it be? 

I think we all know people whom we would call gracious in the full sense of the word—people who in the face of terrible trouble and calamity still show fortitude and so on. But it is very interesting to consider how separate we are from God. Are we making things worse by talking about him as separate?

Reinhard: Like the rich young ruler, the Israelites liked to follow the commandments to the letter, as if they don’t have faith in God. They just want to fulfill what the law requires. So in their relationship with God there is no faith; since Sinai, there is just fear of the judgment. In the Old Testament, the paradigm is different. Compare Zaccheus to the rich young ruler whom God asked to give everything… [connection lost]

Jay: As Reinhardt was saying, that’s the point of the rich young ruler. If you want to be judged by your works, what do you have to do? That’s a works statement, and you’re going to come up short every time. You are incapable of doing the works necessary to live a life where, in the end, you are what you need to be. It is only by God’s grace that that it is possible. The real question is, does there have to be some kind of understanding of that? Does there have to be some kind of acceptance of that? Acknowledgement of it? Flow-through of grace, through you, with it? So that when judgment comes, you’re in the right spot.

Sharon’s point about fear and judgment is a really good and interesting point. People who believe in the Second Coming and the end of time might have more trepidation about it than they have relief about it. They fear it. It creates for them an ominous atmosphere. Why? I think, as Donald said, it’s that nobody wants the book of judgment to be opened up and all their deeds revealed. But we so quickly forget that our advocate is Christ, who says” “I take away that one. And that one. And that one….” Our deeds don’t matter. 

Don: What about Donald’s question—why is there no discussion or emphasis on this?

Jay: That goes back to what Sharon said: We are control freaks. We are incapable of controlling and (as we’ve seen over the last three years) defining grace really well. We have zero control over it and it’s really hard to put our mind around it. I think that’s why Sharon says it’s not a human construct, because it is so ambiguous, so hard to put our mind around. Why in the world would we want to talk about that? We don’t! That’s not how we’re wired, or that’s not how we become wired. We’ve become wired, as Sharon said, as control freaks. If I can’t manipulate it, control it, put it in a box, define it, then why would I want to talk about it?

David: Wouldn’t you say that 99% of the Bible is about the law, and only 1% about grace?

C-J: I agree that God is always in the room. When Jesus asked Peter: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter replied: “Thou art the Son of the living God, Thous art the Christ.” In the garden of Eden, God walked with Adam and Eve. The whole idea of this reconciliation comes through this propitiation and this Holy Spirit that walks with us and teaches us. True, it’s a construct of humankind, because we’re in a time warp, we measure time by the daily rising and setting of the sun, but in God, it is infinite. In the divine, it’s a mistake to try and separate us from God because it is God within us that animates us. 

God is living energy, and we’re organic. We have a time date on us. Our time will be up. As for the soul: I think that that work—the struggle to survive—isn’t just in this dimension. I think we’re always trying to work our way back to the divine and that’s the innate piece of us that bears witness. The rest is iniquity and deception and power and control. It’s the nature of the beast. But I agree it’s a mistake to try and separate God from us because we’re part of his creation.

Jay: Re 99% of the Bible being about the law and 1% about grace: Two questions. First, what lenses do the writers have on as they’re writing? What is the author perspective? Second, what is the reader perspective? As human beings, we’re programmed to want to see law rather than grace in the Bible, 

I wonder if we could change our lenses to look for God’s grace in the Bible, instead of looking for what I’m supposed to do and what I’m not supposed to do, based on Biblical people’s lives and mistakes. I wonder, if it were possible to strip off my law lenses and put on my grace lenses, whether the Bible would be 99% about grace and 1%. about the law.

David: That’s very profound.

Reinhard: The rich young ruler was too proud of his obedience. I see no faith in him. He looks at God as a powerful God, a mighty God, he admits that much, but his relationship with God is not that close. Unlike the young man, Zaccheus didn’t have to give away all his wealth—only half of it. I think the heart of the matter is willingness to get close to God, to follow God. Grace is automatically given to people who yield to God, who give their lives to God. 

We don’t have to ask for grace. Grace is already provided. When we put our life to God, we yield everything. We’re going to fall short in many other requirements but as long as our hearts and minds want to be close to God, I think that’s what counts. We don’t have to worry. Grace will cover our shortcomings, and we’re going to fall short in many things. 

Is hell going to be where the wicked people, the unsaved people, will suffer for eternity? I don’t think so, because Revelation also mentions the second death. People not saved automatically are not going to live in eternal punishment. 

Donald: Connie referred to something else we don’t spend a lot of time on—at least I don’t feel like I do or the environment that I’m in does—and that is the difference between the soul and the body. The spirit, God, is within you. Your body is what screws things up. It does things wrong, it deteriorates. It is human. So your soul is always filled with God’s grace.

David: Salvation is what we what we talk about all the time here. Everything is about salvation in the end, to Christians. But it cannot be salvation of the body. The body is corruptible—ashes to ashes, dust to dust—but there is an eternity in our (spiritual) hearts. We are divine, in the spiritual sense. We are the temple of God, which cannot be ephemeral. It’s forever.

This problem arises from differentiating ourselves all the time from God, saying “We’re only human” when we’re not. I think we’re a little bit more than that.

Anonymous: According to the Bible, we are judged by the law of God. This is the basis of the judgment. And if I’m not mistaken, the Bible says that we are judged by our works but saved by our faith, or by grace. So the law of God is the base on which all things are built. Why does the Bible talk mainly about the law? It’s because we only understand grace when we feel it, when we experience it. Before then, it’s not as obvious, not as clear and concrete as the law. 

That’s why I think keeping the law is an important part of our lives, in our relationship to God, because it must be the beginning. Even in the Bible, it’s in the beginning chapters when God revealed his law, before he teaches us about anything else. So it is important. It is true that it doesn’t save us—the law is only to show us our sins. It’s not there to save us or to take God’s place. But that doesn’t mean we can do away with it. 

Sharon: The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. That’s our problem. The Spirit is grace, but it is our humanity and our human struggle with who we innately are. 

C-J: The law was the mandate of heaven in terms of civility. It was for humankind to live next to each other. Jesus said, “I did not come to banish the law, but to fulfill it.” Grace is the extension of that. Only grace brings revelation and real obedience. We surrender when we see how much the divine offers us and how limited the flesh is. In small nomadic tribal communities, it has to be done cooperatively. When somebody steps outside of being cooperative, the consequence is tribunal, like the Sanhedrin: “You can’t do that because we have to live together in peace. And the reason this rule is here and your recompense for what your choice was, will be this restitution.” I agree with everything that people have added by using scripture in terms of we can’t diminish the law, but we can’t stand only in the law.

Don: We’ll talk more about judgment. Why is it that hell is such an easy concept to embrace (and the literal one as well) while grace seems to be something you can’t even give away.

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