2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body… The language of the text conveys the idea of a manifestation rather than that of a mere presentment. I. THE TRIBUNAL OF THE LAST DAY WILL BE THE GREAT FINAL REVEALER OF HUMAN CHARACTER. There all deceptions will be at an end, and the inner life will make itself visible to the eyes of the assembled world. Now much of the popular notion of the day of judgment is drawn from the modes of procedure in our courts of law. We read in the Bible of a tribunal and a judge. Accordingly we find it believed that the destiny of the man, as in a human court of justice, remains uncertain and undecided until the sentence upon him is actually pronounced. But this theory will not bear a moment's thoughtful consideration. The moment of our death is virtually the moment of the proclamation of our sentence. When the day of grace has closed and the soul and the body are divorced for a time, the spirit passes at once into a place of happiness or a place of woe. The happiness is not complete. The woe is not at the worst. Both are conditions of anticipation. But in both cases the condition is fixed and known. Then comes the day of resurrection. The body suddenly rises, but it rises "that body that shall be." If the life which is to be manifested is a life with Christ and in Christ, the material frame will partake of the beauty and splendour of the appearance of the Judge who sits upon the throne. If, on the other hand, the man has not lived for Christ, the inward aversion from God will find expression in his outward appearance. It will be seen at once, beyond possibility of mistake, what the past has been. You drop a seed into the ground, and when you have done so it is an absolutely certain and settled thing what the future of the plant or the tree shall be. The seed-corn never produces a lily. The bulb of the lily never produces an oak. It is just so with ourselves. The great day of judgment determines nothing. It only makes visible and palpable what we really are. II. IN THIS WORLD A PROCESS OF SELF-MANIFESTATION IS CONTINUALLY GOING ON. The general opinion about a man as to the real tendency of his life is pretty sure to be the correct one. Let him go in and out amongst you, and the popular estimate of him may, generally speaking, be depended upon. You make no doubt, e.g., of the "worldliness" of certain person who is numbered amongst your acquaintance. But why? The man is respectable enough, a church-goer too, perhaps a communicant. You cannot put your finger upon anything and say it is absolutely faulty. No! But you have been acquainted with him for some time, and all this time he has been unconsciously manifesting himself. Little things have let you into the secret. Tones, glances, remarks, or the absence of remarks, have told you that there is a lack of spiritual life in the man. Now this process of self-manifestation, continually and inevitably going on now in all of us, comes to a culmination in the great day of judgment. What is in us comes out. If we have lived to self, it is known. If we have lived to Christ, it is known. III. THIS VIEW THROWS LIGHT ON THOSE PASSAGES WHICH SPEAK OF MEN AS BEING JUDGED OUT OF A BOOK ACCORDING TO THE THINGS WRITTEN THEREIN. What is the record? I believe it to be the impression made upon the human memory by the various acts and thoughts and feelings of our lives upon earth. We are told with respect to some persons who had been recovered from drowning that, just before the state of unconsciousness came on, every event in their history, everything which they had thought, or said, or done, seemed to rise up again, and to be present to their minds in a moment of time. Wake up the memory as Eternity will wake it! And then the spectres of the past, of past neglect, of past indifference, past practical contempt of God, past rejection of the offers of Christ, come trooping in, and close round his soul, and refuse to depart. Oh, if he could only bathe his perturbed spirit in some Lethe, in some stream of forgetfulness, he might know comfort again! But they will not go. They cannot go. "The books have been opened"; the man has been "manifested." He has seen himself. (G. Calthrop, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. |
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