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… I. WHAT IS IT WHICH THROWS SUCH AN ATMOSPHERE OF AWE AROUND HUMAN JUDGMENT? It is not the outward pageantry nor any accident in the administration of justice, but that justice is an attribute of God; that law is the representative of His majestic justice; that all justice here is an earnest of His Divine justice hereafter. The outward course of justice strikes a chord in an inward conscience. Conscience, of which even the Jews spoke under the title, "the Accuser," tells us that we too are amenable to justice — if not to human, to Divine. II. THIS THOUGHT IT AWAKENS ALIKE, WHETHER HUMAN JUSTICE COMES QUICKLY OR SLOWLY UPON THE OFFENDER. The rapidity with which human justice comes down, seems like the lightning discharge of God's displeasure. Yet since this is rare, the slowness of its execution calls forth a yet more awful thought, its dread certainty. "Seldom," said even heathen observation, "has punishment, with limping tread, parted with the fore-hastening criminal." A class of heathenised writers, who but seldom mention God, are even fond of replacing Him with the old heathen goddess, Nemesis. So deeply inwrought in us is the thought of God's persevering justice, which, though it seem to tarry, will surely come. Crime punished here impresses on us God's just judgment on sin; crime which escapes here is an earnest of punishment hereafter. III. GOD'S JUSTICE, BY THOSE UNIVERSAL LAWS WHICH EXPRESS THE DIVINELY-GIFTED REASON OF MANKIND, SPEAKS FURTHER TO THE CONSCIENCE BY ITS MINUTENESS. Men often encourage themselves in sin by the thought, "It is only this; it is only that!" Human law does not leave petty offences unpunished. It imitates herein God, who knows that the truest mercy to the sinner is to arrest him by light punishment (if he will be arrested) in the beginning of his sin. The law of Moses visited very heavily, sins both against the seventh and ninth commandments, which human law is now compelled to leave for the most part to the judgment seat of Christ. Yet mankind has endorsed the thought, that to rob of a good name is a worse sin than to rob of worldly goods; but human law leaves it unchecked, unrebuked. But it will not remain always unpunished, because unpunished now. IV. CONSCIENCE, WHICH "DOTH MAKE COWARDS OF US ALL," IS AN INVOLUNTARY, UNTAUGHT INSPIRED PROPHET OF JUDGMENT TO COME. By "conscience," I mean that eternal law written in our hearts by the finger of God, which unlettered islanders of the Pacific know as "the magistrate within"; that almost unextinguishable voice, which burned in David like a firebrand, drove Cain, self-condemned, a wanderer on the earth, made itself heard amid the murderer's fitfulness of Saul, worked Ahab's passing humility, and Judas' unloving but self-accusing remorse. Why does a word bleach a man's cheek, stop his utterance, or, if he have schooled himself to drive back all outward emotion, strike such a pang into his soul? It has awakened the voice of the silenced judge within. Whence, then, this terror? Whence but that conscience is already, in this world, a judgment seat of God? "Conscience may be o'erclouded, because it is not God; extinguished it cannot be, because it is from God." Judgment to come needs to be nothing new in kind; it needs to be but the intensified concentration of all those acts of judgment which God has passed upon us through ourselves, which He has made us pass upon ourselves. The final judgment is but the summary of all those particular judgments. V. HERE PAUL SPEAKS OF THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT AS A "MANIFESTATION." Of what? Plainly of what existed before, but was hidden. Here, some glimpse of us only shines through; there, what all and each of us have been is to be brought to open light. Light from Him who is Light shall lighten up all the secret corners of the soul of man, all the hidden springs and motives of his outward acts. VI. JUDGMENT TO COME, BESIDES BEING A DIVINE TRUTH, DECLARED FROM JOB TO REVELATION, IS AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY. Every man is imperfect; every one is tending to a completion, of good or of evil, which here he does not reach. But more, we have each our individual responsibilities. Creation implies an end and object of that creation. We came forth from God; we return to God. God has left us to be masters over ourselves, to work out — with His grace, if we would have it, or, if not, against it — our own destiny, or alas! our own doom. We return, to give account of ourselves, to have our lives summed up, to be judged. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.) 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. |
    |