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Title: How Does God Judge Us?
I can think of few verses in the Bible that should terrify us as much as this one does.
V5 “But in accordance” What Paul is doing is comparing two things and saying there is a divine balance between he two things.
On one hand is the individual’s hardness and their impenitent heart.
On the other hand is wrath and revelation of the righteous judgement of God.
Let’s look at both sides this morning so that we completely understand what Paul is teaching us.
Side One: “Hardness and Impenitent heart.” Impenitent is another word for unrepentant heart. And, as we looked at last week, to repent is to change. So Paul is saying that their own stubbornness, and unwillingness to change is what is going to do them in.
This fits perfectly with the unfolding teaching of what Paul has been outlining in chapter one. For, starting in about v.18 of chapter one, Paul is making the argument that everyone has at least a general revelation of who God is. And because of this general revelation no one has an excuse for not recognizing God. (2:1). And that those people who practice such sin are in one of two camps: they either think they can escape the judgment of God or they despise God.
Side Two: “Treasuring Up”
And all of this leads to the inevitable: That in perfect response to their stubbornness against God they are “treasuring up wrath.”
Now we need to look at Paul’s words very, very carefully at this point because for a lot of us, what I am about to say next is going to be hard to digest. Paul is teaching us that while salvation is by grace, judgement is according to works.
We are judged according to our works. Now, as believers, we know that no amount of good works can earn salvation, and we also know that when we stand before judgement, it is the blood of Christ that proclaims us innocent before God, not what we have or have not done.
But what about the non believer?
We seem to have the cartoon-like innocence in the way that we think of judgement for the non-believer. We see them before the throne of God, begging, pleading for mercy, screaming out that they were ignorant, not defiant, that they did a lot of good things in their lives. And when the justice of God is administered, a trap door in the floor opens and they are sent screaming into the fiery pits of hell.
Friends, that is too easy a way out for a serious student of the Bible. Paul tells us in verse 5 that these people, for their entire lives, have been “treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath.” Each sin is counted against them as punishment. Each sin.
This is why Jonathan Edwards once commented that any sinner in Hell would give anything to
live his entire life over again to sin just one less time. The judgement of sin is multiplied over the number of sins and years that the person chose to be defiant towards God.
We talk of God’s perfect justice. Perfect justice is not one punishment for all sins. When a person in our court system goes on trail for murder, rape and kidnaping, that person is tried on each of those accounts, the jury votes separately on each of those accounts, the judge sentences that person on each of those accounts.
Do you see where I’m going with this. Perfect justice is a trial, judgement, and sentencing on each of those accounts.
Now do you get what is so amazing about Grace? There is nothing fair about it. We, unlike the judgement of the sinner’s sins, we are forgiven in one instance for all our sins: past, present, and future. There is nothing so amazing as the one time effective blood of Christ Jesus.
The other thing that we see is that there is a revelation of the righteous judgement of God to the sinner. There will no longer be any doubt of God’s existence. Right now there are two groups of people who have a clearer understanding of the reality of God than you or I could ever hope to grasp. The first group is the saints in Heaven, the second group, for whom God is just as real, are those in Hell.
Let us not be so ignorant to consider such things lightly.
v6 Paul is quoting two things here. The first is Psalm 62:12
Also to you, O Lord, belongs mercy;
For you render to each one according to his work.
You see, our work, as believers will also be judged, but judged as work that God commissioned us to do. We’ll look at that a bit more in depth next week.
The other verse that Paul is referencing here is much more startling in Proverbs 24:12
If you say, “Surely we did not know this,”
Does not He who weighs the heart consider it?
He who keeps your soul, does he not know it?
And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?
Essentially, the stress here is put on our accountability to a God that knows us personally. God knows our hearts. He knows when we are being lazy, or selfish, or prideful, even as we do His work.
We are saved by grace, and judged by our works. Don’t be the ignorant believer who knows they are saved by grace and therefore is lazy in working for God. Such frivolity will come into the light of judgement before God.