He Shall Come To Judge
Adult study
As We Believe, So We Behave
Living the Apostles' Creed
Object:
"I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead."
Judgment -- a disquieting thought. Ever been to court? Most of us have, at one time or another. How did you feel when you went into the courtroom? I cannot speak for anyone else, but every time I have set foot in one of those august chambers, looking toward the raised bench from which sentence would be passed, I have been a bit awe-struck. "Oyez, oyez, oyez," intones the bailiff in calling for order and inviting those with business to draw near. The judge is introduced -- "All rise!" -- and a black-robed figure bustles in and takes the chair behind the lofty bench. "God bless the United States of America and God bless this honorable court. Be seated." That is very awesome.
Now move that scene up exponentially -- the picture painted in Revelation. The entire universe is transformed into a courtroom and everyone who ever lived has been subpoenaed there. Presiding over the proceedings from a lofty bench is the Lord of all creation. Amidst the shuffling and shifting, the papers are arranged and the books are opened. "Call the first case." Awesome.
Is that how it will be ... at the end of time? Hard to say. After all, the pictures we get throughout the book of Revelation are more poetic than photographic. What we can and do say is that "I believe ... [Jesus will] come again to judge the quick and the dead."
A brief word on the language here. "The quick and the dead" refers not to pedestrians trying to cross a busy street at rush hour where one had better be quick or else end up dead. The "quick" of our affirmation is simply Elizabethan English for "living" or "alive." The point of what we say is that no one escapes this process. Even death is no escape.
Is that what you believe? Jesus is coming and will judge? Have you thought about it? From conversations I have had with parishioners over the years, many have considered the question, but despite the fact that week in and week out we say "from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead," there is not much clarity about the affirmation.
Break it in two. Consider just "He shall come." Scripture says so. In the upper room with his disciples, Jesus himself said he was going away but promised to come again (John 14:3). At his ascension, the two angels declared, "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). There are all those bumper stickers declaring, "In the event of the Rapture, this car will have no driver." Those refer to a portion of a letter that Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
-- 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
Whether we are to understand that literally is open to question. Regardless, it is one more biblical affirmation of Christ's second coming.
I heard much about that as I was growing up. Perhaps you did, too. Mostly, it was shared as a way of keeping sinful teenagers in line (and I suspect that has been the case for every generation for almost 2,000 years): "Do not be caught somewhere or with someone or doing something which would be an embarrassment if the Lord should come back right then and see you." And there was the reminder that the second coming could be at any moment, so be ready! Did the warnings work? Well....
Is the Lord coming back? As I say, scripture says so, and so do we from week to week: "from thence he shall come...." But, so saying, the return might not be in the way that traditional understanding has taught (and I can promise it will not be the cause of massive traffic accidents because of driverless vehicles -- what kind of God would cause such a mess?). So saying, I am satisfied to leave the details in the Lord's hands. I am content to know that, one day, whether individually at the end of my earthly journey or as one of a great band of believers at the end of history, he is coming for me, and I will see him face-to-face.
Now, what about the second half of our affirmation? "To judge the quick and the dead?" How are we to understand God's judgment? Again, the concept is thoroughly biblical. In the Old Testament God's judgment is demonstrated concerning nations, their rulers, and individuals. In the New Testament, divine judgment is a both a present reality ... John's gospel: "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil" (3:19) ... and a future certainty ... John again: "a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out -- those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned" (5:28-29). In the scene we encounter in Revelation, the basis of judgment is both from the book of life and also from the books of works.
Here is where questions come. Some ask if Christians go through the judgment just like everyone else. After all, it was Jesus himself who said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24). The issue is eternal destiny -- for believers, it is settled and, as scripture affirms, is not a subject for judgment.
The story does not end there -- there is that matter of this judgment of our works. I know, I know, I know -- we who are the heirs of the Reformation have a fit on that one. Were we not always taught by the apostle Paul, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith -- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -- not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9)? True enough. But Paul also taught, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10). He talked about the quality of our works -- some terrific, as if gold, silver, or precious stones, others not so terrific, in quality like nothing more than wood, hay, or stubble. Come the day of judgment, the good stuff survives and is even refined, but the bad is just wiped out, gone in a puff of smoke. The worker is saved, but the works are gone (1 Corinthians 3:12-15).
So the question comes again: Are believers subject to judgment? And that wonderful answer is, "Yes," and "No." No, concerning our destiny; yes, concerning our behavior. "From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" ... all of them, you and me included.
I remember an occasion of being in court in North Carolina. Our son had gotten a traffic ticket. I had gone down to Charlotte to bring him home from college for the weekend. He was the driver for the return trip. Passing by Salisbury, a state trooper pulled him over. He may have been exceeding the limit a little bit, but he was keeping with the flow of traffic and not driving unsafely. If he had been, I would have been giving him more grief than any officer, because, as he would be the first to attest, I can be one of the world's most vocal and vehement backseat drivers. We thought and thought about what might have caught the trooper's attention, and the only thing I could figure was, at some point, as we traveled cheek-by-jowl at highway speed with an eighteen-wheeler five feet from my face, I probably said, "Get past this guy." He did, and the blue lights began to flash. For the first time in his life, he was pulled over.
"License and registration, please." My son handed them over. The trooper took them back to his cruiser, did whatever troopers do in such situations, then came back with a ticket. He was being charged with exceeding the speed limit in a work zone and fined $230! He could mail the money in and be done with it, or he could dispute it. $230? The punishment did not fit the crime. We would take this one to court. There was a preliminary appearance to determine if we might accept a lesser plea. Our answer was, "No," and the date was set.
We arrived at the courthouse early, the first ones there. We had been told that cases were arranged with order of arrival taken into account (and such is apparently the case in preliminary appearances), but early, schm-early, on this day it made no difference. We took our seats in the criminal court amidst a packed house. Case after case was called. Drug dealers, wife-beaters, petty thieves -- this was not the "cream of society" forming the passing parade but rather the curdled milk. Hour after hour we watched and waited. The judge was impressive: fair, open, tough when he needed to be, merciful when that appeared called for. He was sharp. Recess for lunch. More watching and waiting. Hour melted into hour as the crowd slowly dwindled. The courtroom was almost empty now. The biblical irony was not wasted on us -- "the first shall be last," and we were. The last case of the day.
My son had prepared his defense. There may have been a breach of the speed limit, but it was not in a work zone despite the charge, and thus should not be subject to an outrageously high fine. He had drafted a careful diagram of the scene to demonstrate the contention. He had driven to Raleigh for an official copy of his heretofore unstained driving record. Suddenly, he was being asked to play Perry Mason. This was formal. Witnesses were sworn. The district attorney examined the trooper. When it came to the cross-examination we heard, "And you have to do this son, not your father."
Gulp! "Uh, no questions, your honor."
It was my son's turn. He took the stand himself. In his hand he held the painstakingly prepared diagram, which the court examined with care. He offered his recollection of events and answered questions from the judge.
"All right, son, stand down," said the judge as he continued to look at the diagram. "How long have you been driving?"
"Three-and-a-half years, your honor."
"Have you ever had a ticket before?"
"No sir. My record is spotless." He approached the bench and handed over the copy of his driving history. The judge smiled at the forcefulness of the answer.
With the evidence at hand, the judge was not comfortable declaring him "not guilty," but he was not going to convict either. "Prayer for judgment," he said (the North Carolina equivalent of probation without verdict). "Pay the court costs, and slow down when you are passing Salisbury on your way home from school."
Hallelujah!
That story is a parable. You see, when it comes to passing judgment, more is involved than rendering a sentence. A good judge is going to do his or her level best to have things come out right for all concerned. Our judge that day did. The judge of all the earth whom we meet in the pages of scripture is no different.
You see, in the biblical tradition, "judgment" is not primarily punishment; it is the restoration of order; it is setting right a situation that has gone wrong. When we affirm our faith in a final judgment, we are trusting the divine judge to fix things. Listen to the way our Southern Presbyterian "Declaration of Faith" put it a few years ago:
All things will be renewed in Christ ...
As he stands at the center of our history,
we are confident he will stand at its end.
He will judge all people and nations.
Evil will be condemned
and rooted out of God's good creation.
There will be no more tears or pain.
All things will be made new.
The fellowship of human beings
with God and each other will be perfected.
Again, we reach for our anchor in this series of messages: "As we believe, so we behave." What does our affirmation about final judgment mean to us?
My friend, Al Winn, suggests that since this is the way it is going to be ultimately and finally -- perfect -- let us begin now. Let us tell the truth now. Let us stop playing games with each other now. If we are to be judged by how we have treated the least of these, Christ's brothers and sisters, let us begin now to reevaluate who is important. Let us approximate justice now. Let us practice compassion now. Let us stop worrying so much about what people think and what people may say and what the newspaper may publish now. Let us ask what the judge will think and what the judge will say. Let us ask now.
Dr. Winn recalls a friend who was a pastor in South Carolina at the height of the Civil Rights struggle. One of his members came to him, very upset, to ask why he preached so much about justice to black people. "Because," the pastor said, "I believe in the last judgment. In that day you will know the truth. You will understand clearly that the way you treat powerless people is the way you treat Jesus Christ himself. And when all that hits you, I don't want you to look across at me, your pastor, and ask, 'Why didn't you tell me?' I want to be clear of your blood."
"Do you really believe in the last judgment?" asked the man.
"Literally," said his pastor.1
So do we, we say. "From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead."
____________
1. Albert Curry Winn, A Christian Primer: The Prayer, The Creed, The Commandments (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 150.
Questions For Reflection
1. If you were the judge, for what would you reserve the harshest judgment? Do you think Jesus would agree?
2. Christians have preached and taught that the Lord would return again and soon, but that has not happened for 2,000 years. Should the message be revisited?
3. Will you as an individual be judged more harshly on the things you have done or the things you have failed to do?
4. If the church is responsible for telling the good news of the gospel, how responsible is the church for issuing warnings about judgment?
5. When you come to that eternal moment of judgment, do you want justice or mercy?
Judgment -- a disquieting thought. Ever been to court? Most of us have, at one time or another. How did you feel when you went into the courtroom? I cannot speak for anyone else, but every time I have set foot in one of those august chambers, looking toward the raised bench from which sentence would be passed, I have been a bit awe-struck. "Oyez, oyez, oyez," intones the bailiff in calling for order and inviting those with business to draw near. The judge is introduced -- "All rise!" -- and a black-robed figure bustles in and takes the chair behind the lofty bench. "God bless the United States of America and God bless this honorable court. Be seated." That is very awesome.
Now move that scene up exponentially -- the picture painted in Revelation. The entire universe is transformed into a courtroom and everyone who ever lived has been subpoenaed there. Presiding over the proceedings from a lofty bench is the Lord of all creation. Amidst the shuffling and shifting, the papers are arranged and the books are opened. "Call the first case." Awesome.
Is that how it will be ... at the end of time? Hard to say. After all, the pictures we get throughout the book of Revelation are more poetic than photographic. What we can and do say is that "I believe ... [Jesus will] come again to judge the quick and the dead."
A brief word on the language here. "The quick and the dead" refers not to pedestrians trying to cross a busy street at rush hour where one had better be quick or else end up dead. The "quick" of our affirmation is simply Elizabethan English for "living" or "alive." The point of what we say is that no one escapes this process. Even death is no escape.
Is that what you believe? Jesus is coming and will judge? Have you thought about it? From conversations I have had with parishioners over the years, many have considered the question, but despite the fact that week in and week out we say "from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead," there is not much clarity about the affirmation.
Break it in two. Consider just "He shall come." Scripture says so. In the upper room with his disciples, Jesus himself said he was going away but promised to come again (John 14:3). At his ascension, the two angels declared, "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). There are all those bumper stickers declaring, "In the event of the Rapture, this car will have no driver." Those refer to a portion of a letter that Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
-- 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
Whether we are to understand that literally is open to question. Regardless, it is one more biblical affirmation of Christ's second coming.
I heard much about that as I was growing up. Perhaps you did, too. Mostly, it was shared as a way of keeping sinful teenagers in line (and I suspect that has been the case for every generation for almost 2,000 years): "Do not be caught somewhere or with someone or doing something which would be an embarrassment if the Lord should come back right then and see you." And there was the reminder that the second coming could be at any moment, so be ready! Did the warnings work? Well....
Is the Lord coming back? As I say, scripture says so, and so do we from week to week: "from thence he shall come...." But, so saying, the return might not be in the way that traditional understanding has taught (and I can promise it will not be the cause of massive traffic accidents because of driverless vehicles -- what kind of God would cause such a mess?). So saying, I am satisfied to leave the details in the Lord's hands. I am content to know that, one day, whether individually at the end of my earthly journey or as one of a great band of believers at the end of history, he is coming for me, and I will see him face-to-face.
Now, what about the second half of our affirmation? "To judge the quick and the dead?" How are we to understand God's judgment? Again, the concept is thoroughly biblical. In the Old Testament God's judgment is demonstrated concerning nations, their rulers, and individuals. In the New Testament, divine judgment is a both a present reality ... John's gospel: "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil" (3:19) ... and a future certainty ... John again: "a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out -- those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned" (5:28-29). In the scene we encounter in Revelation, the basis of judgment is both from the book of life and also from the books of works.
Here is where questions come. Some ask if Christians go through the judgment just like everyone else. After all, it was Jesus himself who said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24). The issue is eternal destiny -- for believers, it is settled and, as scripture affirms, is not a subject for judgment.
The story does not end there -- there is that matter of this judgment of our works. I know, I know, I know -- we who are the heirs of the Reformation have a fit on that one. Were we not always taught by the apostle Paul, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith -- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -- not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9)? True enough. But Paul also taught, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10). He talked about the quality of our works -- some terrific, as if gold, silver, or precious stones, others not so terrific, in quality like nothing more than wood, hay, or stubble. Come the day of judgment, the good stuff survives and is even refined, but the bad is just wiped out, gone in a puff of smoke. The worker is saved, but the works are gone (1 Corinthians 3:12-15).
So the question comes again: Are believers subject to judgment? And that wonderful answer is, "Yes," and "No." No, concerning our destiny; yes, concerning our behavior. "From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" ... all of them, you and me included.
I remember an occasion of being in court in North Carolina. Our son had gotten a traffic ticket. I had gone down to Charlotte to bring him home from college for the weekend. He was the driver for the return trip. Passing by Salisbury, a state trooper pulled him over. He may have been exceeding the limit a little bit, but he was keeping with the flow of traffic and not driving unsafely. If he had been, I would have been giving him more grief than any officer, because, as he would be the first to attest, I can be one of the world's most vocal and vehement backseat drivers. We thought and thought about what might have caught the trooper's attention, and the only thing I could figure was, at some point, as we traveled cheek-by-jowl at highway speed with an eighteen-wheeler five feet from my face, I probably said, "Get past this guy." He did, and the blue lights began to flash. For the first time in his life, he was pulled over.
"License and registration, please." My son handed them over. The trooper took them back to his cruiser, did whatever troopers do in such situations, then came back with a ticket. He was being charged with exceeding the speed limit in a work zone and fined $230! He could mail the money in and be done with it, or he could dispute it. $230? The punishment did not fit the crime. We would take this one to court. There was a preliminary appearance to determine if we might accept a lesser plea. Our answer was, "No," and the date was set.
We arrived at the courthouse early, the first ones there. We had been told that cases were arranged with order of arrival taken into account (and such is apparently the case in preliminary appearances), but early, schm-early, on this day it made no difference. We took our seats in the criminal court amidst a packed house. Case after case was called. Drug dealers, wife-beaters, petty thieves -- this was not the "cream of society" forming the passing parade but rather the curdled milk. Hour after hour we watched and waited. The judge was impressive: fair, open, tough when he needed to be, merciful when that appeared called for. He was sharp. Recess for lunch. More watching and waiting. Hour melted into hour as the crowd slowly dwindled. The courtroom was almost empty now. The biblical irony was not wasted on us -- "the first shall be last," and we were. The last case of the day.
My son had prepared his defense. There may have been a breach of the speed limit, but it was not in a work zone despite the charge, and thus should not be subject to an outrageously high fine. He had drafted a careful diagram of the scene to demonstrate the contention. He had driven to Raleigh for an official copy of his heretofore unstained driving record. Suddenly, he was being asked to play Perry Mason. This was formal. Witnesses were sworn. The district attorney examined the trooper. When it came to the cross-examination we heard, "And you have to do this son, not your father."
Gulp! "Uh, no questions, your honor."
It was my son's turn. He took the stand himself. In his hand he held the painstakingly prepared diagram, which the court examined with care. He offered his recollection of events and answered questions from the judge.
"All right, son, stand down," said the judge as he continued to look at the diagram. "How long have you been driving?"
"Three-and-a-half years, your honor."
"Have you ever had a ticket before?"
"No sir. My record is spotless." He approached the bench and handed over the copy of his driving history. The judge smiled at the forcefulness of the answer.
With the evidence at hand, the judge was not comfortable declaring him "not guilty," but he was not going to convict either. "Prayer for judgment," he said (the North Carolina equivalent of probation without verdict). "Pay the court costs, and slow down when you are passing Salisbury on your way home from school."
Hallelujah!
That story is a parable. You see, when it comes to passing judgment, more is involved than rendering a sentence. A good judge is going to do his or her level best to have things come out right for all concerned. Our judge that day did. The judge of all the earth whom we meet in the pages of scripture is no different.
You see, in the biblical tradition, "judgment" is not primarily punishment; it is the restoration of order; it is setting right a situation that has gone wrong. When we affirm our faith in a final judgment, we are trusting the divine judge to fix things. Listen to the way our Southern Presbyterian "Declaration of Faith" put it a few years ago:
All things will be renewed in Christ ...
As he stands at the center of our history,
we are confident he will stand at its end.
He will judge all people and nations.
Evil will be condemned
and rooted out of God's good creation.
There will be no more tears or pain.
All things will be made new.
The fellowship of human beings
with God and each other will be perfected.
Again, we reach for our anchor in this series of messages: "As we believe, so we behave." What does our affirmation about final judgment mean to us?
My friend, Al Winn, suggests that since this is the way it is going to be ultimately and finally -- perfect -- let us begin now. Let us tell the truth now. Let us stop playing games with each other now. If we are to be judged by how we have treated the least of these, Christ's brothers and sisters, let us begin now to reevaluate who is important. Let us approximate justice now. Let us practice compassion now. Let us stop worrying so much about what people think and what people may say and what the newspaper may publish now. Let us ask what the judge will think and what the judge will say. Let us ask now.
Dr. Winn recalls a friend who was a pastor in South Carolina at the height of the Civil Rights struggle. One of his members came to him, very upset, to ask why he preached so much about justice to black people. "Because," the pastor said, "I believe in the last judgment. In that day you will know the truth. You will understand clearly that the way you treat powerless people is the way you treat Jesus Christ himself. And when all that hits you, I don't want you to look across at me, your pastor, and ask, 'Why didn't you tell me?' I want to be clear of your blood."
"Do you really believe in the last judgment?" asked the man.
"Literally," said his pastor.1
So do we, we say. "From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead."
____________
1. Albert Curry Winn, A Christian Primer: The Prayer, The Creed, The Commandments (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 150.
Questions For Reflection
1. If you were the judge, for what would you reserve the harshest judgment? Do you think Jesus would agree?
2. Christians have preached and taught that the Lord would return again and soon, but that has not happened for 2,000 years. Should the message be revisited?
3. Will you as an individual be judged more harshly on the things you have done or the things you have failed to do?
4. If the church is responsible for telling the good news of the gospel, how responsible is the church for issuing warnings about judgment?
5. When you come to that eternal moment of judgment, do you want justice or mercy?
