Judgment Seat of Christ: “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.” II Corinthians 5:10. We’ve all heard people say that when they stand before God, they hope their good works will outweigh their bad, but if we have even the slightest understanding of grace, it will cause us to tremble for them, immediately recognizing their perilous condition outside of Christ. Scripture leaves no room for such a thought. There are no good works apart from Christ; to imagine otherwise is “to imagine a vain thing.” Psalm 2:1. Count them all, and they testify only to guilt and unbelief. Man has nothing to offer but sin, and God accepts nothing but the righteousness of His Son, so unless a man is found in Christ, he is already judged, for outside of Him there is nothing but guilt, condemnation and death. The last tragic sentence my mother said to me prior to seeing her for the last time was, “I’ll hope to see you in heaven if my works are good enough.” My immediate reply was, “Mom, no one’s works are good enough, only Christ is good enough.” It solemnly echoes this hopeless delusion.
Yes, we say, that is the speech of unbelief, of those who still trust in their own merit, who echo the lie that man can stand before God in anything of himself. But have we never spoken the same language under a more refined accent? We claim to know grace, to rest in Christ alone, yet when the judgment seat of Christ is mentioned many still imagine a review of personal conduct, a weighing of deeds to determine reward or standing in glory, where your entire life is scrutinized; not to decide salvation, but to calculate reward, as though the LORD of glory must appraise His own handiwork, to see how much of His own work in us deserved to be repaid. In such thoughts, Christ Himself is displaced, the ONE whose death is our satisfaction before divine justice, whose resurrection is our standing in righteousness, and whose finished work has already secured every crown His redeemed shall wear.
Both notions, though clothed in a different language, spring from the same degenerate root, the presumption that something in man can supplement the perfection of Christ. Whether it be the unbeliever’s hope of acceptance or the believer’s hope of reward, both make grace a debtor and the cross incomplete. The one trusts in works for salvation, the other in works for distinction. The form changes, but the heart of it remains unbelief. Thus, in the end, the difference is only outward. The unbeliever dreams of earning acceptance, the “believer” of earning recompense, yet both alike forget that every debt has been paid, every crown purchased, and every glory secured in Christ alone. The very thought of “more” is an insult to grace.
To imagine a future reward for religious service, for sacrifices made “for the cause of Christ,” is to repeat the ancient folly of thinking that God in some inconceivable manner is obligated to acknowledge man’s greatness in all that he has done for others in the “name” of Christ. This is complete foolishness at best, and at worst a blasphemous denial of grace itself, a subtle attempt to make the ALMIGHTY a paymaster to His creatures. “Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous, or is it gain to Him, that thou makest thy ways perfect?” Job 22:2-3.
Who made “us” to differ, and what have we that we have not received? I Corinthians 4:7. “Are we better than they,” Romans 3:9, as we attempt to measure or evaluate some “fruit” that now all of a sudden has sprung up in the very ‘garden’ of God as though everything we have ever brought forth in our life that was or could be considered “good” was not originally planted, cultivated and brought forth by the very hand that formed us? Measuring it by what? A scale that “broke” in Eden?
The only fruit is the fruit of the Spirit, Ephesians 5:9, which has nothing to do with whatever refinements we might adorn our lives with, or with the embellishments we attempt to add to the lives of others, but everything to do with setting forth the praises and virtues of “Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.” I Peter 2:9. It’s not about us now, and it will not be about us then, for in that day all fruit will be traced to the Vine, and every crown will be cast at the Redeemer’s feet. “The four and twenty elders fall down before Him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power, for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” Revelation 4:10-11.
Besides, the “garden” of the Lord grows no fruit of man’s planting. To count the harvest as ours is to rob the Husbandman of His glory. “So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” I Corinthians 3:7. If there is any holy inclination, any love toward His name, any hatred of sin or longing for righteousness, it is wholly the result of grace. We are but clay in the Potter’s hand. Romans 9:21. Do we really grasp that? We are dust shaped by mercy. Are we forgetting that even the ability to believe is a gift, that every aspect of salvation is of the Lord from first to last, from the first awakening of faith to its final perfection in glory, all the “workmanship” of Christ’s own hands, Ephesians 2:10, the Spirit working in us “both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13.
In the light of these considerations, this verse, “for we must all appear (be manifested) before the judgment seat of Christ,” like every line of Scripture, finds its meaning in Christ. To wrench them from the gospel and employ them in the service of human merit and conditional theology is to distort both the text and the throne it describes. In that “great and notable day of the Lord” both the “righteous” and the “wicked” shall stand before the same throne, but under different representatives, one clothed in the righteousness of Christ, the other in the guilt of Adam. The saints appear, not to be tried, but to be vindicated in their Head; the wicked, not to reason, but to receive their just condemnation. John 5:24. The same presence of Christ that glorifies the saints destroys the wicked. II Thessalonians 2:8.
This judgment seat is the meeting place of all divine perfections, where righteousness and peace are seen united in Christ, the ONE in whom mercy is magnified through justice, and justice glorified through mercy. For the believer, it will be the open manifestation of his union with Christ, who has already borne his judgment; for the unbeliever, the fearful unveiling of a rejection long harbored in the heart and confirmed by unbelief. John 3:18. To the saints, that light will be joy; to Christ’s enemies, it will be absolute terror, “but those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me,” Luke 19:27, but to all, it will proclaim the glory of the Lamb.
As far as the “receiving of the things done in the body,” it is not a divine audit but a divine unveiling. The believer receives nothing apart from what Christ has already received for him; he simply enters into the open display of that inheritance. Matthew 25:34. He stands not before the bar of recompense, but before the throne of revelation. The righteousness that will appear there is the same that was imputed here, the righteousness of Christ alone; the deeds done in the body will be revealed for what they are, the fruit of grace, the manifestation of that life which has been wrought in the believer by the Spirit. What we “receive” will be the public acknowledgment that every holy thought, every faithful act, every enduring grace, was His workmanship from beginning to end. Isaiah 26:12.
The believer regards the judgment seat from a wholly new position. The question of guilt has been forever settled at the cross of Christ, and the sentence of death reversed in His resurrection. Romans 4:25. He does not stand in Adam to be weighed, but in Christ to be revealed, not awaiting a verdict, but manifesting a victory, Christ’s own triumph over sin and death, no longer on the ground of guilt or re-examination, but on the ground of glory, clothed in the righteousness of Him who died and rose again.
In conclusion, if the judgment seat of Christ were a tribunal to weigh a believer’s life, then the gospel would be no gospel at all. If this concept of a future evaluation of believers is true, what saint could even look forward to such a day with any sense of joyful anticipation? Who then could rejoice at the Lord’s coming? Only those deceived by the pride of their own supposed faithfulness, who revere the echo of their own devotion and name it the voice of Christ within, as they find within themselves some ground of confidence in what they call their faithful christian life. But the one who has seen something of the plague of his own heart, who knows the corruption that clings to every thought and deed, would crumble at just the thought of a fresh reckoning and reevaluation of everything he had ever done in the “name” of Christ, and all his works exposed for what they really are! Isaiah 64:6. Each trembling conscience would be left to measure itself by its own obedience, and every saint would stand in the shadow of condemnation. But Scripture teaches no such uncertainty. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1. MPJ