Judgement
Fourth in a seven-part series
(Previous posts in this series: Part I ^[1], Part II ^[2], Part III ^[3])

Immediately after death each one of us will be asked to give an accounting of our lives. There are two fundamental directions our lives can take: towards God or towards self. God, who is complete justice and mercy, will decide which direction our lives took and will grant us the fulfillment of that direction. This is Judgement.

The event of our judgement is a difficult concept for modern man to accept, for we are incessantly told that we must judge no one and no action. Yet it will be a judgement which determines our place of residence for all eternity. Every action in this life has tremendous meaning, and all our actions – ALL of them – are considered when it comes to our judgement. The magazine we stole as a teenager, the elderly man we helped find his home when we were in college, the friend we ignored in a time of crisis – all these actions and every other one will be used in determining our final home. At Judgement, light will be shone on every thing we did – and everything we could have done but did not.

When we face judgement, we no longer have any opportunity to change our lives for the better. The final chapter has been written and the book is now closed on our life. It is important to note that God’s judgement is not a superficial look at our lives, simply balancing our good and evil deeds and seeing which one comes out on top. Instead God takes a full look at the life of each person who faces judgement: every mitigating factor, every influence, every decision made in knowledge or in ignorance. All these things will be considered. And there is no appeal possible, and there is no appeal needed, for each person who is judged knows that the judgement is true.

One of the great mysteries of God is how He perfectly integrates justice and mercy. In our finite world these two realities often seem to be opposites and at loggerheads. Yet in God they are one reality: His justice is His mercy and His mercy is His justice. There is no tension or conflict between them. And at our judgement God’s justice and mercy will together determine the final outcome of our lives.

Yet every life is imperfect and selfish in some way and thus every person “deserves” to be found guilty of rejecting God. So how can anyone be saved? God judges each person through a special “prism”: the Passion of His Son, Jesus Christ. In a way, one could say that God wears blood-colored glasses at judgement, and the blood is the redemptive blood of Jesus. Under our own power, we could have no hope for salvation, but in light of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, we know that God can transform us and make us holy, as Christ is holy. It is only by the power of Christ that we can have any hope to hear the judgement, “well done, good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of your master.”