Sermon for Flinders Park Church July 2018
“People are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Heb 9:27). The inevitability of judgement seems like a cause for fear. I believe that even Christians are afraid of the coming judgement. Because we are afraid of God’s judgement, we tend to live in denial instead of eagerly awaiting the coming of Jesus. This denial results in avoidance: avoidance of God if there is sin in your life; avoidance of prayer; avoidance of the Bible. Then instead in intimate fellowship with God, we live busy lives in which we try to cover over the fear of what is to come. Consequently, it seemed like a good idea to discuss judgement day. I plan to do this over a couple of messages.
What are we afraid of? I know that I am afraid that I will not measure up. I will not have done enough. Other people are afraid that there is too much sin and not enough good works. I know that we all know that God’s grace is what saves us, and yet fear still keeps creeping in where it should not. So let’s consider why that fear is there.
The truth is that what we do as human beings actually matters, whether our lives are godly or ungodly. A Day of Judgement is coming. Jesus said, “But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken” (Matt 12:36). Jesus said some other things that should give us pause. “‘You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, “You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, “Raca,” is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, “You fool!” will be in danger of the fire of hell’” (Matt 5:21-22). How many of us has never thought of someone else as a fool or said it out loud?
God’s standard is very high. It is obvious that none of us will meet it. Actions, words and even thoughts will be judged. It is not a matter of the good outweighing the bad. If we had to stand alone on that day, we would all be cast into hell with no court of appeal. This is something we cannot take lightly. This is described in Heb 10:27 as “a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” It would be foolish to not be terrified by that prospect. For if we do not take seriously the fact that God will judge the world in righteousness (Ps 96:13) then we will not do what is necessary to be saved on that day.
In a very famous sermon by Jonathon Edwards entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, he says the following:
There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men’s hands cannot be strong, when God raises up. The strongest have no power to resist Him, nor can any deliver out of His hands. He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty in subduing a rebel, who has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the number of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defence from the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and a vast multitude themselves, they are easily broken in pieces. They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind; or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is for us to cut or singe a slender thread that anything hangs by: thus easy is it for God when He pleases, to cast His enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before Him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?
This last point bears repeating. “What are we that we should think to stand before Him?” We are but sinners and we will be crushed by the wrath of God if we try to stand on our own on that day. It is right to fear the judgement of God because the Bible is clear that the judgement is coming. “The wicked will not stand in the judgement” (Ps 1:5).
We need to take the day of judgement seriously, but even more so we must take seriously the fact “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19a). There truly is salvation in Christ. Our sins are truly forgiven in Jesus. “‘This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.’ Then he adds: ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more’” (Heb 10:16-17). The nature of this good news is what I want to focus on today.
This good news can only be found in Jesus Christ, the one who will judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42). Jesus said, “‘For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man’” (John 5:26-27). What does Jesus mean when he said that he has authority to judge because he is the Son of Man? Jesus has lived a genuine human life on our behalf. Instead of failing to meet God’s standard, he has fully met that standard. Everything that God required has been done by Jesus. Jesus had a heart completely committed to doing the will of God. All his actions, words and thoughts are in accord with God’s will. Consequently, he is the only human being who has the right to judge another. We cannot do that because we do the very things we judge others for, and in doing so we condemn ourselves and can only expect God’s wrath (Rom 2:1-5). But Jesus is the judge and he has the right to be that judge.
Since we will have to face the judgement of God the Father and God the Son, how is this good news? It is good news because those who believe in the Son of God have become united to him by faith. In this way we share in his reward since he took our punishment. This is what the Reformers called “the wonderful exchange”. Permit me to quote at length from Luther and Calvin here.
Calvin explained this wonderful exchange like this:
We may dare assure ourselves that eternal life, of which He is the heir, is ours; and that the Kingdom of Heaven, into which He has already entered, can no more be cut off from us than from Him; again, that we cannot be condemned for our sins, from whose guilt He has absolved us, since He willed to take them upon Himself as if they were His own.
This is the wonderful exchange which, out of His measureless benevolence, He has made with us, that, by His descent to earth, He has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, He has conferred His immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, He has strengthened us by His power; that, receiving our poverty unto Himself, He has transferred His wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon Himself (which oppressed us), He has clothed us with His righteousness.
(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John T. McNeill, ed. Ford Lewis Battles, trans, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960 [1559]), 4.17.2., p. 1362.)
Luther put it like this:
That is the mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners: wherein by a wonderful exchange our sins are no longer ours but Christ’s and the righteousness of Christ not Christ’s but ours. He has emptied Himself of His righteousness that He might clothe us with it, and fill us with it.
And He has taken our evils upon Himself that He might deliver us from them… in the same manner as He grieved and suffered in our sins, and was confounded, in the same manner we rejoice and glory in His righteousness.
(Martin Luther, Werke (Weimar, 1883), 5: 608.)
And in a different place Luther compares our union with Christ to a marriage in which the husband shares everything with his wife.
The third incomparable grace of faith is this: that it unites the soul to Christ, as the wife to the husband, by which mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul are made one flesh. Now if they are one flesh, and if a true marriage — nay, by far the most perfect of all marriages is accomplished between them (for human marriages are but feeble types of this one great marriage), then it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possesses, that the believing soul may take to itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, that Christ claims as His. If we compare these possessions, we shall see how inestimable is the gain. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation; the soul is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith step in, and then sin, death, and hell will belong to Christ, and grace, life, and salvation to the soul. For, if He is a Husband, He must needs take to Himself that which is His wife’s, and at the same time, impart to His wife that which is His. For, in giving her His own body and Himself, how can He but give her all that is His? And, in taking to Himself the body of His wife, how can He but take to Himself all that is hers? In this is displayed the delightful sight, not only of communion, but of a prosperous warfare, of victory, salvation, and redemption. For, since Christ is God and man, and is such a Person as neither has sinned, nor dies, nor is condemned, nay, cannot sin, die, or be condemned, and since His righteousness, life, and salvation are invincible, eternal, and almighty, — when I say, such a Person, by the wedding-ring of faith, takes a share in the sins, death, and hell of His wife, nay, makes them His own, and deals with them no otherwise than as if they were His, and as if He Himself had sinned; and when He suffers, dies, and descends to hell, that He may overcome all things, and since sin, death, and hell cannot swallow Him up, they must needs be swallowed up by Him in stupendous conflict. For His righteousness rises above the sins of all men; His life is more powerful than all death; His salvation is more unconquerable than all hell. Thus the believing soul, by the pledge of its faith in Christ, becomes free from all sin, fearless of death, safe from hell, and endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of its Husband Christ. Thus He presents to Himself a glorious bride, without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word; that is, by faith in the word of life, righteousness, and salvation. Thus He betrothes her unto Himself ‘in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies’ (Hosea ii. 19, 20). Who then can value highly enough these royal nuptials? Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that rich and pious Husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with all His good things. It is impossible now that her sins should destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him, and since she has in her Husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying, ‘If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine,’ as it is written, ‘My beloved is mine, and I am His’ (Cant. ii. l6).
What does all this mean for us now? It means that as long as I remain united to Christ by faith, I have no reason to fear the judgement day. So we have nothing to fear on judgement day if our sights are on the Saviour. We only need to fear if we put those sights back on ourselves and what we have done for God. Those things cannot save us. Those things will never be enough to cancel out our sins. They cannot redeem us from our rebelliousness. Only Jesus can do that.