Justification
by faith means that the Day of Judgment has been brought from the future
to the present, and believers who are now declared rightly related to
God are by that fact pronounced “Not guilty. Acquitted.” Judgment
can hold no terrors for them. “Fearing” God in this life, believers
will never have to be afraid of Him, even in the life to come.
Their
approaching biological cessation is but the slightest interruption, a
momentary inconvenience, in a journey that began with their new birth
and will conclude with their admittance to the “great cloud of
witnesses,” God’s people who have remained faithful amid
discouragement and fatigue and are now engulfed in long-awaited
splendour.
While
God’s people certainly await heaven, they have already begun to
experience it. The apostle Paul speaks of the Spirit, God Himself in His
utmost immediate and intense and intimate presence within believers, as
the “guarantee” of their safe arrival in the Sabbath rest He has
promised His people.
“Guarantee”
translates the Greek word arrabon,
a term in the ancient world used in everyday commerce to speak of
“down payment” or “first instalment.” Purchasers made a “down
payment” on an article so dear to them that they had to have it, the
first instalment pledging the payment of many more. In modern Greek arrabon
is a woman’s engagement ring. Deliriously happy as she is now in the
love that soaks her, she eagerly anticipates a richer, more intimate and
therefore more intense experience of her beloved on the day that she
marries.
Christians
are aware of the Spirit as God’s incursion whereby they are
constrained to confess “Jesus is Lord!” The Spirit moves them to cry
spontaneously “Abba! Father!” as they are made God’s children and
are brought into His family. The Spirit brings forth characteristic
“fruits” that render Christ’s people unmistakable and undeniable,
a city set on a hill. Plainly the Spirit is guarantee in the sense that
current experience of their Lord assures Christians of a future that is
as indescribable as it is indubitable.
Yet
Scripture never suggests that heaven is the destiny of all humankind
just because God created us all. Solemnly Jesus identified the fork in
the road throughout His public ministry. There are two gates, one
leading to destruction and the other to life. While two masters beckon,
only one can be served. Treasures can be laid up either on earth or in
heaven, the venue of one’s investment determining the nature of
one’s heart (and one’s future).
Soberly
Jesus insisted every day that repentance, that “U-turn” which the
gospel urges all to make, shouldn’t be put off. The theme of final
judgment is found in virtually all His parables. “The Two Sons”
(also known as “The Prodigal Son”) tersely insists that the son
“in the far country” is “lost, dead”—a spiritual condition
that the Final Judgment doesn’t confer but merely confirms. Jesus’
Hebrew name “Ye-hoshua” means “God saves,” for He has been
appointed Saviour—even as His mother is told “this child is set for
the fall and rising of many in Israel.”
No
apostle thinks differently. Paul warns spiritual dilettantes about the
coming wrath. Peter tells readers that God is neither slow nor sleepy
concerning His promise to conclude human history; God is simply
prolonging the day of grace and protracting opportunity for repentance.
John maintains that Christ came not in order to condemn but in order to
save; still, to disdain the proffered salvation is to be left with
condemnation. James warns careless people that the Judge is standing at
the door. Jude laments that some are “devoid of the Spirit,” a
vacuity so significant that to be devoid of the Spirit is ultimately to
lack everything.
Since
God is love—love is in a sense all there is to God—then final,
irretrievable spiritual loss points up the enormity of sin. Surrounded
by blessing only, the impenitent repudiate it only to find curse.
Similarly, ultimate loss points up the monstrosity of sin, as those who
are the beneficiaries of God’s infinite goodness maliciously throw it
all back in His face. And of course condemnation highlights sin’s
irrationality, its sheer incomprehensibility: why would anyone facing
eternal loss persist in spurning God’s provision and sneering at
God’s mercy, and do all of this in a flaunted posture of insolence and
ingratitude?
To
be sure, there has never been a lack of “universalists” who maintain
that all will be saved thanks to the cross or that eventually no one
will be able to hold out against a love whose winsomeness will prove
irresistible. Scripture, however, supports neither position. While the
cross has made atonement for sinners, reconciliation and righteousness become effective only in
sinners who give up their headlong flight past the arms of the crucified
and instead embrace the One whose outstretched arms have already
embraced them. Assuredly the cross is God’s publicly announced
declaration of amnesty with sinners. They, however, must in turn confess
their amnesty with Him.
Is
it true, then, that in the end the Sovereign God can be defied by a mere
creature, albeit disobedient? Unlike humans who mistake sovereignty for
control or coercion, God so respects the integrity of the creature made
in His image that He will not violate it. God honours to the end the
integrity of persons made to reflect the
Person, never treating as a thing or object the one creature who is
always a subject or agent. God remains unassailable: the unbeliever’s
rejection of Him threatens neither His security nor His identity.
Then
do believers face no judgment at all? Let’s be clear: they face no
condemnation, although even the holiest must be confronted with the
arrears of sin that remain in them. Impurities will have to be removed
if they are to appear “without spot or blemish.” Yet none of this
can overturn the “good and faithful servant” pronouncement God
speaks to them, even as nothing can eclipse their sight of Him whom they
have known by faith and now behold face to face.
Victor Shepherd of Toronto is
professor of systematic and historical theology at Tyndale University
College and Seminary, and a minister of the Presbyterian Church in
Canada.
