A Few Thoughts On Judgment

The judgment of God, for many, is the proverbial fly in the Christian ointment.  Some try and remove it, while others attempt to enjoy the ointment around it.  No matter how hard one tries, however, these strategies leave their Christianity incomplete and without significant force.  Sure it may be popular; but pragmatism is no substitute for the unadulterated gospel of God's salvation through judgment.

My first thought about all of this is that it should not surprise us that the biblical doctrine of judgment is always being tampered with.  The seed of the serpent will always be whispering that sweet but deadly lie, "You will not certainly die" (Gen 3:4).

D.A. Carson, in The God Who is There, states it well: "The first doctrine to be denied, according to the Bible, is the doctrine of judgment...because if you can get rid of that one teaching, then rebellion has no adverse consequences, and so you are free to do anything."

My second thought is that the severity of the judgment is directly correlated to the worth of the offended and not the offender.  If a man kills a dog, he gets a few years.  If he kills another man, he gets life in prison (or death).  And if he attempts to kill God, he gets an eternity in hell.

I mention this because I heard Rob Bell say in an interview that he doesn't believe God would send a seventeen year old to hell for committing sin.  The idea is that it would be unfair for seventeen years of sin to be punished by an eternity in hell.  The key flaw here is that he is anchoring judgment in the worth of the offender and not in the One offended.  Our Lord is so holy and glorious that one transgression, even by a seventeen year old, is punishable by an eternity in hell.

My third and final thought is that judgment becomes unbearable when we do not focus on the Cross of Christ.  For the Cross tells us at least two things about God and His judgment.  First, until we understand the weight of the judgment we deserve, we cannot fully understand the glory of the the Savior who absorbed all of our judgment.   If what we deserve is small, our Savior is small.  But if our judgment is great, so is our Savior.

Second, when thinking of the punitive system of covenantal judgment, we must understand that God inaugurated such a system with the Cross of His Son in mind.  In other words, when God the Judge freely decided to set Hell as the final punishment for sin, He knew that the severity of Hell would be the punishment His Son would take upon Himself on the Cross for His people.

In summary, in a culture where Jesus is small, we cannot afford to leave the severity of judgment out of our preaching.  In thinking lightly of judgment, we think lightly of sin, of God's glory and of Christ Himself.  The problem of our culture is that teenage athletes are seen as stronger than the God-man.  When such idolatry is identified along with the severe judgment it deserves, then Christ the strong, wrath absorbing Savior begins to grow in our hearts.  Leaving judgment out of our gospel is dangerous, unloving and deadly.