There is a topic in Christianity that I am a bit uncomfortable with because I don’t like how comfortable others are with it. When Christ returns, he will come to bring judgement on this creation. There are some who are too eager for this judgement because they want to see “bad people” get their due. Others look at Jesus’s ministry and are quick to point out that Jesus’s harshest words are towards those who claim to be the leaders of God’s people. When the coming judgement comes up, we might be quick to move to the scenes of a wrathful God where Jesus steps in and takes our place of punishment. Then we read in John 5 that God the Father has given Jesus the authority to come down and be judge the dead (5:27). This begins to mess with our theology a bit, doesn’t it?
That first paragraph is a bit of a vomiting of words (sorry for the imagery). I’ve been wrestling with how to approach this for a bit now. We have to talk about the final judgement and what the hope of salvation is. Take a moment to read these three passages. If you want to take a little more time, read them in their fuller contexts.
John 5:16-30
2 Corinthians 5:6-10
Acts 17:29-31
These are a small sampling of the many passages that talk about the coming judgment. In the view that Jesus receives our judgment from the wrathful God, Jesus is not the judge. Have we gotten this wrong? I don’t think we have but we haven’t fully gotten it correct. Here’s my basic understanding. We do nothing to earn our way into the Kingdom of God. We all got here by the same grace given to us through Jesus Christ. Now that we’ve been brought in, there are expectations of us to work in the Kingdom to join God in redeeming the world.
As you work through these passages, remember the overarching theme of hope we’ve been talking about over the last few weeks. God is bringing redemption to the brokenness of creation. In this light, how is judgement a good thing? How can you talk about judgement being good news? Who is it good news for?
So, what about salvation? How does this fit into the restorative work that God has called us to be part of? There have been times when I’ve heard Christian hope presented in a way that is all about what the person gets out of it and it has, at times, come across as a little on the selfish side. We sometimes put too much emphasis on the reward, almost to the point that it wouldn’t matter if God were absent from our reward, we’d be ok with it as long as we were in paradise. I’m overselling this point a bit to make a point.
When we talk about salvation, we must talk about both salvation from and salvation to. We receive salvation from death. We also receive salvation to be part of God’s Kingdom movement to restore the world. Read Ephesians 2, focusing specifically on 1-10. We are brought into the Kingdom of God to be citizens together. As God’s Kingdom people, we are his handiwork to fulfill the work he is doing in the world to bring redemption and reconciliation.
How does this view of judgement and salvation hold together and shape what the Christian life is all about?