Copyright © 2024 Michael A. Brown
‘For we
must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive
what is due to him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.’ (2 Cor. 5:10)
THE Scriptures make it clear that a
record of how we have lived our lives is kept in books in heaven (Dan. 7:10,
Rev. 20:12), and that one day we will be stand before God for judgement. However, these two references in Daniel and
Revelation are in the context of the final judgement which will be held at the
end of the millennial reign of Christ before the great white throne. This final judgement should not be conflated
with the judgement seat of Christ which the apostle Paul refers to in 2
Corinthians 5:10. They are not the same event. The final judgement is about determining the
eternal fate of those who are not in Christ; their names are not in the Lamb’s
Book of Life. However, this does not
mean that there is not a record in heaven of our own life as believers.
The way in which the Greek word bema
is translated as ‘judgement seat’ in 2 Corinthians 5:10 can perhaps be
misleading. It conjures up images of
standing before a magistrate or judge in a court of law who is ready to
pronounce guilt and give sentence. This
is indeed what judges in a court of law do: they hear a case, render a verdict
and afterwards give sentence. This is
the picture given to us of the final judgement (Dan. 7:10, Rev. 20:12).
These kind of images stir up within us the
fear of potential guilt and condemnation, and our inherently sinful nature
leads us to think that this is what the bema
seat of Christ will be like. There is a part
of every one of us deep down inside that fears that God will dredge up any and
every failure on our part, larger or smaller, and will then pronounce guilt
over us. Our sinful nature has conditioned
us to expect rejection and condemnation.
However, it is wrong for Christians to
view the bema seat of Christ in this
way. The bema seat will not be about pronouncing guilt and condemnation over
us for things that we may or may not have done in our life as believers. The reason for this, and this is at the
heart of it all, is that our sin has been dealt with thoroughly and
completely at the cross. There
is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ (Rom. 8:1).
To view the coming bema seat of Christ as though it is a court of law sitting to
conduct a forensic examination of every last and smallest detail of our life,
is not simply to have a completely wrong concept of it, it also means that we
have not yet fully understood what the cross was all about. When Jesus died on the cross, he took all of
our sins, every single one of them, past, present and future, upon himself, so
that when we receive him as our Saviour, we can know full and complete forgiveness
and be justified before God. As the old
hymn says, ‘My sin, not in part but the whole, has been nailed to the cross and
I bear it no more!’ The cross is a complete and
finished work. There is nothing
that needs to be added to it, and there is nothing that can be taken away from
it. Sin was dealt with by Jesus at the
cross once and for all. So
the cross empties the bema seat of Christ of any fear of condemnation for us,
because that issue was settled for us by him, finally and forever, at the cross.
Therefore, because of the complete and
finished work of Christ at the cross, the forensic, legal judgement of God is
only for those who have not received his salvation and mercy in Christ. Their names are not written in the Lamb’s
book of life, so they will be judged out of what is written in the record of
their life. And hence, because they have
sinned and yet have also refused the atoning work of Christ on their behalf,
they will be condemned to eternal separation from God.
So to think or imply that the bema
seat is about Christians answering for sin in their life is to make a nonsense
of the work of Christ himself on the cross.
It is true that the word bema was used of Roman magistrates when
rendering legal verdicts, but it was also used in other ways too. The word simply meant a raised platform to
which a person ascended by walking up a small number of steps, much like getting
onto a stage today. So, when a person
was stood on a bema, they might give an oration, they might render a
legal verdict as a magistrate, or, if they were acting as a judge at the games,
they would present a laurel crown to an athlete who had won a race.
Confident
of reward
The picture that the Scriptures
give to us about the bema seat of
Christ is that it will be more akin to the commendation of a rewards
ceremony. It is about the giving of
eternal rewards (or the loss of these) based on how we have lived since we
became believers and how we have served the Lord:
‘Behold,
I am coming soon! My reward is with me,
and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.’ (Rev. 22:12)
The apostle Paul was not fearful when he
thought of standing before the bema seat. On the contrary, he was confident. He was looking forward to it as being a time
of commendation from the Lord whom he had served wholeheartedly, and to
receiving the crown which the Lord would give him as a reward for his faithful
service in ministry:
‘Now there is in store for me the
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me
on that day...’
(2
Tim. 4:8)
‘Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win
the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.’ (Phil. 3:13b-14)
Similarly, the apostle John also talked
about being confident on the day of judgement at the bema seat. He pointed out
that being fearful of condemnation on that day is simply due to the fact that
we have not yet fully comprehended the depth and height of the love of God for
us. A believer who is being influenced by fear
of judgement cannot live consistently in the spiritual revelation that s/he is
the bride of Christ and is deeply loved by her Beloved. To grow and become mature in the love of God
is to become confident about the day of judgement, because we know that his
love for us expressed in and through Christ will not condemn us:
‘And so we know and
rely on the love God has for us. God is
love. Whoever lives in love lives in
God, and God in him. In this way, love is
made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement,
because in this world we are like him.
There is no fear in love. But
perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.’
(1
John 4:16-18)
John exhorted believers to continue in a
life of abiding in Christ and thereby grow in confidence about the bema seat:
‘And now, dear
children continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and
unashamed before him at his coming.’
(1
John 2:28)
We get a similar picture in the parables
which Jesus used to describe his return.
He is like a master who has gone away on business, and who has in the
meantime entrusted his servants with responsibilities and money. When he returns, he will spend some time
going over things with his servants and will reward them appropriately.
For those who have served the Lord
wholeheartedly, and have been faithful with the talents they were given and the
responsibilities they were entrusted with, it will be a day of great joy as
they give an account to their Master of what they have done and the fruit they
have borne. And their joy will be shared
by their Master who will then reward them freely and abundantly:
‘Who then is the faithful and wise
servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to
give them their food at the proper time?
It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he
returns. I tell you the truth, he will
put him in charge of all his possessions.’ (Matt. 24:45-47)
‘After a long time the master of
those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents
brought the other five. “Master,” he
said, “you entrusted me with five talents.
See, I have gained five more.”
His master replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I
will put you in charge of many things.
Come and share your master’s happiness.” (Matt. 25:19-21).
The
picture that these passages give us of the bema
seat is an overwhelmingly positive one.
Similarly, the
eight promises which are given in the book of Revelation to believers who
overcome also give us a very positive and affirming picture of reward (cf. Rev.
2:7,11,17,26-28; 3:5,12,21; 21:7). At
the bema seat, the Lord will delight to reward us for every faithful act of
service we have rendered to him:
‘For the Son of man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his
angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.’ (Matt. 16:27)
‘For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in
the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes?
Is it not you? Indeed, you are
our glory and joy.’ (1 Thess. 2:19-20)
‘Be shepherds of God’s flock that
is under your care… And when the Chief
Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade
away.’ (1 Peter 5:2,4)
‘Now there is in store for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that
day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.’
(2 Tim. 4:8)
Reward
or loss?
According
to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, when we stand before Christ at the bema seat, our life as a Christian and
in particular our work for him on this earth will all pass before him in its
entirety, right down to the smallest detail. Everything will pass through the fire of his
judgement:
‘For no
one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus
Christ. If any man builds on this
foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will
be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire
will test the quality of each man’s work.
If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he
himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.’ (1 Cor. 3:11-15)
A simple
reading of Paul’s epistles to the church in Corinth will show that these
believers were still living and thinking in many ways according to the wisdom,
ways and standards of this world, rather than according to the wisdom and ways
of the kingdom of God. Figuratively
speaking, they were building on the foundation of Christ using ‘wood, hay and
straw,’ rather than with the enduring ‘gold, silver and costly stones’ of the
word of God. They were spending their lives
doing things and focusing on things which, as far as eternity is concerned,
were worthless. So Paul
warned them that what they were building would not stand the test of God’s
judgement. They would suffer loss on that day, rather
than gaining eternal reward…
Anything
that has been built in our life using ‘gold, silver and costly stones’ will endure
and survive the test, but everything else will be burned up and consumed. Only what is left and has survived the fire
will be rewarded, because it is only this that was truly of God.
As I
said previously, we do not need to fear this judgement in a wrong sense,
because Jesus bore God’s judgement on our sin in its totality. It is important to emphasise that no
sin that has been confessed and dealt with in this present life will ever be
brought up at the bema seat. It
has been dealt with at the cross and through our acknowledgement and confession
of it, and God will therefore remember it no more (Heb. 8:12, 10:17).
The
Lord’s judgement and evaluation of our Christian lives and what we did for him
will be in love, yet we will see our lives, our activities in ministry, our
inner attitudes, our relationships and the way we treated others, the words we
spoke, and our motivations for what we did, all under the penetrating light of
God’s truth (cf. Heb. 4:12). We
will know ourselves for what we truly were as believers in this life. Everything, absolutely everything, will pass
through the fire of God’s judgement and will be exposed for what it really was
in his sight.
The Greek word kakos which is translated as ‘bad’ in 2 Corinthians 5:10 is perhaps
better rendered as ‘worthless.’ It does
not refer here to acts of sin that a Christian may have committed, but rather
to things which are of no eternal value to the kingdom of God, and which are
therefore ultimately worthless:
‘For we
must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive
what is due to him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.’ (2 Cor. 5:10)
On that day, we will be made aware of things or areas that could have
been improved or done better, and we will be aware of many things that we did
which were worthless as far as the kingdom of God is concerned. We will be aware of areas of failure in our
lives, not to condemn us, but so that we know why we failed and what could have
been done better in order to avert failure.
We will know exactly how we made both the Lord and other people feel, in
terms of sadness and hurt, when we spoke certain words or acted in certain
ways. None of us will be exempt from
this. It will be a sobering and humbling
experience for everyone, and for these things there will be no reward, simply a
loss of potential reward. So, although
there will be a home for everyone in heaven (John 14:2-3), yet the rewards that
believers receive will certainly be different from each other.
The true value, greater or lesser, of
everything we ever did for God will be made known to us. God will evaluate everything we did for him,
and the inward heart motives for which they were done, in the way he himself
sees them. Were they done out of love
for him, and in genuine love for others, or were they done for self-centred
motives, for self-gain, or to be seen by others and for human praise, etc.?
Will there be feelings of shame, and
any sense of failure and regret among believers on that day? Undoubtedly so in a measure, and believers
will experience this to differing degrees.
Indeed, apart from Jesus himself, there will not be one single person in
heaven who will be able to say that they perfectly fulfilled everything that
God had given them to do on earth. We
all fall short in many ways, and on that day we will certainly be aware that
this is true of ourselves. However, this
will not lead to eternal condemnation, but rather through God’s profound grace
it will be overcome and washed away forever from our hearts by the deep, abiding
love of Christ and his total acceptance of us.
Paul implies in 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 that there
will be some believers who will prove to have built their Christian lives and
ministries only with worthless ‘wood, hay and straw’, and who will therefore
suffer an entire loss (i.e. there will be no actual eternal fruit from their
life or their work for God). They
themselves will be saved (because they trusted Jesus for their salvation), but
on that day they will be left with ‘nothing but the clothes they stand up in,’
as it were. As far as rewards are concerned, they will be left empty-handed, but
they will still be profoundly and eternally thankful to be in heaven.
If what
we build is to endure the test of God’s fire, then we must learn to build with
‘gold, silver and costly stones,’ rather than with ‘wood, hay and straw.’[1] What we have built in our own lives and in
those of others with ‘wood, hay and straw’ will simply be burned up and
consumed on that day. However, on the positive side,
whatever we did using ‘gold, silver and costly stones’ will be richly rewarded,
because these things will survive the fire.
We will be commended and rewarded for what was well and faithfully done:
‘Well done, good and faithful
servant! You have been faithful with a
few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ (Matt. 25:23)
So
live proactively in the light of what is coming
The
apostle Paul exhorted the believers in Rome to live proactively in the light of
the coming bema seat of Christ. He rebuked
them for treating one another without love, because they were judging and
looking down on one another. So he
responded to this by reminding them that they would one day have to give an
account to God for this kind of behaviour:
‘You,
then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgement
seat... So then, each of us will give an
account of himself to God. Let us
therefore stop passing judgement on one another…’ (Rom. 14:10-13)
For himself, Paul lived in the fear of the
Lord which was generated within him by knowing that he too would one day stand
before the bema seat of Christ. His love for God and this fear of God within
him spurred him on please the Lord, by staying faithful to his apostolic call
right to the end of his life, working to persuade people to accept Christ:
‘So we make it our goal to please him… For
we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may
receive what is due to him for the things done while in the body, whether good
or bad. Since, then, we know what
it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.’ (2 Cor. 5:10-11)
Put simply, if we know what is coming and
have been forewarned about it, then we would be wise to prepare ourselves and to
live proactively in the light of it.
We need to live every day in the light of the fact that Christ’s judgement
of our lives as believers and of our work for him is indeed coming one day. So we should live our life and
handle our relationships and our ministry in the light of how God himself views
them.
In a similar way, Paul exhorted us to ‘run
the race’ in our Christian life as though we are expecting to win the prize:
‘Do you not know that in a race all
the runners run, but only one gets the prize?
Run in such a way as to get the prize.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last;
but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running
aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so
that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the
prize.’ (1 Cor.
9:24-27)
When he returns, the Lord wants it to be an
occasion of mutual joy, rather than one of regret and disappointment for us. So he wants us to live and work for him in
this present time just like the faithful steward did, rather than like the
worthless one who forsook his responsibilities.
He wants us to be like the servants who invested their God-given talents
and gained more for their master, rather than like the worthless servant who
buried the only talent he had been given and did nothing at all with it (Matt.
24:45-51, 25:1-30). The Lord does not want us to
suffer eternal loss by missing out on the reward that we might otherwise receive
from him (cf. Rev. 3:11).
This suggests the following simple
principles:
·
We
should confess any and all sin in our life when we become consciously aware of
it, and deal with it.
·
We
should live in the love of God, both for ourselves and for other people. We should be kind and loving towards others,
and we should make it our goal to please the Lord (2 Cor. 5:9, 1 John 4:16-18,
Jude v.21).
·
We
should fear the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly and faithfully throughout our
life, looking forward to his return, rather than simply living unto
ourselves. We should engage meaningfully
and fruitfully with the work of his kingdom, rather than consuming our time and
energy on things which are fruitless and ultimately worthless.
‘Therefore, my dear brothers, stand
firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of
the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.’ (1 Cor. 15:58)
‘Therefore, as we have opportunity,
let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of
believers.’ (Gal.
6:10)
‘Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the
Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the
Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ
you are serving.’ (Col. 3:23-24)
When
will the bema seat of Christ take
place?
We should not conflate the bema seat of Christ with the final
judgement at the great white throne (cf. Rev. 20:11-15). They are different events. The final judgement takes place after the
millennial reign of Christ, whereas the passages which I have
referred to above make it clear that the bema
seat, the time of evaluation and of giving account as believers, takes place
when the Master returns. This is true of
both the parable of the faithful steward and the parable of the talents (Matt.
24:45-51, 25:14-30). Indeed, these two
parables were given by Jesus in the context of his teaching about the rapture,
as we saw in chapter 6.
Hence, many commentators believe that the bema seat of Christ will take place
after the rapture when we are in heaven with the Lord during the time of
tribulation on earth, but before the wedding supper of the Lamb which will take
place towards the end of this (cf. Rev. 19:6-9). And this, of course, is the most natural time
in which it could take place. The
accountability and evaluation of his servants is the first thing a returning
master would deal with after his return.
We are the deeply loved bride of Christ
and we are waiting in anticipation for our Lord’s return. After we have been through the rapture and
are in heaven, he will take us through this time of evaluation and
accountability, to settle accounts with us as it were, and so to commend and
reward his bride for her faithfulness to him. This will lead on naturally to freely enjoying
eternal life in heaven and to the celebration of the wedding supper of the
Lamb, and then after this to returning with Christ to earth as his bride, as Figure 15.1 shows:
Figure 15.1 The bema seat and the wedding supper happen during the tribulation
[1] To understand the difference
between building our lives and ministries with ‘gold, silver and costly stones’
rather than with ‘wood, hay and straw,’ please refer to “Becoming Worth Your
Weight In Gold”, chapter 22 in my book Living
on the Rock, Second Edition, Lulu Publishing: USA, 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment