Jul 11
15
Will Believers Be Called Into Judgment For Their Sins?
“If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities,
O Lord, who shall stand?”
The question is often raised, “Will believers be called into judgment for their sins; or will God judge his elect for their sins and failures, committed after they were saved, and expose them in the day of judgment?”
The only reason that question is ever raised is because many try to retain threats and fears like those associated with the Roman doctrine of purgatory, by which they hope to hold over God’s saints the whip and terror of the law.
Let me be emphatically clear. There is absolutely no sense in which those who trust the Lord Jesus Christ shall ever be made to pay for their sins. Here are seven reasons why that statement must be so.
1. Our sins were imputed to Christ. They cannot and shall not be imputed to us again (Rom. 4:8). God declares that he sees no sin in his people (Num. 23:21; Jer. 50:20). If he did, we could not stand before him.
2. Christ paid our debt to God’s law and justice (Gal. 3:13). Justice cannot demand that the same debt be paid twice, by our Surety and by us. God will never require us to pay.
3. God who has blotted out our transgressions will never write them against us again (Isa. 43:25). Because he has blotted them out of the record book, he does not and cannot remember them. Law cannot remember a crime that is not on the books.
4. He who covered our sins will never uncover them. As the blood of the paschal lamb sprinkled on the mercy-seat ceremonially covered the sins of Israel, represented in the broken law within the ark, so the blood of Christ completely covers (by atonement) our sins from the eye of omniscient justice (Rom. 5:10-11).
5. The perfect righteousness of Christ has been imputed to us. We are now made to be the very righteousness of God in him. Just as our sins became his by imputation, his righteousness is ours by imputation (2 Cor. 5:21).
6. On the day of judgment, God’s elect are never represented as having done any evil, but only good (Matt. 25:31-40). Christ’s perfect obedience is ours. His righteousness is ours. We shall be justly rewarded with eternal life because in him we deserve it (Heb. 9:12).
7. The day of judgment will be a day of glory and bliss for Christ and his people, not a day of mourning and sorrow. It will be a marriage supper, not a marriage split. Christ will glory in his Church (Eph. 5:25-27; Jude 24-25). The triune God will display the glory of his grace in us (Eph. 2:7). We will glory in our God (Rev. 19:6-7). Don Fortner.