‘He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’
At this time of year the
Christian church – or at least, the parts of it that follow the ancient
calendar of the church year – are at odds with the culture around us. To put
the difference bluntly, in the secular world Christmas has already started, but
in the Christian calendar we’re just starting Advent.
This orientation was brought home
to me a few years ago when I realised that in the secular world, the song ‘The
Twelve Days of Christmas’ is assumed to be about the twelve shopping days before Christmas. Is that what you
thought too? Well, it’s not! ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ refers to the fact
that in the Christian calendar, the Feast of the Nativity of Christ starts on
December 25th and runs for twelve days until January 6th,
which is the Feast of Epiphany. So the secular calendar starts Christmas before December 25th, but in
the church the celebration starts on
December 25th and runs for the twelve days afterwards.
The secular calendar and the
Christian calendar do have this in common, though – they’re both about hope. The difference, of course, is that
we’re not hoping for the same thing! The secular calendar is driven by the
retail industry, which is hoping for its most profitable time of year. In the
retail industry, Christmas starts the day after Halloween, because they need
two months to persuade you to buy into the kind of ‘hope’ they have on offer:
the hope of the most impressive looking gifts at the lowest possible price. But
in the church, we’re hoping for something much more important: the fulfillment
of God’s promises for the coming of his kingdom, an end to war and injustice,
oppression and greed, and the establishment of a world of justice and love,
community and peace. Those promises are found in the Old Testament prophecies,
and some of them are fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. But there is obviously a
future fulfillment as well, so we think not only of Jesus’ first coming at
Christmas, but his second coming ‘to judge the living and the dead’.
That phrase – ‘to judge the
living and the dead’ – comes from the Nicene Creed, and over the next three
weeks I want to explore with you three phrases from that Creed which sum up the
biblical teaching we’re celebrating in Advent. Today we’re going to look at the
theme of judgement – ‘He will come again in glory to judge the living and the
dead’. Next week we’ll think about the kingdom – ‘and his kingdom will have no
end’. On the third Sunday of Advent we’ll think about our future resurrection –
‘We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come’.
Today, then, we’re starting with
the unpopular idea of judgement: ‘He will come again in glory to judge the
living and the dead’. In the Christian world these days we’re a little shy
about speaking about judgement. In mainline churches we’ve reacted against the
excesses of what we refer to as ‘hellfire and brimstone preaching’ – the sort
of preaching that talks a lot about the Lake of Fire and the eternal torments
of the damned in hell. We don’t see ourselves as that sort of church, and we
look down on churches like that, and call them ‘fundamentalist’.
However, I’ve noticed that we’re
not entirely consistent here. Paradoxically, there’s a real hunger in our
society for some sort of accountability. There’s a common idea that the
criminal justice system is too soft on criminals, that jails are a sort of
luxury hotel experience, and that we need tougher sentencing to act as a real
deterrent to crime. And when we look at the big picture of the global situation,
many people long for a time when mass murderers and war criminals could
actually be brought to justice. How can it be a just world when murderous
dictators get away with their heinous crimes without ever being brought to
account? Are they going to go unpunished forever? What sort of God would allow
that to happen?
We hear this sort of question
often in the psalms. We find some of those psalms offensive today - like Psalm
137, which blesses the person who bashes Babylonian babies against rocks. But
we need to understand that the people who first prayed those words had
experienced exactly that sort of
atrocity from Babylonian armies. The people were crying out to God: ‘Are you
going to let them get away with this?’ And the answer is, no, God is not going
to let them get away with it. The biblical teaching is quite clear; there is a
God of justice, and he will hold people accountable for what they have done.
There’s a popular caricature of
the Bible story that goes like this: in the Old Testament we read about a stern
God of judgement, but in the New Testament Jesus sets us straight and tells us
that God is really a gentle father who wouldn’t hurt a flea. But anyone who has
read the Bible knows that this is a caricature. All the sternest warnings about
judgement and hell in the Bible come from the mouth of Jesus himself!
After all, Jesus is the one who
talks about people being ‘cast into the outer darkness, where there is weeping
and gnashing of teeth’. Jesus is also the one who tells the parable of the sheep
and the goats, where he pictures the day when the nations will be gathered
before him and be separated into two groups like a shepherd separating sheep
from goats. He will say to the sheep ‘Come into the kingdom, because I was
hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, naked or
sick or in prison and you helped me’. ‘When did we do that, Lord?’ they will
ask, and he will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, when you did it to the least of
these members of my family, you did it to me’. But the goats don’t experience
such a pleasant surprise; they’re heading for the eternal fire prepared for the
devil and his angels, Jesus says, because when they saw Jesus in need, they
refused to help him. ‘When, Lord?’ they ask, and Jesus replies, ‘When you refused
to help the least of these, it was really me you were refusing to help’.
So it’s not true to say that the
God of Jesus is not a God of judgement; the note of judgement is very clear in
the teaching of Jesus. And there’s an uncomfortable shift in it; it’s not just
about other people, which I would
prefer it to be – particularly heinous war criminals, for instance. Bruce
Cockburn says in one of his songs, ‘Everyone wants to see justice done – to somebody else!’ But the teaching of
Jesus won’t allow me to wriggle out of my own responsibility so easily. Human
evil in the world is actually the sum of all the acts of evil committed by
individual human beings – and I’m one of them. This includes active sins –
things like cruelty, violence, betrayal, greed, selfishness and the like – but it
also includes passive sins, like the times I just can’t be bothered to love my
neighbour as myself.
God’s judgements on those actions
are not arbitrary; in fact, in this life, they often seem to consist of the
natural consequences of the choices we make. On the night of his betrayal Jesus
told his disciples who wanted to defend him with violence to put away their
swords because, he said, “all who take the sword will perish by the sword”
(Matthew 26:52); live by the code of dog eat dog, and sooner or later you’ll be
the dog who gets eaten. Live by the principle of selfishness, and you shouldn’t
be surprised if no one wants to put themselves out to help you when your time
of need comes. Live your whole life rejecting God’s company, and you may find
yourself spending eternity in
isolation from him; as C.S. Lewis once said, hell may well be God’s greatest
compliment to our human freedom of choice.
The same principle applies to
God’s rewards; they often seem to be the natural consequences of godly choices.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, says Jesus, “for
they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy”
(Matthew 5:5-6). So often in life, we find that love is its own reward; people
who cultivate love and forgiveness do in fact seem to enjoy their lives more
than those who cultivate hatred and bitterness. We shouldn’t be surprised to
find that principle extending to eternity as well.
The Nicene Creed
says, ‘He will come again to judge the living and the dead’. The New Testament does
teach us that there will be a day of accountability, when our actions will be
produced as evidence for the faith that is in us. But some might object to this emphasis on judgement on the
basis of our actions. Doesn’t the New
Testament say that we are put right with God through faith? Haven’t we said over and over again that we don’t have to
obey the Law in order to be saved, but simply put our trust in Jesus? Are we
going to go back on this now, and recreate a religion of fear, in which we obey
God because we’re scared of hell?
Absolutely not. This is not what
the New Testament is teaching us. Certainly, we don’t have to measure up to an
impossible standard before God will accept us into his family. Jesus died for
our sins, and free forgiveness is offered to all who will come to him in faith.
Trust in Christ, and you will experience forgiveness and new life – that’s the
message that’s proclaimed loud and clear in the New Testament.
But what the New Testament is also
teaching us is that true faith will always show itself in acts of love and
compassion – and if it doesn’t, it’s not true faith. Do you remember the story
of how Jesus was teaching in a house one day and four men brought him a paralyzed
friend, lying on a mat, in the hope that Jesus would heal him? The house was
full of people, and there was no room for them to bring their friend in, so
they ended up digging a hole in the roof of the house and letting their friend
down with ropes, right in front of where Jesus was standing.
What happened next? Mark says,
‘When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are
forgiven”’ (Mark 2:5). But what did Jesus actually see there? You can’t see
faith – what you can see are the actions
faith produces – in this case, the actions of four men letting their friend
down in front of Jesus because they loved him and wanted Jesus to heal him.
Jesus saw their actions and rewarded
their faith – and that’s what he will
do for us as well in the last day.
So the question I need to
consider is this: If I were to be put on trial for being a Christian, would
there be enough evidence to convict me? And if I were to ask, ‘Well, what sort
of evidence would be admissible?’ all I need to do is go right back to the
parable of the Sheep and the Goats, where Jesus talks about feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, caring for the sick and visiting those in prison. Or
perhaps the parable of the Good Samaritan, where we’re told that anyone in need
is our neighbour, so we’re to go through our day with our eyes wide open to
human need wherever we find it. Or the parable of the wise man building his
house on the rock; we’re told that he represents those who hear the words of
Jesus and put them into practice.
Of course, it’s absolutely
impossible for us to live up to this standard apart from the work of Christ in
us. That’s part of what faith is all about. It’s like the little boy who’s
learning to shoot with a pool cue for the first time. His dad stands behind him,
puts his hand on the little boy’s hands, points the cue in the right direction,
moves the boy’s hands and makes the shot through him. The cue ball shoots
straight and true, connects with the target ball and drops it into the corner
pocket with a satisfying ‘plop’, and the little boy is so excited – he’s such a
good shot with a pool cue! His dad is just as excited and congratulates him,
even though he knows that it’s really his own skill that has put that ball in
the pocket.
That’s what the work of Christ in
us is like. We have all received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we all have
the pattern of Jesus’ life to follow. What’s needed on our part is an active
choice: ‘Yes, I will put the teaching of Jesus into practice today in such and
such a way; Lord, please help me to do it’. With a prayer like that we are able
to call on resources far beyond our own strength and ingenuity. We may think
we’re the ones holding the cue and making the shot, but in reality the hands
that are doing the deed are far stronger than ours.
The earliest Christian confession
of faith was a simple statement: ‘Jesus is Lord’. To Paul, this was good news,
because it meant that the Roman emperor was not
Lord! The Roman emperor might think that all his citizens are ultimately
accountable to him, but the Gospel tells us that the one we’re truly
accountable to is not some godless tyrant, but the Son of God who loved us and
gave his life on the Cross for us. So let us put our faith in him, and let us
put that faith into practice in acts of love and compassion, so that by his
grace we may stand before him with joy and confidence on the day of his
appearing.
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