Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
CHAPTER XXX
JUDGMENT: WHEN AND WHAT?
WE must now proceed to what comes after death. And here,
before we can come to details, there are some misconceptions as to the very
idea of judgment which we must examine by the light of Scripture, and seek to
remove.
In Mr. Constables volume upon Hades, so often referred to
in the earlier stages of our inquiry, he has two chapters of considerable
importance to his argument which we have as yet scarcely glanced at.
Their subjects are respectively, "The Time of Judgment" and "The Time of
Retribution." The general object of these is to show that neither judgment nor
retribution can take place until the resurrection, and we shall quote some
passages that we may have a clear view of the issues before us.
Chap.
xiii., xiv.
His first arguments, grounded upon his peculiar views of
death and of the nature of man, I may pass over. He next brings before us what
the Lord says of Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, as to a future day of
judgment (Matt. x. 15; xi. 22; Mark vi. 11), and "what He affirmed of these
heathen He also affirmed of the Jews living in His own days. Both are to be
tried in this coming judgment day. And what He says of the Jewish cities of His
own time, we suppose to be equally true of the Jews of all previous time. . .
We are thus told that for four thousand years there was no such thing as
judging men when they were dead."
This judgment of the great day, Mr.
C. argues, our Lord tells us "is when He returns from that right hand of God
where He now is. He tells us this in His parable of the talents. It is
after a long time the lord of those servants cometh and reckoneth with
them. There is no reckoning with good or with wicked servants until the
Lord comes."
Mr. Constable goes on to show us how -
"our Platonic
theology has virtually nullified this great truth of Scripture. It has not
denied in words the great day of future judgment of which Christ and His
apostles speak, but it has robbed it of all its significance and meaning by
telling us that there is another judgment before it which effects for every man
separately what the final judgment has to do". He quotes in proof of this the
Roman Catholic "Key of Paradise" and Pooles Commentary, the latter of
which "tells us that after souls by death are separated from their
bodies, they come to judgment, and thus every particular one is handed over by
death to the bar of God the great Judge, and so is dispatched by His sentence
to its particular state and place with its respective people. At the great and
general assize, the day of judgment, shall the general and universal one take
place, when all sinners in their entire persons. bodies and souls united, shall
be adjudged to their final unalterable and eternal state."
Further, as to retribution, Mr. Constable quotes 2 Cor. v. 10 as -
"decisive that no retribution whatsoever, be it reward or punishment, takes
place before the resurrection and the judgment. There can be no question that
made known or manifest should be the translation of the Greek verb
in this verse, as it is its translation in the next. Bengel expresses its sense
when he says that it means not merely that we should appear in the body, but
that we should be made known, together with all our secret deeds. . . The
judgment seat of Christ is that judgment seat which He sets up when He comes
and raises up the dead. . . not until then will retribution take place ; not
until then will the sinner be punished, and the saint receive his reward; i.e,
it is in the body, and not out of the body that retribution takes place. . .
Paul was here only following the teaching of his Master. Nowhere in the
teaching of Christ are His disciples taught to expect their reward, or any part
of it, when they are dead. The very idea of dead men recompensed is enough to
excite scorn against the school of thought which has taught it, until, from the
perpetual repetition of the nonsense, we could not see its folly. But not to
the state of death, but to the resurrection from that state of death, does our
blessed Lord teach His people to look. When thou makest a feast, He
says, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and thou shalt be
blessed for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed at the
resurrection of the just. . . But are there, according to our Platonic
theologians, any passages of Scripture which do directly state that before
resurrection retribution of any kind, reward or punishment. takes place? Yes,
they say, there is one. Where is it? In Luke xvi. 23. What do these words form
part of? A parable! What are the words? In hades he lifted up his eyes,
being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
"
He then has the usual objections to employing a parable to teach
doctrine: all which we have already looked at.
Now there is truth in
Mr. Constables objections to the common doctrine here, as we shall see.
The statements he objects to are not clear - do not distinguish between things
which it is important not to confound. Especially the Romanist quotation (which
I have not given, and which applies 2 Cor. v. 10 to the intermediate state)
does clash entirely with Scripture. But then Mr. Constables error on the
other side is as plain. He meets a false issue with a partial truth, and is
certainly no less superficial than those he is opposing. The full statement
harmonizes all Scripture, parable and all else, instead of arraying one text
against another.
The very chapter last quoted from, as we have seen,
bears witness, not in the last parable but in the lesson which our Lord deduces
from the first, that when the righteous "FAIL" (that is, at death therefore,
not resurrection) they are "received into everlasting habitations" (Lk xvi. 9).
And this the last parable shows, in whatever figurative language, with regard
to Lazarus. And it is in express contrast to this that the rich man in hades is
tormented, as he is "comforted." Thus there is no room to doubt the meaning of
the solemn words. The rich man is certainly pictured (and even Mr. Constable
cannot deny that) as receiving retribution in hades, before the resurrection
and the final judgment, and if the Lord did not mean that, He would not have
used words which every one must admit give that impression, without one word of
warning. It is useless to talk of trees speaking, etc., in the same breath with
this. By the one no one could be deceived. In the other the Lord would be
coming in with what men represent as false and heathenish ideas actually in the
very minds of His hearers: for He spoke to Pharisees. And we are forbidden
therefore by our reverence for Him, who was never anything less than Incarnate
Truth itself, to allow that He could so trifle with untruth, and help to
confirm in error the souls of those He came to rescue out of it.
Thus
far as to the parable. But as to the righteous at death being received into
everlasting habitations, we cannot so ignore the direct teaching both of our
.Lord and His apostles, as to allow Mr. Constable unchecked to assure us that
we have no other Scripture than that just looked at to establish such a
doctrine. He may believe that when our Lord said to the thief by His side,
"To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise," He meant only that he should fall
asleep for perhaps two thousand years, so that it would be no matter to him
whether that promise was kept or no! (What matter to him indeed, if he did not
wake up forever? That quiet "sleep," in which the sleeper vanishes altogether,
would not know one uneasy dream in consequence!) And so he may please to
interpret Pauls desire to depart and be with Christ, and similar things.
All this we have before examined. But then we must believe that we have some
Scripture for a truth like this.
Mr. Constable may say, perhaps, "I am
stating you have only one Scripture for retribution in the death state." Well,
but the one involves the other. The righteous die, and the wicked. If death be
extinction, the righteous could not be "comforted" in it, any more than the
wicked "tormented." Mr. C. himself quits rightly puts both upon the very same
footing. We should at least want proof of a difference, if difference indeed
there were. We should need proof that the wicked were not tormented, if we were
assured that the righteous were comforted.
Thus every text for the one
is an argument for the other also; and when the language even of a parable
comes in to sustain the prior conviction, we must be permitted to think that it
neither stands alone, nor gives an uncertain sound either. We do not expect
that it should be much dwelt upon. We have just been considering how little
even the resurrection of the wicked is. Enough is given to establish the
doctrine. Warnings and promises alike may be expected to be connected rather
with a final and everlasting state, than with one necessarily to pass away. Yet
we do not accept Mr. Constables statement as to there being only one
text. There are others, as Isa. xxiv. 21, 22; 1 Pet. iii. 19, 20, the first of
which speaks of the "kings of the earth" whom Revelation (xix. .19, 21) shows
us "slain with the sword" at Christs coming in glory, while Isaiah speaks
of them as prisoners shut up in the pit, to be visited after many days; i.e.,
at the judgment of the dead, after the millennium. While the latter speaks
correspondingly of those disobedient in Noahs days, as now "spirits in
prison."
Both texts assure us of retribution in the intermediate state.
But Mr. Constable would allege doubtless, as he has against the views
of others, that "retribution before judgment is contrary to all the principles
of the divine and human law." I allow it fully. What he fails to see is that,
as far as the settlement of personal guilt and condemnation is concerned, man -
the world - is ALREADY judged - already condemned: a thing which, if it be not
plain to him, as it would seem it is not, is none the less abundantly plain in
Scripture.
We have already seen that God by the ministry of death and
condemnation was for centuries pressing home upon man his lost condition, and
that the apostle could speak for Christians in saying, "we know that what
things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that
every mouth may be stopped, and ALL THE WORLD become guilty before God." Is
that, or is it not, a sentence of God and is it to be passed, or passed
already? Certainly, it is long since passed, and this sentence of the law was,
as we have seen, only itself the affirming and confirming of a prior sentence,
of which every grey hair in man was witness.
It is true man might,
alas, prophesy smooth things to himself; and dream of being able to face God
about his sins, and on the other hand it is blessedly true that, wherever there
was real bowing to the sentence, the mercy of God was ready to manifest itself:
real "repentance" is always "unto life." But it needed no judgment seat for him
to manifest such mercy, wherever He knew a soul had bowed to own its guilt;
while with all others judgment had not to be pronounced, but had been. This is
what makes so solemn and so blessed that great truth of Ecclesiastes, the
settlement of the question of the book "the spirit shall return to God that
gave it." Not yet indeed the judgment seat, where He would "bring every WORK
into judgment," but the assurance at least then, if never before, of PERSONAL
acceptance, or of personal rejection.
Mr. Constable does not see - as
many do not - the difference between these two things. We must look at them,
therefore, more in detail, and the Scriptures which affirm and illustrate them.
Personal acceptance with God is NEVER on the ground of our works. "By
the works of the law" - in which all good works are summed up - "shall no flesh
living be justified." So the word of God decisively says. On the one hand not
the most perfect upon earth (as Job was in his day) but must, with Job, put his
hand upon his mouth in the presence of God, or open it but to say, "I am vile:"
"I abhor myself; and repent in dust and ashes."
On the other hand, let
any soul but take this latter ground, and "if we confess our sins, God is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness."
The future day of judgment (whether we speak of saint
or sinner) is, therefore, never in Scripture for the settlement of personal
acceptance or the reverse. We have already seen that personal judgment for a
sinful creature before a holy God can only be condemnation. The saved are saved
here and now, and do not "come into judgment." The doom of the unsaved is
determined in the present life also, and if men ignore it here, the spirit
returning to God cannot remain ignorant. It is a "spirit in prison," already
with the consciousness of wrath upon it, if not received into "everlasting
habitations." This is the rich mans portion, where the wrath of God is
the consuming fire by which he is tormented, and yet resurrection plainly has
not come.
Does this set aside the reality of the judgment to come? By
no means. It only affirms the reality of the judgment pronounced. The judgment
to come is the judgment of works, and there is what answers to this even for
the saint. But he comes to it in resurrection glory, and in the image of his
Lord. Can he be put upon trial to decide the future of one already glorified?
Clearly not. But he does stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and receives
for the things done in the body, as a question of reward obtained or lost.
Eternal life is not a reward, but the free gift of God in Christ, and
justification is by His blood alone. Sonship, membership of the body of Christ,
a home in the Fathers house, are all fruits of the same blessed work, His
and not ours. And these can never be brought in question: judgment never is
brought in to settle these.
Similarly then as to the lost. The judgment
to come does not settle that they are lost. If they come forth to a
resurrection of judgment, it is not a judgment which is to decide if they can
stand before God or not; but they are, as the saint is not, "judged,"
themselves personally, "according to their works" (Rev. xx. 13). They get a
measured recompense, as the saint does, but a recompense of judgment and
nothing else: "few" or "many stripes," as the case may be; an absolutely
righteous apportionment for the sins committed in the body. This is the
judgment of works, as distinct from the settlement of whether lost or saved as
is the reward of works for the righteous.
What has helped to confuse
the minds of many has been a question of prophetic interpretation; and it helps
to show how little there can be a thorough settlement of the question of
eternal judgment without a previous settlement of what many judge so lightly as
"the millennarian question." Failing to see the Lords coming as
antecedent to the millennium, and the purification of the earth by judgment in
order to the blessing, the separation of the sheep from the goats, in Matt.
xxv., has been looked at as the same thing with the judgment of the dead more
than a thousand years later. It was inevitable in this way that the latter
should be supposed (yet in opposition to the plainest passages elsewhere) one
in which righteous and wicked would stand together, and the former be
discriminated from the latter by their works.
It should be plain,
however, that in Matt. xxv. 31-46, we have a judgment of living nations when
the Lord comes to earth and sets up His throne there, and not a judgment of the
dead, when the earth and the heavens are fled away; and also that the account
of the taking up of the saints to meet the Lord in the air in 1 Thess. iv.,
before He appears to the world at all (Col. iii. 4), is quite inconsistent with
such an interpretation. There is no hint of resurrection in our Lords
prophecy at all. And the nature of the investigation differs much from that in
Revelation. The truth is, that "the nations" in the former scripture are those
who, after the taking away of the saints of the present dispensation, and
during an interval which takes place between that and His appearing with them,
have received a final call by the preaching of the coming kingdom. It would be
too lengthy a matter to enter upon here. But the broad characteristic
differences between this and the Apocalyptic vision, should be sufficient at
least to prevent their being confounded.
Into judgment he who now
believes in Christ can never come. So He declares. "As it is appointed unto men
once to die, and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear
the sins of many, and to them that look for Him shall He appear the second
time, apart from sin, unto salvation." If "God has appointed a day in which He
will judge the world by that Man whom He hath ordained," the saints whom He
declares to be even now "not of the world even as He is not of the world,"
shall (not be judged with it, but) "judge the world" with Him (1 Cor. vi. 2).
They are thus seen upon the throne in Rev. xx. 4-6 as having part in the first
resurrection; and not till a thousand years afterwards does the judgment of the
dead take place. God has taken care to separate thus widely between His
peoples portion and that of those who hate Him.
The truth is what
alone makes all harmonious. Present judgment has been passed upon the world.
The very cross itself as His portion at mens hands, has only confirmed
finally that sentence, to be executed when He comes.* Out of it God in His
grace is calling men and saving them. His saved are upon the ground of Christ
and His work, not their own. The unsaved are still under the universal sentence
already judged; the judgment of works, the full measurement of each mans
due, being still to come. This is not a question of personal acceptance or
rejection, which is on other ground, but is the solemn and exact award of deeds
done in the body, as Scripture says. The doer and the deeds are questions,
however connected, still distinct.
*John xii. 31-33; xvi. 8-11.
Go To Chapter Thirty-One
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