Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

4. The judge is a person of power to execute sentence.

God is his own executioner. As he legislates and sentences, so he punishes. All judicial functions coalesce in him.

the Bible’s proclamation of God’s work as Judge is part of its witness to his character.

It shows us also that the heart

of the justice which expresses God’s nature is retribution, the rendering to persons what they have deserved;

To reward good with good, and evil with evil, is...

The retributive principle applies throughout: Christians as well as non-Christians will receive according to their works.

God has resolved to be every person’s Judge, rewarding every person according to his works.

Retribution is the inescapable moral law of creation; God will see that each person sooner or later receives what he deserves—if not here, then hereafter. This is one of the basic facts of life. And, being made in God’s image, we all

know in our hearts that this is right. This is ho...

the character of God is the guarantee that all wrongs will be righted someday;

The truth is that part of God’s moral perfection is his perfection in judgment. Would a God who did not care about the difference between right and wrong be a good and admirable Being?

Moral indifference would be an imperfection in God, not a perfection. But not to judge the world would be to show moral indifference. The final proof that God is a perfect moral Being, not indifferent to questions of right and wrong, is the fact that he has committed himself to judge the world.

the reality of divine judgment must have a direct effect on our view of life.

it must be emphasized that the doctrine of divine judgment, and particularly of the final judgment, is not to be thought of primarily as a bogey with which to frighten men into an outward form of conventional “righteousness.”

its main thrust is as a revelation of the moral character of God, and an imparting of moral significance to human life.

The doctrine of final judgment

stresses man’s accountability and the certainty that justice will finally triumph over all the wrongs which are part and parcel of life here and now.

This doctrine gives meaning to life. . . . The Christian view of judgment means that history moves to a goal.

Judgment protects the idea of the triumph of God and of good.

Judgment means that evil will be disposed of authoritatively, decisively, finally. Judgment means that in the end God’s will will be perfectly done.

Jesus constantly affirmed that in the day when all appear before God’s throne to receive the abiding and eternal consequences of the life they have lived, he himself will be the Father’s agent in judgment, and his word of acceptance or rejection will be decisive.

A time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned” (RSV).

God’s own appointment has made Jesus Christ inescapable. He stands at the end of life’s road for everyone without exception.

Final judgment, as we saw, will be according to our works—that is, our doings, our whole course of life. The relevance of our doings is not that they ever merit an award from the court—they fall too far short of perfection to do that—but that they provide an index of what is in the heart—what,

words show what you are inside.

Once we see that the significance of works in the last judgment is that of a spiritual character index, it becomes possible to answer a question which puzzles many.

How do free forgiveness and justification by faith square with judgment according to works?

First, the gift of justification certainly shields believers from being condemned and banished from God’s presence as sinners.

second, the gift of justification does not at all shield believers from being assessed as Christians, and from forfeiting good which others will enjoy if it turns out that as Christians they have been slack, mischievous and destructive.

Reward and loss signify an enriched or impoverished relationship with God, though in what ways it is beyond our present power to know.

Final judgment will also be according to our knowledge.

“where a man has been given much, much will be expected of him”

In every case the Judge of all the earth will do right.

Jesus the Lord, like his Father, is holy and pure; we are neither. We live under his eye, he knows our secrets, and on judgment day the whole of our past life will be played back, as it were, before him, and brought under review. If we know ourselves at all, we know we are not fit to face him.

What then are we to do? The New Testament answer is: Call on the coming Judge to be your present Savior.

As Judge, he is the law, but as Savior he is the gospel. Run from him now, and you will meet him as Judge then...

and you will then discover that you are looking forward to that future meeting with joy, knowing that there is now “no condemnati...

Whilst I draw this fleeting breath; When my eyelid...

When I soar through tracts unknown, See thee on thy judgment-throne; Rock of Ages, cleft for me,...

Wrath is an old English word defined in my dictionary as “deep, intense anger and indignation.”

wrath, the Bible tells us, is an attribute of God.

The modern habit throughout the Christian church is to play this subject down. Those who still believe in the wrath of God (not all do) say little about it;

the church mumbles on about God’s kindness but says virtually nothing about his judgment.

The fact is that the subject of divine

wrath has become taboo in modern society, and Christians by and large have accepted the taboo and conditioned themselves never to raise the matter.

One of the most striking things about the Bible is the vigor with which both Testaments emphasize the reality and terror of God’s wrath.

“A study of the concordance will show that there are more references in

Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness” (A. W. Pink, ...

The Bible labors the point that just as God is good to those who trust him, so he is ter...