Systematic Theology (Volume 3 of 3) :: V. The Last Judgment.

V. The Last Judgment.

While the Scriptures represent all punishment of individual transgressors and all manifestations of God's vindicatory justice in the history of nations as acts or processes of judgment, they also intimate that these temporal judgments are only partial and imperfect, and that they are therefore to be concluded with a final and complete vindication of God's righteousness. This will be accomplished by making known to the universe the characters of all men, and by awarding to them corresponding destinies.

Passages describing temporal or spiritual judgment are: Ps. 9:7—“He hath prepared his throne for judgment”; Is. 26:9—“when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness”; Mat. 16:27, 28—“For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then shall he render unto every man according to his deeds. Verily I say unto you, There be some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom”; John 3:18, 19—“he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil”; 9:39—“For judgment came I into this world, that they that see not may see; and that they that see may become blind”; 12:31—“Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.”

Passages describing the final judgment are: Mat. 25:31-46—“But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats....” Acts 17:31—“he hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead”; Rom. 2:16—“in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ”; 2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad”; Heb. 9:27, 28—“And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment; so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait for him, unto salvation”; Rev. 20:12—“And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

Delitzsch: “The fall of Jerusalem was the day of the Lord, the bloody and fiery dawn of the last great day—the day of days, the ending-day of all days, the settling day of all days, the day of the promotion of time into eternity, the day which for the church breaks through and breaks off the night of this present world.” E. G. Robinson: “Judgment begins here. The callousing of conscience in this life is a penal infliction. Punishment begins in this life and is carried on in the next. We have no right to assert that there are no positive inflictions, but, if there are none, still every word of Scripture [pg 1024]threatening would stand. There is no day of judgment or of resurrection all at one time. Judgment is an eternal process. The angels in 2 Pet. 2:4—‘cast ... down to hell’—suffer the self-perpetuating consequences of transgression..... Man is being judged every day. Every man honest with himself knows where he is going to. Those who are not honest with themselves are playing a trick, and, if they are not careful, they will get a trick played on them.”

1. The nature of the final judgment.

The final judgment is not a spiritual, invisible, endless process, identical with God's providence in history, but is an outward and visible event, occurring at a definite period in the future. This we argue from the following considerations:

(a) The judgment is something for which the evil are “reserved ” (2 Peter 2:4, 9); something to be expected in the future (Acts 24:25; Heb. 10:27); something after death (Heb. 9:27); something for which the resurrection is a preparation (John 5:29).

2 Pet. 2:4, 9—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell ... reserved unto judgment ... the lord knoweth how ... to keep the unrighteous unto punishment unto the day of judgment”; Acts 24:25—“as he reasoned of righteousness, and self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified”; Heb. 10:27—“a certain fearful expectation of judgment”; 9:27—“it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment”; John 5:29—“the resurrection of judgment.”

(b) The accompaniments of the judgment, such as the second coming of Christ, the resurrection, and the outward changes of the earth, are events which have an outward and visible, as well as an inward and spiritual, aspect. We are compelled to interpret the predictions of the last judgment upon the same principle.

John 5:28, 29—“Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment”; 2 Pet. 3:7, 10—“the day of judgment ... the day of the Lord ... in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat”; 2 Thess. 1:7, 8, 2:10—“the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God ... when he shall come ... in that day.”

(c) God's justice, in the historical and imperfect work of judgment, needs a final outward judgment as its vindication. “A perfect justice must judge, not only moral units, but moral aggregates; not only the particulars of life, but the life as a whole.” The crime that is hidden and triumphant here, and the goodness that is here maligned and oppressed, must be brought to light and fitly recompensed. “Otherwise man is a Tantalus—longing but never satisfied”; and God's justice, of which his outward administration is the expression, can only be regarded as approximate.

Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 194—“The Egyptian Book of the Dead represents the deceased person as standing in the presence of the goddess Maat , who is distinguished by the ostrich-feather on her head; she holds the sceptre in one hand and the symbol of life in the other. The man's heart, which represents his entire moral nature, is being weighed in the balance in the presence of Osiris, seated upon his throne as judge of the dead.” Rationalism believes in only present and temporal judgment; and this it regards as but the reaction of natural law: “Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht,—the world's history is the world's judgment” (Schiller, Resignation). But there is an inner connection between present, temporal, spiritual judgments, and the final, outward, complete judgment of God. Nero's murder of his mother was not the only penalty of his murder of Germanicus.

Dorner: “With Christ's appearance, faith sees that the beginning of the judgment and of the end has come. Christians are a prophetic race. Without judgment, Christianity [pg 1025]would involve a sort of dualism: evil and good would be of equal might and worth. Christianity cannot always remain a historic principle alongside of the contrary principle of evil. It is the only reality.” God will show or make known his righteousness with regard to: (1) the disparity of lots among men; (2) the prosperity of the wicked; (3) the permission of moral evil in general; (4) the consistency of atonement with justice. “The s??t??e?a t?? a????? (‘end of the world,’ Mat. 13:39) = stripping hostile powers of their usurped might, revelation of their falsity and impotence, consigning them to the past. Evil shall be utterly cut off, given over to its own nothingness, or made a subordinate element.”

A great statesman said that what he dreaded for his country was not the day of judgment, but the day of no judgment. “Jove strikes the Titans down, Not when they first begin their mountain-piling, But when another rock would crown their work.”R. W. Emerson: “God said: I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ears the morning brings The outrage of the poor.” Royce, The World and the Individual, 2:384 sq.—“If God's life is given to free individual souls, then God's life can be given also to free nations and to a free race of men. There may be an apostasy of a family, nation, race, and a judgment of each according to their deeds.”

The Expositor, March, 1898—“It is claimed that we are being judged now, that laws execute themselves, that the system of the universe is automatic, that there is no need for future retribution. But all ages have agreed that there is not here and now any sufficient vindication of the principle of eternal justice. The mills of the gods grind slowly. Physical immorality is not proportionately punished. Deterioration is not an adequate penalty. Telling a second lie does not recompense the first. Punishment includes pain, and here is no pain. That there is not punishment here is due, not to law, but to grace.”

Denney, Studies in Theology, 240, 241—“The dualistic conception of an endless suspense, in which good and evil permanently balance each other and contest with each other the right to inherit the earth, is virtually atheistic, and the whole Bible is a protest against it.... It is impossible to overestimate the power of the final judgment, as a motive, in the primitive church. On almost every page of St. Paul, for instance, we see that he lives in the presence of it; he lets the awe of it descend into his heart to keep his conscience quick.”

2. The object of the final judgment.

The object of the final judgment is not the ascertainment, but the manifestation, of character, and the assignment of outward condition corresponding to it.

(a) To the omniscient Judge, the condition of all moral creatures is already and fully known. The last day will be only “the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”

They are inwardly judged when they die, and before they die; they are outwardly judged at the last day: Rom. 2:5, 6—“treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his works”—see Meyer on this passage; not “against the day of wrath,” but “in the day of wrath”—wrath existing beforehand, but breaking out on that day. 1 Tim. 5:24, 25—“Some men's sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some men also they follow after. In like manner also there are good works that are evident; and such as are otherwise cannot be hid”; Rev. 14:13—“for their works follow with them”—as close companions, into God's presence and judgment (Ann. Par. Bible).

Epitaph: “Hic jacet in expectatione diei supremi.... Qualis erat, dies iste indicabit”—“Here lies, in expectation of the last day.... Of what sort he was, that day will show.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:3—“In the corrupted currents of this world Offence's glided hand may shove by justice. But 'tis not so above. There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults. To give in evidence”; King John, 4:2—“Oh, when the last account 'twixt heaven and earth Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal [the warrant for the murder of Prince Arthur] Witness against us to damnation.” “Not all your piety nor wit Can lure it [justice] back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out one word of it.”

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(b) In the nature of man, there are evidences and preparations for this final disclosure. Among these may be mentioned the law of memory, by which the soul preserves the records of its acts, both good and evil (Luke 16:25); the law of conscience, by which men involuntarily anticipate punishment for their own sins (Rom. 2:15, 16; Heb. 10:27); the law of character, by which every thought and deed makes indelible impress upon the moral nature (Heb. 3:8, 15).

The law of memory.—Luke 16:25—“Son, remember!” See Maclaren, Sermons, 1:109-122—Memory (1) will embrace all the events of the past life; (2) will embrace them all at the same moment; (3) will embrace them continuously and continually. Memory is a process of self-registry. As every business house keeps a copy of all letters sent or orders issued, so every man retains in memory the record of his sins. The mind is a palimpsest; though the original writing has been erased, the ink has penetrated the whole thickness of the parchment, and God's chemistry is able to revive it. Hudson, Dem. of Future Life, 212, 213—“Subjective memory is the retention of all ideas, however superficially they may have been impressed upon the objective mind, and it admits of no variation in different individuals. Recollection is the power of recalling ideas to the mind. This varies greatly. Sir William Hamilton calls the former ‘mental latency.’ ”

The law of conscience.—Rom. 2:15, 16—“they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them; in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ”; Heb. 10:27—“a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries.” Goethe said that his writings, taken together, constituted a great confession. Wordsworth, Excursion, III:579—“For, like a plague will memory break out. And, in the blank and solitude of things, Upon his spirit, with a fever's strength, Will conscience prey.” A man who afterwards became a Methodist preacher was converted in Whitefield's time by a vision of the judgment, in which he saw all men gathered before the throne, and each one coming up to the book of God's law, tearing open his heart before it “as one would tear open the bosom of his shirt,” comparing his heart with the things written in the book, and, according as they agreed or disagreed with that standard, either passing triumphant to the company of the blest, or going with howling to the company of the damned. No word was spoken; the Judge sat silent; the judgment was one of self-revelation and self-condemnation. See Autobiography of John Nelson (quoted in the Diary of Mrs. Kitty Trevylyan, 207, by Mrs. E. Charles, the author of The SchÖnberg-Cotta Family).

The law of character.—Heb. 3:8, 15—“Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, Like as in the day of the trial in the wilderness.... Today, if ye shall hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.” Sin leaves its marks upon the soul; men become “past feeling” (Eph. 4:19). In England, churchmen claim to tell a dissenter by his walk—not a bad sign by which to know a man. God needs only to hold up our characters to show what have been our lives. Sin leaves its scars upon the soul, as truly as lust and hatred leave their marks upon the body. So with the manifestation of the good—“the chivalry that does the right, and disregards The yea and nay of the world.... Expect nor question nor reply At what we figure as God's judgment-bar” (Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 178, 202). Mr. Edison says: “In a few years the world will be just like one big ear; it will be unsafe to speak in a house till one has examined the walls and the furniture for concealed phonographs.”But the world even now is “one big ear”, and we ourselves in our characters are writing the books of the judgment. Brooks, Foundations of ZoÖlogy, 134, 135—“Every part of the material universe contains a permanent record of every change that has taken place therein, and there is also no limit to the power of minds like ours to read and interpret the record.”

Draper, Conflict of Science and Religion: “If on a cold polished metal, as a new razor, any object, such as a wafer, be laid, and the metal breathed upon, and when the moisture has had time to disappear, the wafer be thrown off, though now the most critical inspection of the polished surface can discern no trace of any form, if we breathe once more upon it, a spectral image of the wafer comes plainly into view; and this may be done again and again. Nay, more; if the polished metal be carefully put aside where nothing can injure its surface, and be kept so for many months, on breathing upon it again, the shadowy form emerges. A shadow never falls upon a wall without [pg 1027]leaving thereon a permanent trace, a trace which might be made visible by resorting to proper processes. Upon the walls of our most private apartments, where we think the eye of intrusion is altogether shut out, and our retirement can never be profaned, there exist the vestiges of all our acts.”

Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, 113-115—“If we had power to follow and detect the minutest effects of any disturbance, each particle of existing matter would furnish a register of all that has happened. The track of every canoe, of every vessel that has yet disturbed the surface of the ocean, whether impelled by manual force or elemental power, remains forever registered in the future movement of all succeeding particles which may occupy its place. The furrow which it left is indeed filled up by the closing waters, but they draw after them other and larger portions of the surrounding element, and these again, once moved, communicate motion to others in endless succession. The air itself is one vast library, in whose pages are forever written all that man has said or even whispered. There, in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each particle the testimony of man's changeful will.”

(c) Single acts and words, therefore, are to be brought into the judgment only as indications of the moral condition of the soul. This manifestation of all hearts will vindicate not only God's past dealings, but his determination of future destinies.

Mat. 12:36—“And I say unto you, that every idle word that man shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment”; Luke 12:2, 8, 9—“there is nothing covered up, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.... Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: but he that denieth me in the presence of men shall be denied in the presence of the angels of God”; John 3:18—“He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God”; 2 Cor. 5:10—“For we must all be made manifest [not: ‘must all appear,’ as in A. Vers.] before the judgment-seat of Christ.”

Even the human judge, in passing sentence, commonly endeavors so to set forth the guilt of the criminal that he shall see his doom to be just. So God will awaken the consciences of the lost, and lead them to pass judgment on themselves. Each lost soul can say as Byron's Manfred said to the fiend that tortured his closing hour: “I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey, But was my own destroyer.” Thus God's final judgment will be only the culmination of a process of natural selection, by which the unfit are eliminated, and the fit are caused to survive.

O. J. Smith, The Essential Verity of Religion: “Belief in the immortality of the soul and belief in the accountability of the soul are fundamental beliefs in all religion. The origin of the belief in immortality is found in the fact that justice can be established in human affairs only upon the theory that the soul of man is immortal, and the belief that man is accountable for his actions eternally is based upon the conviction that justice should and will be enforced. The central verity in religion therefore is eternal justice. The sense of justice makes us men. Religion has no miraculous origin,—it is born with the awakening of man's moral sense. Friendship and love are based on reciprocity, which is justice. ‘Universal justice,’ says Aristotle, ‘includes all virtues.’ ”If by justice here is meant the divine justice, implied in the awakening of man's moral sense, we can agree with the above. As we have previously intimated, we regard the belief in immortality as an inference from the intuition of God's existence, and every new proof that God is just strengthens our conviction of immortality.

3. The Judge in the final judgment.

God, in the person of Jesus Christ, is to be the judge. Though God is the judge of all (Heb. 12:23), yet this judicial activity is exercised through Christ, at the last day, as well as in the present state (John 5:22, 27).

Heb. 12:23—“to God the judge of all”; John 5:22, 27—“For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he hath given all judgment unto the Son ... and he gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man.”Stevens, Johannine Theology, 349—“Jesus says that he judges no man (John 8:15). He does not personally judge men. His attitude toward men is solely that of Savior. It is rather his work, his word, his truth, which pronounces condemnation against them both here and hereafter. The judgment is that light is come; men's attitude toward [pg 1028]the light involves their judgment; the light judges them, or, they judge themselves.... The Savior does not come to judge but to save them; but, by their rejection of salvation, they turn the saving message itself into a judgment.”

This, for three reasons:

(a) Christ's human nature enables men to understand both the law and the love of God, and so makes intelligible the grounds on which judgment is passed.

Whoever says that God is too distant and great to be understood may be pointed to Christ, in whose human life the divine “law appears, drawn out in living characters,”and the divine love is manifest, as suffering upon the cross to save men from their sins.

(b) The perfect human nature of Christ, united as it is to the divine, ensures all that is needful in true judgment, viz.: that it be both merciful and just.

Acts 17:31—“he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”

As F. W. Robertson has shown in his sermon on “The Sympathy of Christ” (vol. 1: sermon vii), it is not sin that most sympathizes with sin. Sin blinds and hardens. Only the pure can appreciate the needs of the impure, and feel for them.

(c) Human nature, sitting upon the throne of judgment, will afford convincing proof that Christ has received the reward of his sufferings, and that humanity has been perfectly redeemed. The saints shall “judge the world” only as they are one with Christ.

The lowly Son of man shall sit upon the throne of judgment. And with himself he will join all believers. Mat. 19:28—“ye who have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel”; Luke 22:28-30—“But ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations; and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom; and ye shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel”; 1 Cor. 6:2, 3—“know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?... Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” Rev. 3:21—“He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne.”

4. The subjects of the final judgment.

The persons upon whose characters and conduct this judgment shall be passed are of two great classes:

(a) All men—each possessed of body as well as soul,—the dead having been raised, and the living having been changed.

1 Cor. 15:51, 52—“We all shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed”; 1 Thess. 4:16, 17—“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

(b) All evil angels,—good angels appearing only as attendants and ministers of the Judge.

Evil angels: 2 Pet. 2:4—“For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment”; Jude 6—“And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day”; Good angels: Mat. 13:41, 42—“The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth”; 25:31—“But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations.”

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5. The grounds of the final judgment.

These will be two in number:

(a) The law of God,—as made known in conscience and in Scripture.

John 12:48—“He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day”; Rom. 2:12—“For as many as have sinned without the law shall also perish without the law: and as many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by the law.” On the self-registry and disclosure of sin, see F. A. Noble, Our Redemption, 59-76. Dr. Noble quotes Daniel Webster in the Knapp case at Salem: “There is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.” Thomas Carlyle said to Lord Houghton: “Richard Milnes! in the day of judgment, when the Lord asks you why you did not get that pension for Alfred Tennyson, it will not do to lay the blame on your constituents,—it is you that will be damned.”

(b) The grace of Christ (Rev. 20:12),—those whose names are found “written in the book of life” being approved, simply because of their union with Christ and participation in his righteousness. Their good works shall be brought into judgment only as proofs of this relation to the Redeemer. Those not found “written in the book of life” will be judged by the law of God, as God has made it known to each individual.

Rev. 20:12—“And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works.” The “book of life” = the book of justification, in which are written the names of those who are united to Christ by faith; as the “book of death”would = the book of condemnation, in which are written the names of those who stand in their sins, as unrepentant and unforgiven transgressors of God's law.

Ferries, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, 2:821—“The judgment, in one aspect or stage of it, is a present act. For judgment Christ is come into this world (John 9:39). There is an actual separation of men in progress here and now.... This judgment which is in progress now, is destined to be perfected.... In the last assize, Christ will be the Judge as before.... It may be said that men will hereafter judge themselves. Those who are unlike Christ will find themselves as such to be separate from him. The two classes of people are parted because they have acquired distinct natures like the sheep and the goat.... The character of each person is a ‘book’ or record, preserving, in moral and spiritual effects, all that he has been and done and loved, and in the judgment these books will be ‘opened,’ or each man's character will be manifested as the light of Christ's character falls upon it.... The people of Christ themselves receive different rewards, according as their life has been.”

Dr. H. E. Robins, in his Restatement, holds that only under the grace-system can the deeds done in the body be the ground of judgment. These deeds will be repentance and faith, not words of external morality. They will be fruits of the Spirit, such as spring from the broken and contrite heart. Christ, as head of the mediatorial kingdom, will fitly be the Judge. So Judgment will be an unmixed blessing to the righteous. To them the words “prepare to meet thy God” (Amos 4:12) should have no terror; for to meet God is to meet their deliverance and their reward. “Teach me to live that I may dread The grave as little as my bed: Teach me to die, that so I may Rise glorious at the judgment day.” On the whole subject, see Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 456, 457; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 465, 466; Neander, Planting and Training, 524-526; Jonathan Edwards, Works, 2:499, 500; 4:202-225; Fox, in Lutheran Rev., 1887:206-226.

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