The Righteous Will Be Judged

Answering a question on Quora:

Why will the righteous be judged?

The short answer is that, whereas the unrighteous are judged for punishment, the righteous are judged for reward.

The long answer requires starting by defining “the righteous.” The righteous are not people who never sin.

Now we know that whatever the Law [the Ten Commandments and associated commands] says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [ancient Israelites], so that every mouth may be closed and call the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh [no human] will be justified in His [God’s] sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God… — Romans 3:19–20, 23

The purpose of passages such as the Ten Commandments is not to show us how we can earn heaven. It is to show us that we cannot earn heaven. It drives us to seek a different way to have positive relationship with God.

Rather, the righteous are people who let go of self-righteousness and instead trust that God paid their penalty through Jesus’s sacrifice and then proved it by raising Jesus from the dead. Scriptures use accounting language to say that God credits their penalty to Jesus and imputes their faith to their account for righteousness. They become, not perfect or sinless, but declared righteous.

Being declared righteous does not automatically make their thoughts and actions righteous; that takes growth over the rest of their lives. Becoming a Christian doesn’t make you perfect, it makes you a student.

Here’s an important distinction: Being declared righteous does not mean you can do whatever you want. There are many reasons for this. First, believers do what they believe, so if they really believe God, then they’ll start learning to do God’s will.

Second, God takes steps to help them grow more holy in what they do. So their belief will produce evidence, that is, good behaviors. Good behavior is not a cause of God’s gift of forgiveness, it is a result. Every false system will reverse that by making good works into requirements for receiving the gift. But when you try to earn a gift, you insult the Giver and miss out on getting the gift.

Third, God tests and chastises His children to instill good behaviors. In extreme cases, chastisement can even lead to taking a severely disobedient believer home to heaven. So it’s laughable to say that being secure in God’s love and not having to persevere in good works means you can get away with anything. A “believer” who does whatever he wants and gets away with it demonstrates that he is a counterfeit Christian.

The judgment of the righteous is different from the judgment of those who reject or fail to accept God’s gift (let’s call them “the lost”). When the lost are judged, their moral crimes determine their degree of punishment. Since we sin against infinite God, even a “small” sin earns a very serious punishment.

The righteous, on the other hand, are not judged for punishment because their sins were already punished. (Remember, they were transferred to Christ.) Instead, their works are judged for reward. Many of their “good” works will be disqualified because they were mixed with error, bad methods, or wrong motives. Those works that survive the test will be rewarded. 1 Corinthians 3:12-13

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use. Please give credit where credit is due.

Will God Forgive Bitterness?

From a question on Quora:

Will God still forgive those who hold bitterness in their hearts towards others?

Bitterness is wrong. It hurts others and it hurts you. It means that you have not seen yourself through God’s eyes because you see yourself as superior to the other person. You must know this, so I’ll keep the focus on God’s forgiveness.

There are two routes to heaven. If you depend on the first route, then, along with obeying numerous other commandments, you must forgive everyone who offends you in order to earn God’s forgiveness. If you have depended on the second route, God has already forgiven you as Judge, although He may chastise you as a loving Father.

The Jews of Jesus’s day, most people around the world, and many “Christian” denominations and offshoots pursue the first route. This route depends on human merit.

• The Jewish leaders, being descendants of Abraham, believed their heritage earned heaven for them. You will hear similar claims today, such as “My mother was a saint!” or “Grandpa was a Baptist preacher.”
• Many believed that the sacrifices made by their parents or ceremonies such as circumcision that their parents put them through brought them into a special relationship with God. When I was 18, I thought that because I was born an American and my parents had me “baptized” when I was little, I would see heaven.
• Others believed that if they kept the Ten Commandments, related commandments, traditions, and ceremonies; did acts of love and generosity; and kept themselves separate from things that would defile them (such as eating pork of shrimp), God would forgive them. Much of that continues today. The standard may be as simple as “Love one another” or may include performing sacraments, works of charity, refraining from offenses, or forgiving others.

Jesus often preached against depending on the first, heritage. He also preached that the second, what others do for you, was worthless unless you embrace the third in your heart. He did often preach the third, personal righteousness. But there’s a catch.

If you depend on personal righteousness, then the standard is perfection. The test is Pass/Fail, and any score less than 100% is Fail. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours (Matthew 6:15). Jesus implied that the personal righteousness standard was so high that, instead of saving people, it condemned them. All (except Jesus) have fallen short of God’s standard. Because of this, God cannot allow us to defile His presence. Even if we could, we could not bear to be in His presence.

Not everybody reaches sufficient humiliation to admit in frustration and self-condemnation, “I can’t.” For those who do give up on the futile self-merit route, God has created the second route.

The word grace means gift or unmerited favor. If something is a gift, you don’t insult the Giver by trying to earn it either before or after the fact. You don’t mix faith and works or mix grace and merit the way many churches do.

God’s grace is an attitude, not a money-like stuff that comes bit-by-bit. Someone made up an acronym to explain g-r-a-c-e: God Redeems At Christ’s Expense. Jesus, Son of God, like a Big Brother taking his little brother’s punishment, took God’s punishment for our sins. Jesus’s sacrifice was sufficient for all sins of all people; and God demonstrated His satisfaction by physically raising Jesus from the dead.

God applies that payment to those who trust God instead of themselves. That includes several points of faith such as our guilt and its consequences, Christ being God, Christ dying on a cross and rising from the dead, and God’s promise to save trusting people from being judged for their offenses.

When you have that kind of repentance and faith, God grants total forgiveness. That means you will never face God as Judge because He has changed your relationship. He births you into His family and adopts you as His heir. So now He’s your Father who will never leave or abandon you, even if you have not yet overcome bitterness in your heart.

Does that mean you can do anything you want — such as failing to forgive — without consequences? Absolutely not! God chastises His children when they will not turn from offensive ways. Sometimes, chastisement can be as severe as sickness or death. But your sin cannot change what you are.

So if you want to earn your way to heaven, go ahead: Hold yourself to an impossibly high standard. And when you fall flat on your face, go to God in humility. As Judge, God will forgive all your sins — and by all I mean all, including bitterness. And as Father, he will train you, using internal influence over your spirit, positive reinforcement, and chastisement. 

Copyright 2020 Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for non-remunerated use, and please give credit where credit is due.

Hebrews 6:6 -- Not About OSAS

Does Hebrews 6:4-8 mean that a person cannot come back to God and be saved if they once were with God and then fell away from God?

The simple answer is that the passage is not about salvation. Verses 4–8 describe the first century Jewish nation, not individual Christians.

(For simplicity of language, I’m going to use the Jewish author’s term “Jews” to refer to the first-century establishment Hebrews in Judea. It’s a lot easier to type, I do not intend any insult to “Jews” of today, and I assume the reader is intelligent and flexible enough to accept that.)

Two camps within Christianity have argued for centuries over the meaning of then have fallen away. One side (called Arminians, after Jacob Arminius) say that it means Christians can fall away and lose their salvation. The other side (Calvinists, after John Calvin) claim that the Arminian interpretation would contradict other less ambiguous statements in the Bible.

The New American Standard Bible translation is the most consistently accurate word-for-word translation, so I use that here. Here is the passage:

• For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

In the Greek, the structure of verses 4–6 is:

• For it is impossible, those who (identifying phrases), to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify, etc.

The meaning is ambiguous because the identifying phases can be interpreted to mean either Christians or the Jews. The following is a literal translation of the Greek identifying phrases without the adjustments needed to make the sentence fit together in English.

• those who, having once been enlightened
• having tasted of the heavenly gift
• having been made partakers of the Holy Spirit
• having tasted the good word of God
• having tasted... the powers of the age to come
• and having fallen away

Arminians interpret having fallen away to mean that a Christian can fall away. This is based on the King James Version’s mistaken translation, if they shall fall away. If and shall fall makes the phrase conditional and future.

But that interpretation is incorrect because it derives from an incorrect translation. If does not exist in the Greek text, and the verb to fall has the same past tense (called aorist) that all the other verbs have. Having fallen is not about a potential action that might happen in the future. It is about an actual action that had already happened at the time the author was writing.

The phrase does not describe hypothetical Christian individuals in the future. It describes an action that the Jewish establishment had already performed.

If you remove the identifying phrases, the sentence reads thus:

• For it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, seeing that they crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame

If you apply these phrases to Christians, it does not make much sense. Why can’t a straying Christian be restored? How would restoring a repentant Christian crucify Christ afresh and put Him to shame? If restoring a “fallen” Christian re-crucifies Christ, then isn’t Christ re-crucified every time a sinner repents?

In contrast, it becomes quite simple if applied to the Jewish establishment. If you outline Hebews, you will notice that it's all about contrasting the Jewish temple system against the superior system of Christ's gospel and church. Before Christ’s sacrifice, the temple system’s daily sacrifices pointed forward to redemption through His sacrifice. Afterwards, continuing the sacrifices implied that Christ’s sacrifice had not happened, or if it had happened, it was insufficient. (Roman Catholicism’s mass has similar problems.) This was analogous to hanging somebody in effigy. It was an insult.

Also note that the sentence does not say, if one renews them again to repentance, they will crucify to themselves the Son of God…. The meaning is, it is impossible because they crucify…. The temple sacrifices rejected Christ’s coming and sacrifice. The leaders had already been called to repentance and had rebuffed that call.

Hebrews 6:4-6 is ambiguous enough for a careless reading to lead to several possible interpretation. However, it is far more likely that the fallen refers to the Jewish system that rejected Christ, and the evidence that it is impossible to renew the Jews to repentance was that they insulted the person and work of Christ. If you continue on to verse 8, you will see a veiled threat to the Jews that their system was about to undergo God’s judgment.

This dovetails with what we know from history, namely, that God allowed waves of Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem and Judea starting in 67 AD. This was prophesied hundreds of years before (for instance, by Joel) and later by Jesus. So Hebrews 6:6–8 fits into a much larger picture.

Let's not stop at verse 8. Verses 9–12 contrast with the preceding verses. Whereas verses 4–8 describe people who were never saved, verses 9–12 describe people who have been saved.

There are “things” that accompany salvation such as love and ministry (verses 9–10). It does not say that love and ministry produce salvation, but rather, they are found in the person who already possesses salvation. Diligence in producing evidence of salvation produces not salvation, but assurance (verse 11).

Also note a contrast between verses 9 and 12. The beginning of the paragraph treats salvation as a present condition of the Christian whereas the ending of the paragraph treats inheritance, that is, reward, as something that comes at the end of a faithful, persevering life.

God saves through faith alone, but faith plus salvation results in fruits of the Spirit such as love, good works such as ministering to the needs of the church, and perseverance through doubts, temptations, and trials. Those results of salvation produce assurance and result in rewards. Be careful when people try to turn the results or evidences of salvation into causes of salvation.

I was forgiven. I need forgiveness. Contradiction?

The Bible teaches that salvation means you have been forgiven; yet it also teaches a continuous need for confession and forgiveness. Skeptics twist that into a contradiction. Arminians and Wesleyans twist it into "proof" that salvation is conditional and not secure. Both reflect a need for greater understanding. 

Forgiveness or being forgiven means either an action or a state. The word forgiven has more than one meaning.

• Past participle of the verb to forgive — You were forgiven, meaning, God forgave you.
• Adjective — You are forgiven, meaning, since you were declared forgiven, now you are in a state of forgiveness; it is one of your attributes.
• Present participle — You are forgiven, meaning, I forgive you.

I forgive

Before discussing forgiveness in the spiritual context, we need to recognize a practical context. Sin affects everybody.

• My sin affects me because it has consequences for me.
• It affects God because it desecrates His creation, it is an affront to His holiness, and it rebels against His sovereignty.
• Some sins directly hurts others.

So if somebody says, You are forgiven, they might mean that, assuming you have obeyed the gospel, God has forgiven you. However, they might mean that they forgive you for what you did to them.

God forgives

The state of forgiveness cannot be reversed. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1, NASB).

This is because Christ fulfilled the Law — the Old Testament commandments that condemned us. God God reckons Christ’s death and payment of the debt to our accounts, so in the new birth, we died to the Law of Condemnation and were born into a Law of love.

Romans 7:1–6 uses marriage as an analogy. Marriage is a lifelong commitment. When one spouse dies, the other is free from that first commitment and free to marry another. Similarly, when Christ’s death is imputed to us, it’s like we’ve died to the Law of Condemnation, and God places us under a new law, the Law of Love. So the passage concludes in verse 6,

• But now we have been released from the Law [of commandments that condemn], having died to that by which we were bound [the Law and our guilt], so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter [the Law].

Because God remakes us as His children, His role in relationship to one whom He remakes into His child changes from Judge to Father. Formerly, His end role was to pronounce guilt, hand down the sentence, and execute justice. Now, His role is to train us; and by being trained, we can bring more honor to Him, earn rewards, enjoy fellowship with Him, and become more of a blessing to those we encounter. His end role will be to judge our performance and give rewards rather than to condemn.

On the other hand…

All this means that sin cannot condemn us, but it does not mean that sin does not hurt is. Sin still

• brings embarrassment to God’s name
• wastes rewards
• interferes with our fellowship with God
• interferes with our fellowship with others
• makes us a hindrance to others instead of a blessing
• weighs us down with guilt

Even though we have been forgiven by our Judge so that no penalty of condemnation remains, we still seek forgiveness from our Father because a penalty of lost joy and usefulness weighs us down.

Whereas the book of Romans focused on judicial forgiveness, the book of 1 John focuses on daily life.

• [I]f we walk in the Light… we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin…. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:7–9, NASB)

This passage would seem self contradictory. “He forgives us of all sins, yet we need continued forgiveness?” This is resolved if you recognize the difference between forgiveness by our Judge and forgiveness by our Father.

Again, judicial forgiveness cleanses us from all our sins — past, present, and future. But within that state of forgiveness, we still need that cleansing of conscience and restoration of fellowship with our Father.

That’s why we should, even though our sins are forgiven, live in a continual state of repentance, confession, and attempted reform.

Copyright 2019, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal or non-profit use. Please give credit where credit is due.

Saved by Grace but Secured by Self Righteousness

"I believe i am saved from this ungodly world by the grace of God. but to continue in that salvation or saving grace requires effort on my part."

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Galatians 3:3

If the potter makes a pot for honorable use, does the pot need to take action to remain a pot? If God turns a goat into a sheep, does the sheep need to take action to avoid turning back into a goat? 

Doctrines of piecemeal justification (Catholicism) or perishable justification (Arminians) contradict the very definition of grace. They do not recognize that the new birth changes a believer's very nature.

The new birth

• Changes strangers into members of the household
• Changes citizens of the kingdom of darkness into citizens of the kingdom of light
• Emancipates slave, turning them into free persons
• Changes children of satan into children of God and brethren of Christ
• Gives sight to spiritually blind
• Gives life to those who were spiritually dead
• Gives an inheritance to the disinherited
• Turns the condemned into the glorified

If God turns a lump of coal into a diamond, a little bit of dirt does not turn it back into coal. Diamonds continue to be diamonds because that's what God has remade them into, and diamonds will shine because that's what diamonds do.

Living in insecurity and in fear of your fleshly nature is not God's will for believers. IFF (if and only if) you are a believer, your spirit is a diamond embedded in a fleshly lump of coal. God promises, indeed predestines, that in the resurrection or rapture, He will transform your old coal into a new diamond, too. You cannot break God's promises or defeat His predestination.

Living in insecurity and fear is wrong for believers, but it is right for those who have not received The Gift, as a gift, from the Giver. God does not take away what He has freely given. Neither does He give the gift to those who insult His generosity.

If you received the "gift" of salvation as though it were something that you would have to pay for on the installment plan (Catholic) or would have to earn through other do's and don'ts (Wesleyan), then you may not have received the gift as a gift. Please make sure you receive the gift God's way.